Absolute Rage Read Online Free PDF Page A

the windows, backed right up to the water, with a weathered deck built out on pilings trimming it on one side and at the rear. White tin tables with beer-company umbrellas flying from them were set out on the latter, each accompanied by an odd assortment of chairs.
    â€œâ€Šâ€˜For men must work, and women must weep,’ ” Rose intoned as they followed the trotting children down the deck, “ ‘and there’s little to earn and many to keep, though the harbor bar be moaning.’ My dad used to say that whenever we came here. He claimed it referred to the drunks at the bar. God! Maybe they’re all still there, still moaning.”
    The children ran to a table and the women followed. The place was nearly full with an early-dinner crowd, mostly sun-reddened tourists on their way back from Shelter Island or Orient Point. One table, however (its top nearly covered with empty beer bottles), was filled with locals—two dark, tanned thirtyish men, one burly and tattooed and balding, the other ponytailed, both in cutoff jeans, muddy work boots, and wife-beater shirts, plus an older man, slim, well-knit, blue-eyed, florid, with a fine dust of graying gold on his head, and next to him, a very dirty little boy with a white hard-hat flopping on his head. The blond man caught sight of their group and nodded, smiling, at Marlene, a deep nod, nearly a bow, but nothing mocking about it. The boy saw her, too, and Marlene was not surprised to see appear on his face an expression far from that which ought to blossom on the face of a lad observing his beloved mom, but something much more like dismay. Marlene ignored him and sat down. The children did the same, immediately grabbing the crayons and starting the paper games thoughtfully provided on the place mats.
    â€œThe prodigal son is getting his bag on after a hard day’s work,” Marlene remarked, and, following Rose’s look over at the other tables, added, “The Damico brothers, Gary and Phil, general contractors, and Billy Ireland. I think I’ll just leave the four of them alone. They look too crude for the likes of us.”
    â€œThey would be the Shelley Society in McCullensburg,” said Rose.
    Marlene picked up a little card stuck to the chrome stand that held packets of sweetener. “Gosh, anchovies and artichokes is the special pizza and they’re doing crab cakes, by which I can tell it’s Friday.” She waved to flag down a waitress. “I’m sorry to say we can’t get shit-faced. I have to pick up my husband at eight oh seven.”
    â€œI bet he’s not crude,” said Rose.
    â€œOh, he has his crude moments. But generally he’s the Shelley Society compared to me.”
    â€œYour trainer is staring at you. Not necessarily an employee-employer look, if I may say so.”
    â€œYes, well, that’s partly why I keep him around,” said Marlene. “And he’s terrific with the dogs.”

2
    M ARLENE SAT ON A WOODEN bench outside the little Southold railroad station and stroked her dog’s velvety ears as she waited for her husband’s train to appear. Marlene was a Romantic, like many people who were highly religious in youth and are no longer so, and all Romantics love trains, even cheesy commuter trains. Although she knew her husband as well as she knew herself (better, if truth be told), she still wished for him to be ever a dark stranger. So, waiting in the gathering dusk, and nearly alone on the platform, she amused herself by striking different poses before her reflection in the glass of a trade-school advertisement while entertaining fantastic thoughts.
    Such as getting on this train and staying on it to the end of the line and then back to the City, and staying on trains and getting off in strange cities, and staying in hotels, always second-class hotels near the station, and then boarding another train for another city, and living an anonymous life, and