The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards by Robert Boswell Read Free Book Online

well. Her children are sweet but inattentive and self-absorbed like almost everyone their age.
    “So?” her mother says. “Did you have yourself a time?”
    Greta shrugs as she grabs the Baileys. “It was pleasant.”
    Her date the night before had been with an attractive stockbroker who means nothing to her. They ate dinner in the Palmer House ballroom. The occasion included a jazz band and speeches by politicians and actors—a fund-raiser for an obscure malady. Afterward, they had drinks and sex and a drive in his convertible. With her mother at the house, Greta could have spent the night with him. She had no responsibilities calling her home, and she’d been only mildly bored—a gentle, yielding brand of boredom she was coming to appreciate.
    She chooses a cup for her coffee and Irish cream, and tells her mother about the celebrities in the audience, their clothing, the courses of food, the alderman who shared their table. She enjoys the night more in retrospect than she had while she lived it.
    “Hair of the dog?” her mother asks, eyeing the bottle.
    Greta finishes pouring the Baileys. “You can call it that.”
    The back door opens. One of the workers nods a greeting, taking in her bare legs. He holds a sledgehammer. “We’re about to get serious out back. Thought I ought to warn you.” He offers an abbreviated wave, two fingers flicking. Lightning divides the sky over the runway. Greta observes it through the bar’s wide window, a brilliant forking flash, followed by a tremendous percussive slap. The lights shut down. The room turns the gray of the sky. The girl in the vest rolls her eyes as she gives Greta the drink. “This always happens. The control tower has a generator. There are emergency lights in the halls.”
    “The bars are on their own?” Greta says.
    “You got it.”
    The tonic is flat. She barely tastes the gin, but she’s happy for the dim room, the quiet, the time to think. The bond she shared with Ellen was physical, a belief in the bodies of children and men, a faith that resided in their own flesh. She cannot keep her friend without her family. For that matter, Ellen could not keep her marriage without Greta and Duncan. They had all come together in a complex harmony, and now they can’t help but attend to everything that is missing. Is there a word for this kind of loss? She’s acquainted with the grief of losing her husband, the shame of deciding to leave him, the guilt from knowing how he died. What’s the word for losing a dear friend? She tries to find one with the right sound and texture. She can almost feel it on her tongue.
    A man on the next stool speaks to her, “Buy you a drink?” She hadn’t noticed him, though he’s in pilot’s uniform. His cap is on the bar and he’s touching the emblem—white wings—with his thumb, as if to wipe it clean. His eyes are appraising and curious. Smiling, he adds, “I get a discount.”
    She declines his offer. “I just want to be left alone.”
    “There’s a wish,” he says. He jostles her stool as he stands. She lifts her G&T to keep it from spilling. The transparent liquid rocks in its transparent container. One of the men dismantling the ramps—the same one as before—pushes open the door again. She has moved her chair into the sun, her feet up on the windowsill, and the door nudges her chair. “Sorry,” he says, his eyes steering themselves along her legs to her thighs. The second man wedges his face into the space between the jamb and the door. The two heads in the opening look connected, like a mythological creature.
    “Something wrong?” she asks.
    She removes her feet from the window ledge and the men enter. They want water. Greta fetches cups and ice. It’s only when she’s handing over the drinks that she realizes one of them is a woman—hipless and flat-chested but undeniably female. She is silent while the man talks about the assembly and heft of the ramps, their sturdy design, the clever interlocking