Read Online The Shore by Robert Dunbar - Free Book Online

one of the nearer tables, two men sipping drinks with a woman who kept stirring ice in a glass. “I could of very easily just continued on.” The woman wore rollers, which had been covered with some sort of sparkling mesh scarf, as if for emphasis. “I’m telling you.” Her eye makeup reminded him of the album jackets of the opera recordings his wife had loved…of how he’d used to tease her about all the fat ladies done up like love goddesses. Can’t get lost in the past now. Have to stay alert. He could actually feel the fever surging within him. Might learn something. He shook his head, tried to concentrate. You never know. One of the three at the table would speak, then stop, then another would say something, though not apparently in response, more as if they’d suddenly recalled some forgotten detail. “Is that what you want? To wind up like Atlantic City?”
    “I’m telling you.”
    He struggled to find the thread of their conversation, but the loudest one, a gaunt man in a toupee, seemed to be engaged in a different discussion altogether.
    “Slums by the sea?”
    “You know who found it? Dolly’s father. Yeah, the old man. Pieces floating. I hear he’s been in bed ever since.”
    “That’s so bad when they get like that at that age. Probably never get up again.”
    “No,” she agreed. “It ain’t.”
    “Homeless people pissing under the boardwalk? Is that what you want?”
    “I’m telling you, we will never have gambling here. Don’t be ridiculous.” She banged the bottom of her empty glass on the table for emphasis, but the rollers on her head never so much as vibrated.
    He strained to listen. It seemed they’d paired off differently now, two still conversing and one continuing to speak exclusively in non sequiturs. “The town council would never allow it.” Suddenly, the woman’s stare angled in his direction, so he fixed his eyes on his beer and let their words blur around him. A thin drift of laughter reached him from across the bar, and he had the feeling he’d missed something, that someone had at last uttered something crucial, and he leaned his head on his hands and struggled to listen, concentrating first on the nearest table, then on another farther away, but now each remark had developed a chanted, mumbled quality that made his head throb. Everyone around him seemed to be drinking boilermakers, even the dim little couple at the far end of the bar, so when Margie/Tracie returned, he ordered one too. Again, she raised an eyebrow, something he knew she practiced in front of a mirror. He gulped the shot and swigged from the beer, feeling the sweat bead out on his forehead. God, how do they stand these? He watched a highly rouged woman drop the whole shot glass into the beer, raise it carefully and take an enormous gulp without blinking.
    “No,” the guy with the toupee loudly insisted. “The real problem is still the gambling and the whores and the fast-food joints.” He waited for one of them to nod in agreement. When no one did, he drained his glass as though vindicated. “Am I right?”
    “I’m telling you.”
    Christ, I need sleep. He realized that he and the barmaid were speaking again, though he had no idea what they’d been saying.
    “…welfare, a lot of them, I guess.” She shrugged a bony shoulder. “I don’t really know.”
    “I guess”—he started to cough—“there’s not much else to do winter nights besides drink.”
    “Well, they do enough of that.” Abruptly, she teetered away.
    Not doing too well here, am I? Haven’t done too well in a long time. He shivered, and the faces in the bar rose like apparitions, thin and anxious, bathed in the light from the television, a light as dingy as dirty water. Probably it’s time they sent somebody else. But who? His glass chattered against his teeth. Steady. Then he realized they’d all stirred. Suddenly, they sat up or leaned forward in their seats, staring above his head. Trying to comprehend, he put