Free The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards by Robert Boswell

community college and through the library. She had published two poems in the college magazine. She had given up poetry to write fiction, and then given that up to paint. She sold two paintings, one to a boyfriend for twenty-five dollars, the other to a man in Santa Fe who wanted her to pose in the nude, for fifty. She had been surprised when he didn’t make a pass at her. Just painted. She had spent hours at his house naked, even after he paid her. She watched
The Sopranos
naked on his couch, the artist beside her but not touching her. His painting had included the slight stretch marks on her stomach, the memory her body held of being pregnant, the way her hair remembered the hot iron with its curl.
    She read her book:
    A nervous glance as eyes meet
    stare beyond
    the wide canyon
    She glanced up at the Chin, who was studying the sports section now, his newspaper folded down to a little square.
    “Are you nervous about something?” she asked him.
    “Me?” he said, lowering the paper and beginning, then, to appear nervous.
    “You look nervous,” she said.
    “How can you tell?” He flicked one eye oddly, a tic in the early stages.
    “I bet I know your nickname,” she said. “Do you have a nickname?”
    “When I was a kid, I had one,” he said. “What’s your name?”
    “That’s not important,” she said.
    “I’ve seen you, though. Before. You bring your lunch here often?”
    “I used to,” she said, which was true.
    Before Brian, she had come to Waffle Park twice a week, directly from the Stalker’s house on Tuesdays and from the Colonel’s on Fridays. Then she met Brian, and he had wanted to take her out so much—ethnic food, expensive places, once to a hotel in the middle of the day. He had been crazy for her, and she had quit coming to Waffle Park.
    It wasn’t really called Waffle Park, of course. She gave things names.
    “So what do you think my nickname was?” The man with the chin shoved the paper aside. She had his complete attention.
    “Water Boy,” she said, smiling, cocking her head.
    “Water Boy?” He sounded shocked, or tried to, then attempted a smile, but he was disappointed, that much was clear. What she said to him mattered.
    “You were hoping I’d say
Romeo or Mr. Beautiful?”
She rolled her eyes dramatically.
    “Well, no, but Water Boy?” Flicked, and flicked again, that nervous tic.
    “Did I get it right?”
    “Skeeter,” he said. “My father—”
    “I had a nickname, too,” she said, though she had not yet thought what it might be.
    He hesitated. His eyes wandered over her chest.
    “I bet I know,” he said. “I bet it was
Foxy.
” His eyes were bright now and zeroed in on her.
    “Oh, please.” She made a face to convey disgust. “My mother started it—the nickname—then my sisters used it, my girlfriends. It was a female kind of nickname.”
    “So?” he said. “What was it?”
    “
Sting
,” she said. “Mostly. I mean, my mother would say, ‘My little Sting,’ and my sister would call me ‘Stinger,’ and the girls called me ‘The Sting.’”
    She made a bridge of her fingers and let her chin rest there, happy with her invention.
    “How… why’d they call you Sting?”
    “They called me Sting because I have a big nose. It is big, isn’t it?”
    “I think you have a great nose.”
    “My ex-husband used to say that. He loved me for my nose.”
    “What did the boys call you?”
    “Some called me Sting, the rest used my name.”
    “You’re not going to tell me your name?”
    “I come here twice a week,” she said. “I’ll tell you another time.”
    The Chin smiled again, a knowing smile, which she didn’t like, and no tic. She could read him already. She would not come here again for at least a month. This idea pleased her, and she raised her book, as if she had forgotten about him.
    “You must like the Police,” he began. When she lowered her book and frowned, he added, “The band, you know. Sting is the lead singer, or was. I