Fishing

(BILL and MARTY are fishing.  There is a full minute of silence where they simply sip their beers and wait for a bite.  Then--)

MARTY:  Delia worried?

BILL:  Worried about what?

MARTY:  The comet.

BILL:  Oh.  (A beat.  He considers it.)  I don’t know.  You’d have to ask her.

MARTY:  She’s your wife.

BILL:  She’s got a mind of her own.

MARTY:  How’s Kristen?

BILL:  She’s okay.  Can’t get a man with that haircut of hers.

MARTY:  Still short, huh?

BILL:  I told her she looks like Joan of Arc.  That didn’t go over too well.

MARTY:  Kids.

BILL:  Damn kids.

            (Silence.)

MARTY:  Your house all boarded up for the storm?

BILL:  It’s not going to be a storm, Marty.  It’s going to be a global catastrophe.

MARTY:  Yeah, but did you board your house up?

BILL:  No, I didn’t.  I also forgot to shave my ass, because it just didn’t seem all that important, you know what I mean?

MARTY:  …Yup.

            (A beat.)

MARTY:  I boarded my house up.

BILL:  Now what did you do that for?

MARTY:  Had to do something, Bill.  Connie kept yelling at me.

BILL:  Tell Connie the world’s going to end whether or not your windows are boarded up.

MARTY:  I tried telling her that.

BILL:  And?

MARTY:  She didn’t want to be told.

BILL:  Marty, sometimes I’m not sure you’re an actual person.

MARTY:  Don’t start in on my manhood, Bill.

BILL:  I’m not talking about your manhood.  I’m talking about whether or not I believe you really exist, and sometimes, I doubt it.  I really do.

MARTY:  They’re just windows.  If she wants ‘em boarded, I board ‘em.  I don’t like arguing with her.  And I don’t know when this thing is coming either.  What I do know is, the last thing I want to be doing with my wife before I die is arguing.

BILL:  Then why aren’t you with her right now?  Why are we fishing if you want to stay on your wife’s good side?

MARTY:  She kicked me out.  Said I was driving her crazy.  Said to come back in a few hours and we’d pray and hold each other.

BILL:  Nice to know you have that to look forward to.

MARTY:  What about Delia?  What’s she doing?

BILL:  At the cemetery.  Visiting her first husband.

MARTY:  That’s odd.

BILL:  Nothing odd about it.  She was married to the man, he died, she wants to go pay her respects before…

MARTY:  Yeah.

BILL:  Perfectly normal thing to do.

MARTY:  You’re right.  I apologize.

BILL:  It’s not odd.

MARTY:  It’s not.

BILL:  What’s up is boarding up windows when—

MARTY:  I apologized, Bill.  Just let it go.

            (A beat.)

BILL:  It bothers me a little.

MARTY:  Why’s that?

BILL:  I always—oh listen to me—

MARTY:  We can talk, Bill.  I know we don’t talk much, but we are supposed to be friends.  It’s okay to share things.  I share things with you.

BILL:  Yeah, but whenever you do, I really hate it.

MARTY:  Bill—

BILL:  It bothers me because I always suspected that she loved him more.

MARTY:  Okay.

(A moment.)

Go on.

BILL:  Well, that, uh, she’d still be with him, you know, if he were…he was still alive.

MARTY:  You know, statistically, most people say they’d chose the person they were currently with even if they could go back to the person that died.

BILL:  What kind of idiot statistics are those?

MARTY:  Well---

BILL:  I mean, who would ask a question like that and who would be dumb enough to answer it and think the answer meant anything?

MARTY:  Bill—

BILL:  I mean, how would you know what you would do in a situation like that unless you’ve actually had to face it?  And since none of those people have, it’s all well and good for them to say—Well, I would do this—but it doesn’t really mean anything, does it?

MARTY:  Well it—

BILL:  Does it?

MARTY:  No, I guess not.

BILL:  I guess not either.

            (A beat.)

MARTY:  She’d choose you.

            (A moment.  BILL makes a sort of grunting sound, as if to say—“Who knows?”)

MARTY:  You’re a miserable old bastard, you have no patience at all, you’re rude, abrasive, and insensitive, but you’re a good husband and a good friend, and if Delia had to choose, she’d choose you.

BILL:  You think I’m a good friend?

MARTY:  You’re my best friend.

BILL:  I am?

MARTY:  Bill, do you think I’d be sitting out here right now with my second best friend?

BILL:  Well…no.

            (A moment goes by.  Then another moment.)

BILL:  The world’s going to end and we’re going to be fishing.

MARTY:  Soon as we catch something, we’ll call it a day.

BILL:  You want to catch something, huh?

MARTY:  Yup.

BILL:  That could be…Well…

MARTY:  You can go if you want to.  Delia’s probably back by now.

BILL:  Yeah.

            (A moment.)

MARTY:  So?

BILL:  I’ll wait a little while longer.

MARTY:  You sure?

BILL:  Yeah.  Hell, I’d like to catch something too.  Not like we’re going to get many more chances to be out here, you know?  Might be our last time.

MARTY:  You can’t think about stuff like that, Bill.  You can only think about the stuff you can control.

BILL:  Oh yeah?  What stuff is that?

MARTY:  Nothing.

            (BILL laughs.)

Absolutely nothing.

            (And they fish.)