The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards Read Online Free PDF Page A

drawing for a color television and sold it for two hundred dollars. He went to Disney World and tried to kill himself. How could sawing up a snake compare to any of that? He realizes he himself was the one screaming. That makes the most sense. A snake, even if it isn’t sawed in half, can’t scream. That’s why his boss is here. To make sure the screaming and trembling are done. He can’t decide whether his hands are shaking. It might just be his eyes.
    He says, “Why am I so…”
    “There’s no telling,” Tom Stewart tells him. “What scares us, we don’t have control over that.”
    “After I cut it in two,” AJ says, “it was ugly.” He wants to say more, explain that the snake had a second and horrible face, but the door opens. The sun is all but set and his father’s shadow across the carpet is gigantic.
    As soon as the joint is lit, Penny decides she must get back to her party. “I don’t require an escort,” she announces, a statement that demands a volunteer.
    “Grab Andrew,” Ellen whispers to Greta. “Let’s hold on to him.”
    As the joint is passed to Andrew on the couch, Greta intercepts it and sits on his lap. She inhales to make the lit end glow. The one who sang “Hotel California” offers to walk Penny.
    The Talking Heads sing over the speakers. A slight chronological advancement over Motown, Greta thinks, as she rises from Andrew’s lap. By the end of the album, the joint is gone and all but four have returned to Penny’s party. Besides herself, Ellen, and Andrew, there’s a dark little man she has hardly noticed. The pot is not so potent that she fails to see her duty. She kicks off her shoes and traipses over to his chair. She sits on one of the wide arms and puts her bare feet on his knees.
    “Hey, sport,” she says. “I’ve forgotten your name.”
    He has a serious face with intense black eyes.
    “We were never introduced,” he says softly.
    “I’m Greta, like the immortal Garbo.”
    “Not too often I meet an immortal,” he says. “You’re only the second.”
    She laughs at that. “Tell me something about yourself.”
    He bends his finger. She obediently leans in. “I’m in love with your friend.” He points.
    On the couch, Ellen and Andrew use a mechanical device to roll another joint.
    “Which one?” Greta asks.
    “Hah,” he says without any humor. “Your sister. This whole evening is for my benefit. I’m supposed to be crazy jealous.”
    Andrew holds the rolling apparatus while Ellen tucks cigarette paper in its vinyl saddle. They look intimate already.
    Greta says, “Sorry, but I don’t think so.”
    “Oh?” His eyebrows rise, and the pouches beneath his eyes vanish. He looks a decade younger. “Watch this.”
    He runs his hand along her leg and under her dress.
    “Hey, now,” she says.
    At the same moment Ellen says, “I know,” and hops up from the couch, spilling pot over Andrew’s lap. “Let’s move the furniture and dance.”
    AJ pedals his bicycle to the house where the tree is coming down. He has stayed home from work two days, and it has taken most of the morning to ride from his neighborhood, which has few trees and no snakes. He watches from a distance. He doesn’t want the crew to see him. All of the branches have been removed from the tree. The top of the trunk has been lopped, but the tree is still incredibly tall—and bare now, like a single monstrous thought.
    He pedals farther, to the house with the red tile roof. A station wagon fills the driveway. The house is brick—nothing any bad wolf could blow down. It would take something huge, as big as the tree, to knock it over. The sprinklers are on and a man is on his knees in the wet grass, getting soaked.
    “Can you help me?” the man says. He is trying to turn off the sprinklers.
    AJ gives the spiked knob a twist. It’s not really that tight.
    The man is effusive. He drips on AJ’s shoes. “Are you handy?” he asks. His name is Duncan, and he offers work. “A few