2.

Two months prior Marty and Alex had gone on a selling spree to afford their weed. They sold every CD they had which had a case that wasn’t cracked or broken. They sold an old box of LP records that Alex had planned on saving till they eventually turned to valuable antiques. They’d sold some VHS porn flicks since they’d both seen them a thousand times, and they had no functional VCR these days anyway since the heads were fried on the one they had. They’d even emptied a Sunday paper vending machine and hawked the stack of papers on the street for a quarter apiece. Marty wondered what they would sell once they ran out of things to get rid of, whether they’d end up in alleys selling blowjobs and hand jobs; but this fear was groundless, he reflected now, since no one did that for weed anyhow.

They even sold Arthur to a farmer they’d met in town at a Farmer’s Market. The man was selling corn and Marty did the honors of approaching him with an offer to sell the pig, whom they’d taken there on a leash for that purpose. Alex was disconsolate but they had to do it; not only was the rent past due, but the electric was coming, they were out of food and they hadn’t had any weed for a week. In quiet tones while Alex stood at a distance Marty told the farmer to pretend the pig was going to be a stud and not someone’s dinner. “Oh no need to pretend!” said the farmer, winking at Marty from under his tan cowboy hat--“it is for studding!”

Once they had the $230 that the farmer gave them for Arthur they went out for groceries. Completely unconscious of what he was doing, Marty put three pounds of bacon into their basket, when Alex broke into tears and started screaming--“No! We can’t buy that, not with Arthur’s money!” Marty realized selling the pig to buy bacon was somehow the same as slaughtering and eating the beloved animal in Alex’s mind. Marty removed the bacon from their cart and with a measure of disappointment he dared not to buy so much as a trout or salmon fillet with Arthur’s money.