Ants Go Marching

Four o’clock. Rory is drunk, but Maggie is drunker, and she’s half-asleep under the shadow of the sycamore tree, her wine glass tipped over onto the grass, her bare feet dangling just off the picnic blanket beside it, a trail of ants marching their way toward the uneaten half of tomato sandwich that’s balanced in the palm of her outstretched hand. It’s hot out, but not too hot. The summer has been a lazy one.

“Danny,” Rory says, and this wakes her.

“Hm?”

“Danny.”

“Yes, I know, but Danny what?” She takes a bite of the sandwich, moving it out of their path just before the ants can make first contact. She chews, thinks, then pitches the rest of the sandwich toward the bushes. The ants reroute and begin their arduous journey anew.

“Danny’s the one that said something.”

She says nothing.

“You asked.”

“When?”

“At the party.”

“No, when did I ask?”

“Just now.”

“Just now?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.”

Maggie rocks the fallen wine glass by its base with her big toe, standing it up, letting it fall, standing it up, letting it fall. The grass cushions each drop.

“I was asleep.”

“Ah.”

Rory is smoking. His notebook is open before him, where he’s been trying another attempt at the story, but it is hard to write with Maggie around. It was hard, in fact, to do most things with Maggie around.

“Well, who gives a damn about what Danny has to say,” she says, sitting up. She stretches, yawns, plucks the cigarette from between his teeth and lays back down with it now clenched between hers. Smoke billows upward, toward the startling blue sky that hangs above them.

“I do,” Rory says. He pulls out his pack and lights another.

“Do what?”

“Give a damn. About what Danny has to say.”

“Why?” She blows smoke. “He’s just Danny.”

“I find that he oftentimes knows quite a deal about a lot of things.”

“A lot of things, huh?”

“Yes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I just think he knows what he’s talking about.”

“But he’s just Danny.”

“Meaning?”

She turns onto her side, so she can see him. It’s just the back of his head. His hair, she realizes, is getting long again. It’s beginning to curl.

“Meaning he’s just Danny. He’s no one, he has no frame of reference to be saying things like that to you, especially if they concern me. That’s what I mean.”

Rory says nothing. He keeps smoking his new cigarette.

Maggie scoots closer to him. He doesn’t shy away.

“Did you still want to see that movie tonight?” she asks him.

He doesn’t respond.

“Rory?”

“I think he’s right. I think he’s worth listening to.”

“Oh, god,” she sighs, laying back down. Her cigarette has gone out. She flicks that toward the bushes, too. “Can we not do this now? Here?”

“I just trust what he has to say. He wouldn’t have told me unless he meant it, you know, like really meant it. He thought that I needed to know.”

“Whatever.”

“It isn’t whatever, Mags.”

They sit in silence. Overhead, a plane leaves chemtrails on its way to wherever. Rory follows it with his eyes, thinks, writes a few words, then stops to think again.

“How’s it coming?” she asks.

“It isn’t.”

“Maybe take a break. Lay with me.”

“I’m still getting started.”

“Lay with me, come on.”

“I want to finish by sundown.”

Maggie is startled. “Are we going to be here until sundown?”

“If it takes that long, then yes.”

“But the movie.”

“I don’t want to see the movie.”

“Yes, you do, you told me you wanted to see the movie.”

“No, Maggie, you wanted to see the movie. You must’ve projected that want onto me.”

Maggie sits up, holds Rory around the middle. She rests her chin on his shoulder. He still makes no attempt to turn and look at her.

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, Maggie.”

“Do you resent me?”

“No, Maggie.”

“Do you love me?”

He sighs. “Yes, Maggie.”

“How much?” she asks, as she lays back down.

Rory thinks of the story he’s writing, in which a woman brandishes a kitchen knife at her husband when he comes home drunk, five hours later than he promised, reeking of gin and ether. He thinks of the handle of his own mother’s kitchen knives, and how the blades were worn down from three generations of use. He thinks of the first day he and Maggie met, how she told him that he needed to shave his face more often, because her mother hated scruffy guys. He thinks of the tomato sandwiches they had for lunch, and of the line of ants that he’d watched march toward Maggie’s outstretched hand, still gripping her half. How he wanted them to crawl up her arm. How she hated insects of any kind. How, after they moved into that apartment downtown, she’d made him crawl around on his hands and knees with his caulking gun to plug any holes he could find, on the off chance that a single errant gnat might make its way into their home and into their lives on a particularly warm day. He thinks of his college girlfriend, and the way her bangs would sometimes cover her eyes. He thinks of the bathtub. He thinks of winter. He thinks of quick, painless death– perhaps a fall from fourteen stories up, or maybe a bellyful of pills, the multi-colored ones, like a rainbow, a handful of them swallowed with four long pulls from a bottle of wine. He thinks of Maggie, too. Fleetingly.

“A whole lot,” he answers, but by the time the words leave his lips, she’s already fallen back asleep.