Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards is an exhilarating collection, as brash as it is wise, by Robert Boswell one of our great storytellers Set mainly in small, gritty American cities, each of these stories is a world unto itself. A man's obsessive visits to a fortuneteller leave him nearly homeless. Time collapses as two marriages slowly dissolve. And in the searing title story, a young man recounts the summer he spent in a mountain town, squatting in a borrowed house with a loose band of slackers, abstaining from all drugs (other than mushrooms)―and ultimately asking just what kind of harm we can do to one another. “Like Richard Yates, Robert Boswell seems always to wish he had better news for us. In the wide-ranging stories of The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards , he wishes we weren't so lost, so conflicted, so stubborn in our misapprehensions. But he's been watching us too closely, with too clear an eye, too keen an intelligence, and besides, Boswell's real talent, like Yates's, is for telling us the truth.” ― RICHARD RUSSO “[Boswell] shows a sensitive and comprehensive understanding of the quirks that can shake a person off course: from fear, passivity and pride to external knocks and dings that are easier to spot, harder to fix.” ― The New York Times Book Review “An unnerving, fascinating collection.” ― O, The Oprah Magazine Robert Boswell is the author of two story collections and five novels, including Mystery Ride and Crooked Hearts . He lives with his wife, the writer Antonya Nelson, and their two children, in Houston, Texas. The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards Stories By Robert Boswell Graywolf Press Copyright © 2009 Robert Boswell All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-55597-566-1 Contents No River Wide, Smoke, Miss Famous, A Walk in Winter, A Sketch of Highway on the Nap of a Mountain, Supreme Beings, In a Foreign Land, City Bus, Guests, Almost Not Beautiful, Skin Deep, Lacunae, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, CHAPTER 1 NO RIVER WIDE Both things first: Greta Steno is two places at once and walking. She is in a Chicago neighborhood in the early fall on a sidewalk made ramshackle by tree roots, and she is barefoot in Florida on a warm winter evening, the broad leaves of a banana tree swiping at her hair. She is thirty-nine and forty-two years old. In Chicago, she wears paint-spattered clothes and walks with her husband to the house of Ellen Riley, who is her closest friend and who is about to move to Florida. In Florida, she is in a tight black dress and walks beside Ellen, whose last name is no longer Riley, and they are on their way to a party. In Chicago, the late-morning air still conjures the façade of summer, and Greta's husband stumbles on the ragged sidewalk, falling to his knees. In Florida, Greta and Ellen drink scotch from transparent disposable cups, the winter dusk as warm as spring, Greta's husband two years in the ground. "A good thing we're wearing our nasties," her husband says, examining the tear in the knee of his slacks. Duncan is slow finding his feet. The weight of middle age has settled in his trunk and limbs. He's been awkward lately, wooden in his expressions. He'd been a lanky boy in a rock band when Greta met him in college. Now their son has the gangly build, while Duncan's body has become thick and ponderous. Their daughter, thankfully, looks like Greta. "It feels like they're doing this to us," he says, getting up. "I know that's silly." He's talking about the move. Ellen's husband, Theo, has accepted a transfer. He has gone to Florida this weekend to look for a house. At the intersection, they can see the top of the great white oak, a landmark tree in a Chicago burg known for its trees. Ellen and Theo's house was built in the 1920s, and the architect designed a notch in one corner to accommodate the oak, which even then was enormous. Today, its upper limbs tremble, and though neither Greta nor Duncan mentions it, they understand the destruction has begun. In Florida, Greta talks about Duncan's quick decline and death. Either she's drunk or acting drunk to hold Ellen's attention. Ellen's neighborhood is the kind of leafy habitat that encourages intoxication — tropical trees leaking oxygen like bad tires, houses rising out of the green abundance like pastel mushrooms. The banana tree that flounces its wide leaves over the sidewalk forces Greta to step to the curb. In one hand she holds her shoes — black mules with outrageous heels — and in the other, her plastic cup of scotch. "I got through it," Greta is saying. She thinks perhaps she has gone on too long. "The kids got through it." They're not young women, Greta and Ellen, and neither are they old, beyond the childbearing pale but clinging bravely to the sheen of ripe sexuality. Ellen has changed her appearance since moving to Florida. Except for her long midwestern gait, everything about her has changed. She's severely tan and so thin as to teeter on tha