‘Then another year goes by and we’re still there,’ she says. ‘We can’t wait another year, Ray. We’ll be bankrupts.’

When she talks, Biz looks at her from his place in the backseat. Sometimes he looks at Ray when Ray talks, but not always. Mostly he looks at Mary.

‘What do you think?’ he says. ‘It’s going to rain so you don’t have to worry about going bankrupt?’

‘We’re in it together, unless you forgot,’ she says. They’re driving through Castle Rock now. It’s pretty dead. What Ray calls ‘the economy’ has disappeared from this part of Maine. The Walmart is on the other side of town, near the high school where Ray is a janitor. The Walmart has its own stoplight. People joke about it.

‘Penny wise and pound foolish,’ he says. ‘You ever hear that one?’

‘A million times, from you.’

He grunts. He can see the dog in the rearview mirror, watching her. Sometimes he hates the way Biz does that. It comes to him that neither of them knows what they are talking about. It is a depressing thought.

‘And pull in at the Quik-Pik,’ she says. ‘I want to get a kickball for Tallie’s birthday.’ Tallie is her brother’s little girl. Ray supposes that makes her his niece, although he’s not sure that’s right, since all the blood is on Mary’s side.

‘They have balls at Walmart,’ Ray says, ‘and everything’s cheaper at Wally World.’

‘The ones at Quik-Pik are purple. Purple is her favorite color. I can’t be sure there’ll be purple at Walmart.’

‘If there aren’t, we’ll stop at the Quik-Pik on the way back.’ He feels like a great weight is pressing down on his head. She’ll get her way. She always does on things like this. Marriage is like a football game and he’s quarterbacking the underdog team. He has to pick his spots. Make short passes.

‘It’ll be on the wrong side coming back,’ she says – as if they are caught in a torrent of city traffic instead of rolling through an almost deserted little town where most of the stores are for sale. ‘I’ll just dash in and get the ball and dash right back out.’

At two hundred pounds, Ray thinks, your dashing days are over, honey.

‘They’re only ninety-nine cents,’ she says. ‘Don’t be such a pinchpenny.’

Don’t be so pound foolish, he thinks, but what he says is, ‘Buy me a pack of smokes while you’re in there. I’m out.’

‘If you quit, we’d have an extra forty dollars a week.’

He saves up and pays a friend in South Carolina to ship him a dozen cartons at a time. They’re twenty dollars a carton cheaper in South Carolina. That’s a lot of money, even in this day and age. It’s not like he doesn’t try to economize. He has told her this before and will again, but what’s the point? In one ear, out the other. Nothing to slow down what he says in the middle.

‘I used to smoke two packs a day,’ he says. ‘Now I smoke less than half a pack.’ Actually, most days he smokes more. She knows it, and Ray knows she knows it. That’s marriage after awhile. That weight on his head gets a little heavier. Also, he can see Biz still looking at her. He feeds the damn thing, and he makes the money that pays for the food, but it’s her he’s looking at. And Jack Russells are supposed to be smart.

He turns in to the Quik-Pik.

‘You ought to buy them on Indian Island if you’ve got to have them,’ she says.

‘They haven’t sold tax-free smokes on the rez for ten years,’ he says. ‘I’ve told you that, too. You don’t listen.’ He pulls past the gas pumps and parks beside the store. There’s no shade. The sun is directly overhead. The car’s air conditioner only works a little. They are both sweating. In the backseat, Biz is panting. It makes him look like he’s grinning.

‘Well, you ought to quit,’ Mary says.

‘And you ought to quit those Little Debbies,’ he says. He doesn’t want to say this, he knows how sensitive she is about her weight, but out it comes. He can’t hold it back. It’s a mystery.

‘I ain’t had one in a year,’ she says.

‘Mary, the box is on the top shelf. A twenty-four-pack. Behind the flour.’

‘Were you snooping?’ she cries. A flush is rising in her cheeks, and he sees how she looked when she was still beautiful. Good-looking, anyway. Everybody said she was good-looking, even his mother, who didn’t like her otherwise.

‘I was looking for the bottle opener,’ he says. ‘I had a bottle of cream soda. The kind with the old-fashioned cap.’

‘Looking for a bottle opener on the top shelf of the goddam cupboard!’

‘Go in and get the ball,’ he says. ‘And get me some smokes. Be a sport.’

‘Can’t you wait until we get home? Can’t you even wait that long?’

‘You can get the cheap ones,’ he says. ‘That off-brand. Premium Harmony, they’re called.’ They taste like old stale cowshit, but all right. If she’ll only shut up about it. It’s too hot to argue.

‘Where are you going to smoke, anyway? In the car, I suppose, so I have to breathe it.’

‘I’ll open the window, I always do.’

‘I’ll get the ball. Then I’ll come back. If you feel you have to spend four dollars and fifty cents to poison your lungs, you can go in. I’ll sit with the baby.’

Ray hates it when she calls Biz the baby. He’s a dog, and he may be as bright as Mary likes to boast, but he still shits outside and licks where his balls used to be.

‘Buy a few Twinkies while you’re at it,’ he tells her. ‘Or maybe they’re having a special on Ho Hos.’

‘You’re so mean,’ she says. She gets out of the car and slams the door. He’s parked too close to the concrete cube of a building and she has to sidle until she’s past the trunk of the car, and he knows she knows he’s looking at her, seeing how she’s now so big she has to sidle. He knows she thinks he parked close to the building on purpose, to make her sidle, and maybe he did.

He wants a cigarette.

‘Well, Biz, old buddy, it’s just you and me.’

Biz lies down on the backseat and closes his eyes. He may get up on his back paws and shuffle around for a few seconds when Mary puts on a record and tells him to dance, and if she tells him (in a jolly voice) that he’s a bad boy, he may go into the corner and sit facing the wall, but he still shits outside.

The time goes by and she doesn’t come out. Ray opens the glove compartment. He paws through the rat’s nest of papers, looking for some cigarettes he might have forgotten, but there aren’t any. He does find a Hostess Sno Ball still in its wrapper. He pokes it. It’s as stiff as a corpse. It’s got to be a thousand years old. Maybe older. Maybe it came over on the Ark.

‘Everybody has his poison,’ he says. He unwraps the Sno Ball and tosses it into the backseat. ‘Want this, Biz? Go ahead, knock yourself out.’

Biz snarks the Sno Ball in two bites. Then he sets to work licking up bits of coconut off the seat. Mary would have a shit fit, but Mary’s not here.

Ray looks at the gas gauge and sees it’s down to half. He could turn off the motor and unroll the windows, but then he’d really bake. Sitting here in the sun, waiting for her to buy a purple plastic kickball for ninety-nine cents when he knows they could get one for seventy-nine cents at Walmart. Only that one might be yellow or red. Not good enough for Tallie. Only purple for the princess.

He sits there and Mary doesn’t come back. ‘Christ on a pony!’ he says. Cool air traces over his face. He thinks again about turning off the engine, saving some gas, then thinks fuck it. She won’t bring him the smokes, either. Not even the cheap off-brand. This he knows. He had to make that crack about those Little Debbies.

He sees a young woman in the rearview mirror. She’s jogging toward the car. She’s even heavier than Mary; great big tits shuffle back and forth under her blue smock. Biz sees her coming and starts to bark.

Ray unrolls the window.

‘Is your wife a blond-haired woman?’ She puffs the words. ‘A blond-haired woman wearing sneakers?’ Her face shines with sweat.