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never had a man buy me milk.”
    â€œI’d like to be the first,” he said. He realized that they were flirting, which was something he had seen and possibly experienced but had never understood in the moment as he did right then. Once, in college, he had told a woman that he enjoyed her scent, but he had seen it as an honest compliment, the kind one adult delivers to another, and not a statement given to promote a favorable reaction, a flirtatious statement, potentially garnering affection. “I would be honored to be the first,” he said.
    Whenever anyone heard the story of Franny and David’s first meeting, they would ask why he hadn’t caught her there in the grocery store parking lot. He would claim he hadn’t been close enough. Years later he would stand next to a kiln and hope the objects inside would drastically change shape. They emerged as they had entered, amateur and uneven, too small, colored like wet sand.
    David’s wedding ring came off before Franny’s, in their fifth year of marriage, a time of great stress in his life. He had lost his dental license the year before, and they had just moved in with his father. He found he had been fussing with the ring, turning it round and round on his finger until his skin flamed, the distressed red band suggesting allergy.
    Then they both left their rings together at home and forgot where they ended up. Franny hoped they weren’t in the basement. David forgot about them.

 
    16.
    DAVID SAT on the front stoop. The dead bolt was not electrified, he was sure. He was fairly sure. There was no evidence to suggest that the dead bolt was electrified, and it was more reasonable to assume that in fact it was not.
    It was a bright day for winter, unusual too because of a drizzling rain that fell without cloud cover. David’s eyes were spangled by sunlight. It seemed that the ground was moving, but then he looked closer and saw that the motion was created by black ants crawling from a crack in the walk, up the stairs, across the porch, and into a gap in the foundation, into the house. The ants were small enough and the drizzle light enough that a connection between the two would be rare indeed, though the ants moved sluggishly out of their hibernation. He wondered how an ant would celebrate the event of a raindrop, if it would survive the impact. David’s body felt wrapped in a thin layer of cellophane.
    He put his face close to the ground and found one ant. The creature walked unevenly, hefting a crumb larger than its body. It bumped into a pebble, the kind that might wedge in the tread of a boot, and began the slow journey around it. David pitied the ant and understood it. He took a tissue from his pocket and laid it down before the ant. After some coaxing, the ant stepped onto the tissue, pausing, pressing on. David slid his hand underneath and, moving low to the ground, stepped, crouching, up the stairs to the point where the line of ants vanished into the house. He shook the tissue close to the line, and the ant landed near. It touched the other ants with the tips of its mandibles, and they paused and touched the first ant before continuing on their way. David noticed that the crumb had fallen loose during transport. He examined the tissue and the porch at the point where he had released the ant. When he looked back at the line, he couldn’t tell which ant he had moved. It was too late.
    The dead bolt did not spark his hand on the way back inside, but he still did not feel safe. He considered the ways in which a wire could be secured to the bolt’s knob, improving the safety of the door should the bolt at any point become electrified and a grounding element be unavailable.
    He washed his hands upstairs, looking at the beauty products that still surrounded Franny’s side of the sink. One bottle claimed to be a vacuum device for blackheads. He opened it and found a pump mechanism that dispensed an opalescent cream.