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by Robert Boswell

"A yellow taxi circles the airport; mist over LaGuardia; rumor of improvised explosive device; a bald Nigerian hack listening to incensed propagandists on WOR, his cab merging with the vortex; and behind the Plexiglas, an entrepreneurial American capitalist half his age, iPhone perpetually to her perfect pink ear, hair dark as a tiger’s stripe. “You could cut it with a knife,” she says. Having left a message with her lover, she speaks now to her sister. 'That much is definite. The bomb is speculation.'"

3 pages, Magazine

Published October 1, 2016

About the author

Robert Boswell is the author of eleven books, including The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, a story collection with Graywolf Press, in April 2009. His novels: Century's Son, American Owned Love, Mystery Ride, The Geography of Desire, and Crooked Hearts. His other story collections: Living to Be 100 and Dancing in the Movies. His nonfiction: The Half-Known World, a book on the craft of writing, and What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak, a book about a real-life treasure hunt in New Mexico (co-written with David Schweidel). His cyberpunk novel Virtual Death (published under the pseudonym Shale Aaron) was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award.

His play Tongues won the John Gassner Prize. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Iowa School of Letters Award for Fiction, the PEN West Award for Fiction, and the Evil Companions Award. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, Pushcart Prize Stories, Best Stories from the South, Esquire, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, Colorado Review, and many other magazines.

He shares the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston with his wife, Antonya Nelson.