The Thing

The Thing

It was his idea to drive to Vegas. She wanted to take a plane. She found a great deal on tickets – round trip from Boston for only eighty-nine dollars a piece, plus tax and security fees.
“I still think we should drive,” Ben had said. “It would be fun.”
“It would be a lot of sitting around,” Maggie pointed out. “I don’t know.”
“Think of all the places we could see,” he continued. “We could go to the Grand Canyon. Maybe we’ll even drive to the Gulf Coast. We can even go a little bit further west and go to California. I know you love California.”
“I don’t know…”
“Come on, Mag. We’ll go to the beach. It will be great.”
“The beach?” she asked, thinking of the ten pounds she had put on since New Years. “I’d rather not.”
“You’re no fun,” he kidded. When she frowned he added, “If you want, we can go to Graceland.”
“Really?” Maggie asked, almost smiling.
“Yeah,” he said, reaching out to touch her arm. “Let’s just drive to Vegas. It will be fun. Besides, I think it will be good for us.”
“It will be good for us,” was the thought Maggie kept in her head from that moment on. Every time they got stuck in traffic, she told herself “This is good for us.” When flying debris from a tractor trailer cracked Ben’s car’s windshield outside Nashville, she breathed, and “We need this trip.” When the air conditioning stopped working in the middle of Texas, she said, “This trip is exactly what we need.” It wasn’t until she caught Ben flirting with a young blonde by the Motel 6 pool in Tucson that she couldn’t help but wonder if the whole drive was actually good for them.
The last stop before Las Vegas was the Grand Canyon. They planned on getting there in the early evening and staying a day before they headed a little further north. By this point they were both pretty bored with the long stretches of empty road and the vast nothingness that came with it, only interrupted occasionally by a view of a dried up house or a half dead desert bush. The once pleasantly different scenery of endless earth, distant hills and mounds of sand began to look like a desolately boring construction site. The air in the car was dusty and the radio stations only played gospel and country. Both of Maggie and Ben’s backs hurt from sitting. When the drive was dull, like when they crossed the dirt, infrequent grass and occasional sprawling ranches of Texas, Maggie and Ben had tried playing games. They played “Who Can Find the Most ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ signs, but after an hour of each of them saying “There’s one” every other minute, they got bored. Now in Arizona neither of them were in good enough moods to attempt to do anything to pass time. Instead they both stared out at the dry scenery and didn’t talk.
Drifting in and out of sleep, and occasionally bumping a tired head onto her window, Maggie began to notice a new collection of billboards appearing. They weren’t the same Shell gas station ones that warned there was only one more stop for fuel for the next 100 miles. These billboards were bright green with “The Thing?” snaking across in purple letters. Underneath the words it said “120 miles”. A few minutes later there was a similar sign that said “115 miles”, then another that said “110 miles”, then “105 miles” and then “100 miles”. Eventually a billboard finally proclaimed “85 miles off Exit 71”.
“Let’s go,” Ben spoke up.
“To ‘The Thing?’” Maggie asked. She grinned, because she had been thinking the same.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“Okay,” she shrugged.
Maggie sighed and shut her eyes until a few minutes later when Ben asked, “What do you think it is?”
“What? The Thing?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know,” she replied and yawned. “Something mysterious.”
“Well, obviously,” he said. “I mean, it is called ‘The Thing.’ I bet its something alive.”
“Like what?” she asked. “A pig with three heads?”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “Or a lizard with five tails.”
“It could be the world’s biggest cactus..”
“Or a dinosaur.”
“I hope it’s something awesome,” Maggie said.
“It will be,” Ben assured her.
“It better be,” she replied.  Sitting up and rubbing her back she changed the radio station. Country music. She changed it again. Static. She shut the radio off and leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes. She hadn’t slept much the night before and wanted to take a nap, but couldn’t fall asleep. The whole trip she had had trouble sleeping and was beginning to rely on Nyquil and Tylenol PM to help her out. Every time she closed her eyes she was bothered. She was bothered by the whole trip to Vegas, the wedding they were going to attend and recent events involving Ben. She was fully aware of the fact that thoughts of Ben never bothered her before, because she had never been worried about her relationship with him before, and this only irritated her further. She was constantly trying not to think about him, and especially trying not to think about Jackie.
Everything began to change a month earlier. It was a Monday and that was the day that a phone call from her little sister, Amy, interrupted Maggie’s meeting with her sales team. Amy called to announce that her and Greg were going to get married in Las Vegas in five weeks.
         “I have to take this call,” Maggie said to her tired employees, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with her hand and sneaking into the hallway. Back on the phone she said, “What? Seriously? You two just met!”
         “We did not ‘just meet’! It was four months ago!” Amy retorted. With a happy sigh she added, “Besides, we’re in love.”
         “What? In love? Are you sure?”
         “Of course I’m sure!” Amy cried. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life! Greg means the world to me! You’ll come won’t you? You’ll come to my wedding?”
         “Of course I will,” Maggie told her. “I can’t believe this! You’re getting married! Why the hell do you want to get married in Vegas? Why not at a church or outside or a courthouse like normal people?”
         “Why not in Las Vegas?” Amy asked. “It will be fun!”
         “But why? Don’t you want a big fancy wedding with flowers and a cake and a gorgeous dress?” Maggie asked.
         “I can have all that in Vegas!” Amy said. “We want something small. We want it personal and memorable and fun and we just thought it would be really great to be married there!”
         “I don’t get it,” Maggie said. “But I’ll be there.”
         After a few more moments the two sisters got off the phone. Before reentering the conference room Maggie stood in the hallway leaning against the wall. She wasn’t sure which of the many fleeting thoughts and emotions fluttering around her head she should grab onto. There was the fact that her sister was getting married, and when she claimed she didn’t want bridesmaids, Maggie’s hopes of ever being a maid of honor were dashed. Then there was the flakiness of the wedding (Vegas? Seriously?) and the absurdly short length of Amy and Greg’s relationship that worried her. Four months was not enough time to properly know someone. After a minute, Maggie rejoined her sales team with a sad sigh and a frown because despite all the issues surrounding the upcoming wedding, Maggie was really only thinking about the fact that her own ring finger was still naked.
         That night Maggie and Ben decided to try out the new seafood restaurant at the plaza down the street, Good Catch. Naturally the upcoming wedding was the topic of conversation since Greg happened to be Ben’s younger brother, and he was marrying Maggie’s sister. Maggie wasn’t sure if she should feel satisfaction or regret at bringing the two of them together at the last Thanksgiving, when both families traveled to Boston to celebrate the holiday at Maggie and Ben’s new apartment.
         “So, is this going to make us related?” Maggie giggled over her second glass of wine.
         “I think we’re sort of going to be legally related,” Ben mused. He ordered the salmon and thought it was too dry, but forked a large piece into his mouth anyway. “But it doesn’t matter. We were together first.”
         “Exactly,” Maggie agreed. “They’ve known each other, for what? Four months?”
         “It’s crazy!” Ben said. “Especially when you consider we’ve been together five years.”
         “Six,” Maggie reminded him.
         “Same difference,” he shrugged. “That’s a hell of a lot longer than them.”
         “I know,” she agreed. “It’s crazy that they’re getting married next month and we’re not even engaged.”
         “Yup,” Ben agreed. “Do you want to get another bottle of wine?”
         “Sure,” she said. “But isn’t it crazy that they’re getting married and we’re not engaged?”
         “Yeah, yeah, seriously,” he replied. “How’s your food?”
         Maggie had ordered the fried seafood platter and it did not sit well with her. She woke up at 4am the next morning to run to the bathroom to throw up. She was sick for days after that. At first she wondered if maybe she was pregnant and her stomach virus was actually morning sickness. When she learned she wasn’t, and was only suffering from food poisoning, she felt embarrassed. A part of her has secretly (and irrationally! she reminded herself) fantasized about having Ben’s baby, and the wedding that would have to result, though she often cringed, knowing how pathetic that was. Ben should want to marry her because he loves her, not because he knocked her up. No, instead she threw up everything that had ever been in her stomach for three days before she could returned to work. She had been feeling better for twelve whole hours and thought she could handle the day that Friday, until her coffee and bagel ended up in the office toilet before 11am.
         Being too hunched over with sickness to bother with the subway, a hurried cab ride brought Maggie to her apartment and within minutes she slipped out of her stifling, too-tight-around-the-waist work clothes and in between the cool sheets of her bed. She tried to sleep, but it wasn’t long before she felt and heard a familiar banging against the bedroom wall. Every so often, she and Ben would be lying in bed when the thump-thump-thumping of their next door neighbor’s bed against their wall would distract them. Their next door neighbor was Jackie, a tall blonde from New York  who moved to the apartment complex around the same time they did. Usually it was amusing (and sometimes a turn-on) knowing that someone was having sex, but at the moment Maggie just felt irritated. She got up and dragged a blanket and pillow to the living room couch but couldn’t sleep there, either. Maggie didn’t know Jackie very well and only spoke to her when they shared an elevator ride or saw each other in the gym. Jackie would run endlessly on the tread mill, sweat-free and gorgeous with her big, bouncing chest and tanned, flat belly, while Maggie tried to not show the arm pit stains on her oversized t-shirt as she suffered through her thirty minutes of cardio, red faced and puffing. Maggie wondered what kind of a woman she was and why she came home during lunch to have sex.          It must be because that is the only time they can meet, Maggie concluded. That means the man she’s fucking must be married or something!
When Maggie heard Jackie’s front door open, she forgot her weak stomach and, with a guilty smile, the spy in her came out and she bounded over to the peep hole on the door to look at who the guy was. She knew he would have to walk by her door on their way to the elevator. She waited, and then suddenly a blonde head came into view, accompanied by an all-too-familiar face. It was Ben, and he was fishing out his keys to open their apartment door.
         Maggie’s first reaction was to hide. She felt strangely guilty, as if she was the betrayer for catching Ben in such a predicament. She quickly ran into her bedroom and dove under the covers, and her stomach began to hurt from confusion and nervousness instead of sickness. She distracted herself by pretending to sleep had initiated fake heavy breathing by the time Ben entered the bedroom.
         “Oh, you’re home,” he said, noticing the lump she made under the covers. “You feeling okay? Mag?”
         Maggie didn’t answer. She continued to pretend to sleep while Ben shuffled around the room, doing something with a pile of his papers that lay in a stack next to his bureau. Maggie’s heart and mind were racing and she swallowed thickly, trying to calm down. He could have been coming up from the stairwell, she thought. That would explain why he was coming from that end of the hallway. He might not have been at Jackie’s at all. She tried to ignore the fact that they lived on the ninth floor and Ben wouldn’t have taken the stairs. Besides, he wouldn’t cheat on me, she thought. He loves me. He would never cheat. He’s going to ask me to marry him soon. He wouldn’t cheat.
         Ben left, shutting the door quietly, and Maggie let out a soft sob. She was about to let herself wail, but before the tears came she heard the door reopen and Ben reentered the room. Maggie resumed her fake sleeping as Ben sat on the bed next to her. He pulled the covers away from the cocoon they made around her head and kissed her softly on her hair, and then again on her forehead. He rubbed her back and whispered, “Feel better. I love you”, before he left. 
         There must be some sort of misunderstanding, Maggie thought to herself. Pulling herself into a ball she groaned with sickness in her stomach and confusion in her heart.          
         Neither of them ever spoke of Jackie after that, though Maggie wasn’t sure if they had ever spoken about her before anyway. Even so, not a day went by that Maggie didn’t reevaluate the circumstances, but everyday she came to the same conclusion. Ben wouldn’t cheat on her. Ben loved her. Ben has a future with her. It must have been nothing but a series of strange coincidences. Despite this, Maggie still couldn’t get up the courage to ask him. If he told her that he cheated it would mean she would have to deal with it, and the only dignified thing to do was leave him. She had come so far with Ben and she didn’t want to leave. It would be six years of her life down the drain.
         Maggie did eventually fall asleep that day in the car in Arizona. When she woke up the car was parked at a gas station and the lack of moving air from the windows caused a layer of sweat to form on her forehead. For the millionth time she regretting the demise of the air conditioning and she wiped off the sweat with a napkin she found in the glove compartment before inspecting her face in the rearview mirror. Sleep lines formed where her cheek had met a wrinkled t-shirted shoulder and she rubbed her face in an effort to smooth them out. For what wasn’t the first time she acknowledged that fact that yes, she was very pretty, but no, not as pretty as Jackie. She tried to smooth her messy hair back into a pony tail and she put on some Chapstick in an effort to spruce up. Eventually she just gave up and decided to get out of the car and stretch her legs, as well as find Ben, who hadn’t been seen since she woke up.
         Maggie stumbled over her stiff legs to the small convenience store that sat on the edge of the quiet highway. The building was white and covered in a brown and red array of dust and sand. A few strands of grass poked up here and there along the paved parking lot, but otherwise Maggie hadn’t really seen grass in days. It seemed like everything in the desert was either dry, paved or dead. A little bell tinkled when Maggie opened the door and both people in the store turned to look at her. One was a tall, bleach blonde who stood behind the cash register in a tight, white shirt wearing too much lip gloss, and the other was Ben, leaning over the counter, talking.
         “What are you doing?” Maggie asked, seized by a sudden bad mood. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
         “I thought you were sleeping,” Ben said.
         “I woke up.”
         “We can see that,” the blonde put in, and Maggie self consciously covered the sleep lines on her face with her hand.
         “I wanted to get some gas and buy you some water,” Ben told her. “Do you want a snack or anything?”
         “No,” Maggie replied. She had lost ten pounds for the wedding and didn’t want to gain it back with the help of gas station food. She had bought a cute blue dress that brought out her eyes and she planned on looking fabulous in it.
         “Okay,” Ben shrugged, and paid for the bottles of water and gas. On the way out the cashier called “Bye Ben” after him.
         “What was that about?” Maggie asked, getting back into the car and buckling her seat belt.
         “What was what about?” Ben asked as he started the car.
         “That,” Maggie said. “How did she know your name?”
         Ben shrugged. “It’s on my credit card.”
         “You paid with cash,” Maggie pointed out. They drove back onto the highway. Maggie could see a sign for “The Thing?” It was only 20 miles away.
         “Oh. I don’t know then. I must have told her.”
         “Why’d you tell her your name?”
         “Does it really matter?” Ben asked. “Hand me a water, will you?”
         Maggie opened a bottle of water and handed it to him, saying, “It does matter. Most people don’t exchange names when they go get gas.”
         “I must have told her, then,” Ben said. “So what?”
         “You were probably flirting,” Maggie muttered.
         “What?”
         “I said you were probably flirting,” Maggie said louder, not quite sure what she hoped to do with the accusation.
         “Why do you say that?” Ben asked. “Why are you accusing me of flirting?”
         “You flirted with that chick in Tucson,” Maggie pointed out.
         “We were talking.”
         “She asked you to rub sunscreen on her back,” Maggie said. “That’s not talking.”
         “But I didn’t rub the sunscreen on her back.”
         “Because I came over and interrupted!” Maggie said, thinking back to the girl who lay in a purple bikini by the hotel pool.
         “Mag, you’re overreacting,” Ben said. “We were just talking, okay? I was just making conversation.”
         “Yeah, right,” Maggie said, and tried not to cry. If they were at home she would have gone into her office, or the bathroom, so Ben wouldn’t know she was upset. One of the hardest parts of being stuck in a car was that she couldn’t just hide when she felt like crying.
         Ben glanced at her. “Are you crying?”
         “No.”
         “Yes you are,” Ben said and sighed. “Sorry, Maggie. I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry.” He stuck his water bottle in the cup holder and rubbed her thigh with a hand that was cold from holding the bottle. “Sorry, baby.”
         “It’s okay,” Maggie turned and stared out the window, swallowing back the question she almost asked about Jackie.
         “I asked the cashier about The Thing,” Ben said after a minute.
         “Oh?”
         “Yeah,” he replied. “She said she’s lived here her whole life and has never gone to see it.”
         “Really?” Maggie asked. “It seems like it would be the only interesting thing to do around here.”
         “I know,” Ben smiled. “But she says she knows people that have seen it and they told her what it is. She said it should be interesting and unexpected.”
         “I hope so,” Maggie said. “I hope it’s something good, like some sort of buried treasure or a quirky piece of history.”
         “Maybe it’s the body of Jesse James. I heard the one in his grave isn’t his real body.”
         “Maybe it’s a sacred Native American relic.”
         “I still think it’s a dinosaur.”
         Again, there was silence. Maggie fiddled with her nails, half wondering if she should get a manicure before the wedding. Her little sister’s wedding. Amy was marrying into Ben’s family before she was. Amy got a diamond ring before she did. Amy would get a hyphenated name and could register for wedding gifts before her. When is it going to be my turn? Maggie wondered.
         “So, I was thinking about California,” Ben spoke up after a few minutes. “I was thinking that maybe we could stay an extra week. Drive up the coast and stuff.”
         “I don’t know…” Maggie said slowly. “Wouldn’t I have to take some more time off work?”
         “Yeah, but it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?”
         “I don’t know…They need me at the office.”
         “Lame,” Ben shook his head. “I thought you loved California.”
         “I do,” Maggie said. “But I have a life in Boston now.” She looked at Ben when she said this, trying to see if there was any significance to her comment. He just stared straight ahead, concentrating on the road. They both knew she had once had a life of sorts in California. After college she had been accepted to a screen writing internship in Los Angeles and had moved out there while Ben headed to Boston. By graduation they had only been together a year and thought it would be best to just break up and move on. They both wanted different things. Maggie wanted to write, direct and star in her own films, while Ben wanted to be a Justice of the Supreme Court. They both knew it might be hard getting over each other for awhile but figured they would deal with it. Neither of them had had relationships before and neither knew how hard it truly was to “deal with it”.
After two months, Maggie half-heartedly began dating a nice guy she met at her internship. Two weeks later and in the middle of her first sex session with him she began to cry when it suddenly struck her how terribly different it was when he touched her, hugged her, kissed her. It wasn’t Ben. The boy naturally felt humiliated and hurried out of her apartment, while she tearfully called Ben long distance. Ben was all too eager to tell her how much he missed her, because he had been doing nothing but struggling through law school, sitting around his parent’s house and drinking with his community-college-educated friends from high school who he didn’t have much in common with anymore. He begged her to move to Boston and get an apartment with him, and more importantly, have a future with him. She happily agreed to give up her apartment, internship and friends, and until she moved the two of them called each other every day. They excitedly made plans to go on trips, eventually get married, have children and be happily ever after.
         Now they were both 27 and Ben was an unsatisfied lawyer and Maggie was moving up quickly in sales, a field she never really saw herself in - she just ended up there because it was the first job that hired her. They both worked long hours, preventing them from having the luxuries of free time, such as shopping, running errands, going to the gym (Ben went during his lunch hours, Maggie went on weekends, but otherwise saw herself as “flabby”) and spending time with each other. But they were together, and they were both somewhat and occasionally happy.
         “There it is,” Ben spoke up. Ahead of them was a long, flat series of  buildings, that were white and red striped with a painted roof that proclaimed “The Thing?” in big bubble letters. The parking lot was surprisingly crowded and Maggie thought there were more cars in the lot than she had seen all day on the road. Ben parked his Camry in between a mobile home and a Lexus with Oregon license plates and the two of them stiffly climbed out.
         “Well,” Maggie said, stretching her legs as she held on the hot steel of the car’s roof. “Let’s go in.”          They trudged to the entrance, and Maggie went to take Ben’s hand, but he was busy with his cell phone.
“Admission is eight dollars for adults,” Maggie said.
“What a rip off,” Ben muttered, slipping his phone into his pocket and removing his wallet. “But I don’t care now. This curiosity is killing me.”
“Me too,” Maggie agreed. “I can’t wait.”
“I bet it’s a sacred text of some sort.”
“No, I think you were closer when you guessed Jesse James. I bet it is some sort of Wild West memorabilia.”
“I heard it’s a lost statue sculpted by Michelangelo or someone,” a heavy set woman in front of them wearing a loud flowered shirt spoke up. “That’s what someone else was sayin’.”
“Really?” Ben asked. “I suppose it’s plausible.”
“It sure is,” she replied. “Where’re you folks from?”
“Boston,” Ben and Maggie replied in unison.
“Oh, I’ve heard that’s a nice place,” she replied. “Ne’er been, though. We drove up here from Alabama. We’re goin’ to Vegas.” She gestured towards an even heavier man who was wearing a quieter, but still flowered, shirt.
“So are we,” Maggie said.
“Doin’ some gamblin’?” She asked. Then with a wink, added, “Or gettin’ married?”
Ben laughed. “Ha. Not us. No way.”
“Aw, what a pity. You two sure are cute.”
“Ha. If you say so.”
The woman and her husband laughed. Meanwhile, Maggie turned to Ben with a scowl. “Why’d you say it like that?”
“Like what?” he asked.
“You’re like ‘Not us. No way,’” she imitated in a deep voice. “You said it happily, as if it’s good we’re not married. As if it’s never going to happen.”
Ben shrugged. “Well, I mean, it’s not like it’s happening anytime soon.”
Maggie opened her mouth to reply, but they had reached the teller. Ben bought them each admission, and handed Maggie a brochure. She shoved it in her purse without looking at it and turned to Ben. “What do you mean by ‘not happening anytime soon’?”
“Just what I said. That it isn’t happening anytime soon,” he replied and they entered the first building. It was exhibit one (not “The Thing?”) and had poor lighting and a dirt floor. To the side was a roped off platform with an old car and a yellowing sign that read “Hitler’s Car” and underneath was a brief explanation of how Hitler may have driven it at one point.
“What’s ‘soon’?” Maggie asked. “This week? This year? This decade?”
“I don’t know, Mag,” he said. “Check it out, Hitler’s car.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I want to know why you don’t want to marry me.”
Ben turned to her. “What’s with you?”
         “I just want to know,” she said.
         “Is this because of Amy?” he asked. “Is this because Amy’s getting married and you’re not and she’s your little sister?”
         “No.”
         “Yes, it is,” Ben said, and reached an arm around her. “Maggie, look. Just because Amy is getting married doesn’t mean we have to get married, too.”
         “I just mean—,” she began.
         “Things are great the way they are now,” he continued. “Don’t feel like you have to keep ahead of you little sister. I’m comfortable. You’re comfortable. Why get married now? We have the rest of our lives to get married.”
         “I just – I –,”
         “I love you, too,” Ben said, and kissed Maggie’s forehead. “Let’s read this display.”
         “I’m going to go to the bathroom,” Maggie said, shaking off his arm and walking back the way they came in, following the signs to a small hut labeled “Ladies Room”. There was a line, and Maggie dug her hands into her jeans pockets and waited. She tried to comprehend what just happened with Ben and suddenly had the feeling that the two of them just wanted different things. Maggie knew she thought that a proposal was going to arrive any day and now she knew that it wasn’t. In fact, he might never propose. She wondered if it had anything to do with Jackie, or if it was all her own fault.
         “Did you see “The Thing?” yet?” a woman asked the lady ahead of Maggie.
         “Yes, I did,” she replied. “I couldn’t believe it.”
         “I was surprised it was real,” the first woman said. “I thought it was going to be a sham.”
         “That would have been a waste,” the second woman agreed.
         I want to go back to Boston, Maggie thought, as though the problems she had didn’t exist there. I want to go back, away from all this. The line moved forward, and as Maggie entered a stall and lay disposable toilet seat protector over the seat and sat down, she wondered if her relationship was a sham. If it was all a waste. The way Amy and Greg were rushing into their wedding just felt so nice, so genuine, so happy and Maggie felt that they must be so completely in love with each other that they can’t stand to not be married. She wasn’t jealous that her sister was getting married before her. She was jealous that her sister was in a happy relationship.
         She took her time in the bathroom, washing her hands and washing the whole day off her face with pink soap and paper towels. By the time she met back up with Ben he had moved ahead and had entered the last building. There sat a glass display case with a big sign over it saying “The Thing?” The line inched forward and people took pictures of the mystery that was inside.
         “Hey, babe,” Ben said when he saw her and put an arm around her stiff shoulders.
         “Hey,” she said. She cleared her throat. She swallowed. She took a deep breath. She knew she had to know if there was anything real left. “What’s the real reason you don’t want to get married?”
         “What?” he asked. “Why?”
         She shrugged. “I want to know.”
         He also shrugged, and looked away. “Didn’t I tell you? I’m comfortable with how things are.”
         She shook her head. “Look…don’t take this the wrong way, but…”
         “What?” he asked. He looked back at her.
         Maggie felt her stomach flutter and it reminded her of the days she spent puking into the toilet. It also reminded her of Jackie’s bed banging into her wall. “Did you cheat on me?”
         Ben opened his mouth and shut it again.
         “I know you did,” she continued briskly, trying not to feel the words she was saying. “At least, I think so.”
Again, he opened his mouth and shut it. When he looked down at his feet and back at Maggie without answering, she knew. She felt like someone had punched her hard in the stomach. “Maggie,” he began.
         “Who?” she asked. “When?”
“Maggie.”
“Who was it?” she asked, fiercer this time. “Was it Jackie?”
         “Maggie – what? Who?”
         “Jackie!” she cried. “The hot chick from next door!”
         “Her? No,” he said. “Maggie – it was – I swear it – I didn’t mean to-,”
         “Who was it?” she asked. “When?” She sniffled and realized she was crying. “Who was it, then?” He must really have taken the stairs that day, she thought to herself, thinking of the only plausible reason for him coming from that direction of the hallway.
         “Maggie, I’m so sorry,” he said, trying to touch her shoulders as she jerked away. “I’m so, so sorry.”
         “Who. Was. It.” Maggie said loudly. “Who the fuck was it?” A few people turned around and stared, and one woman with a small son gave Maggie a dirty look.
         “Do we have to talk about this now?” he asked. “Let’s go back to the car.”
         “No!” she cried. “I want to see The Thing and I want to know who you fucked!”
         “Shh!” he hushed. “Okay, okay. At least quit yelling and swearing!”
         “Don’t tell me what to do!” she yelled, but she quieted after that. “Who was it?”
         “A girl from the law firm’s Denver office,” he said. “She was in town for a week.”
         “What’s her name?” Maggie asked, smearing tears across her cheek with the back of her hand. “Well? What is it?”
         “Paula. Paula Donaldson,” he said. “It only happened once, I swear. Maggie --, ”
         “Shut up,” Maggie hissed. “When was it? Where?”
         “Two months ago,” he said. “In her hotel room. It was only once. Maggie, I swear, I love you and I’m sorry.”
         “I can’t believe this,” she said. “I can’t believe you cheated on me.”
         “Maggie, I’m so, so, so sorry,” Ben said. She stared at him, angry tears welling in her eyes. His eyes were turning red and it looked like he might actually cry.
         “Get out,” she snapped, not looking at him. “Get out and go wait in the car.”
         “But I want to see –,”
         “Get out and go wait in the car,” she repeated, pulling a tissue from her pocket and blowing her nose loudly. Again, a few people turned around to stare. Maggie just glared back.
         Ben inched away from her, repeating, “I’m so sorry,” as he left the building. Maggie didn’t answer.
         It was only one time, she thought to herself. He only cheated once. Plus, it wasn’t with Jackie. Just as her spirits begin to slightly rise, she caught an image in her head of Ben loudly pounding some hot girl with a flat stomach and she began to cry again. She didn’t make any noise, just wiped her tears off her face with the same tissue and tried not too make too much eye contact with the other patrons.
         Then all of a sudden, she was there. She was right there in front of The Thing. The glass case revealed everything there was to it’s Americana mystery and she took it all it, momentarily forgetting about Ben. About five feet long, wrapped in disintegrating browinish, dirty gauze-like material was a mummy. It’s mouth was an empty, gaping hole, and it’s limbs and body were frail with age and death. Wrapped in it’s clutches in a tight hug was a smaller mummy, a baby, a dead lump of love, held in the same, old, dirty cloth. Formerly buried together, now they were on display together as two things for tourists to gape it.
         “Strange,” the woman behind Maggie said to a man she was with. “We came all this way, drove all these miles, and worked so hard to get here and it’s just so sad.”
         I was about to say the same thing, Maggie thought, and brushing a strand of hair of her now-dry face, she turned and headed back out into the Arizona heat.
         Ben sat on the hood of the car with his head in his hands. He jumped up when he saw Maggie approaching.
         “Maggie! Maggie, I’m so sorry. I really am. I love you so much. I’m sorry,” he said, and was about to try to hold her, but hesitated as if he knew he would be pushed away. His eyes were puffy and Maggie could tell that he must have cried a little. “I’m so sorry. I love you. I never should have done that.”
         “Unlock the door,” Maggie replied. Ben quickly did so, and she sat down on the warm seat, heated by the sun. Ben climbed in the car after her.
         “Maggie, I love you. I’m sorry,” he looked at her, waiting for a reply. She didn’t give him one, only buckled her seat belt. He continued to talk. “I never should have done that. I’m sorry. What’s – well, what’s going to happen now?”
         Maggie cleared her throat. “We’re going to skip the Grand Canyon. We’re going to drive to Vegas and we’re not going to stop until we’re there. Then we’re going to get separate hotel rooms.”
         “Okay,” he agreed. “Then what?”
         “Then you’re going to drive home,” she said. “I’m taking a plane.”
         “Oh. Okay,” he nodded. “Then what?”
         “I don’t know.”
         “Oh,” Ben still stared at her, and then placed a clumsy hand over hers, which she snatched away. “Maggie, I—,”
         “Shut up,” she said. “Will you hurry up and start driving?”
         “Oh. Yeah. Okay,” he started the car and they pulled out of the parking lot. Ben continued to glance over at Maggie every few seconds. Finally, he said, “Maggie?”
         “What now?” she asked.
         “No, I don’t mean – I just want to – well, what was it? What was The Thing?”
         Maggie just shook her head. “Fuck you,” she said, and turned to stare out the window, wondering if she could get some sleep on the way the Vegas.