The Friend

By Jeff K. Ramsey

The Friend takes the reader on a journey of three friends growing up in their early twenties, but once the reader looks within these characters of youth, he finds something much deeper and darker. They define an entire schematic for living and reflecting, and they redefine what is known as walking through life . . . with no end in sight. Do we embrace it, or walk away and ignore the obvious? We are offered the alternatives and their consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546229964

Jeff K. Ramsey

Jeff Ramsey has called New Mexico home since 1969. He began his writing career in 1976 which includes novels, short works, six stage plays produced in San Antonio, and multitudes of poetry. He received a degree in English Literature from Trinity University in 1981, and is actively involved in the study of metaphysics.

Book preview

Chapter I

i

I am Justin A. Freeman. I had always thought there was something mystic or sacred one is supposed to feel when growing up and leaving home, a rite of passage. First college, and then a job, a first real job. Some of this I missed as I reached that part of life some call maturity, though I did go through the motions. I suppose if I had been graduated from school and gone into some secure, pre-arranged job I could not make this claim, but we each consider our lives unique, though we seldom have the tenacity, or courage, to look about us and see we are only one in a multitude. Mine was not mundane, but due only to a peculiar combination of circumstances hardly of my own volition, was I allowed to go further.

As I look back it seems to be more what I saw than what I can attribute to personal experience which made this so. I promise not to bore you with all the details of my life because I have always felt autobiographies dull and self-serving, and I don’t intend to compromise that belief here. I only wish to convey that life—for each of us, no matter how unique we may consider ourselves—does not commence with a bang and then fizzle out. One insight I have been given is that it begins with a timid fizzle and remains that way until death, unless we find our own passion and diligently adhere to that end, right or wrong, until we are so deeply immersed in it that we have either found a purpose or created our own.

I do not intend cynicism here, but simply rather one person’s observation. Mine. And what more do we each have than what we are given or what we make for ourselves? Given by either a tangible source or by destiny, it is our reality to do with as we please and, hopefully, for our betterment and that of others. For some, this is as simple and mapped as the fitting together of a child’s five-piece, jig-saw puzzle, but for others, those of us a little slower on the learning curve, it takes a bang before we can see the fizzle and then begin stalking it with our every effort. I was of the latter group who did not heed the premonitions of my better instincts and required the bang of my parent’s death in 1979, my junior year in college. Even that lacked flair for they were not killed in the defense of their beliefs or to further mankind, but in a plane crash when returning from a vacation.

My family was by no means wealthy, just comfortable. And I admit that I never had a driving need for much more money than I was allowed, though few of us are ever really satisfied with enough. This comfort I could not claim any longer because of what little was left from my parent’s estate was eagerly eyed by the government, the lawyers, the courts and anyone else who felt they deserved their share from a deceased man. What did remain I intended to use to finish my last year in school and save enough to begin my career as a writer living in the city of my dreams, my goals, my glories. New York. The capital of American intellect, theatre and dross. It was all I asked for and more.

I returned home to Carmel at the end of my junior year and that was when my parent’s death became real for me. A phone call from a third party is just enough removed so that the animal feelings of loss and despair are not a reality, but rather like a cold, something that would pass. But, finally it was real and my having to do something made it so. I didn’t feel I could stay in California, though I had always liked it, but it just didn’t feel the same. I had changed it with my calloused action, something I do regret.

ii

Jennifer Lorenzo was a beautiful friend to me during that time. I once heard that one can tell a friend if they help not only when times are good, but also when they are hard. My last year in college was a good test of that.

Jennifer was borne in San Antonio and spent her entire life there, other than brief visits to Austin, New York, Jamaica, St. Tropez, and Key Largo. She had a sister, Toni, eight years older who had married when she was twenty. Their father had been killed while in service with the Air Force. He had worked his way to a Master Sargent at one of the bases in San Antonio and was making a comfortable living, enough to support a wife and two daughters. He had been demonstrating some repair on a small device when it ignited the fuel tank and all five men were burned to death. Then Toni married, in the traditional Italian style he had wanted for his daughters.

Jennifer’s mother, from what Jennifer had told me, wept loudly enough to be heard and was given quite adequate compensation to create a trust fund for her youngest daughter’s education. Jennifer had said her mother was a very solitary hermit after that and died less than a year later. Toni, then twenty-one and married for a year, was allowed to take her little sister to live with her and her new husband. Toni was also then Trustee of Jennifer’s trust. Jennifer said she had never liked her sister.

But she knew enough, apparently, how to manipulate her so that she was always dressed in designer clothes and drove a good car, though nothing flashy. She was soon acting in a local theatre and became known in San Antonio for this, but it wasn’t enough, or so she said. Jennifer wanted something more, but at sixteen she didn’t know quite what. She did know there were ways to get whatever she wanted…whenever she found out what that was.

She waited, dating older men because, as she had said, they had something the guys her own age didn’t. She’d grinned at that remark. But, to my knowledge, she didn’t become serious with any of the men she dated until the summer before she came to Trinity to start her first year in college. She told me all of this many times during the first year I knew her and each time I was surprised it intrigued her as much as it seemed to. Starting that summer, she had traveled to several exciting places with her beaux, though I tend to consider New York the most interesting, but I realize my bias.

I met her in our sophomore year. She had gone there the year before, but we hadn’t chanced to meet until one evening when my roommate took a date to the theatre and it was Jennifer. I preferred go alone and enjoy the plays. She was quite striking with her long black hair, olive skin, and clear black eyes. Her penetrating stare fascinated me first as it was deeply emotional but somehow removed at the same time, as if she cared, but only objectively. To call her beautiful would be near an insult. She was Italian. She was striking. And she knew it.

Her only detriment, in my opinion, was that she never looked directly at the person with whom—or to whom—she was speaking. I noticed this the first night when my roommate, Jennifer and I went for a drink after the play.

Oh, Justin, I think you might be interested in this, she said looking at me for only a brief moment before turning to my roommate. Mark Goodwin asked me out this summer. He took me to this absolutely gorgeous place in the hill country called The Grey Moss Inn, she glanced at me when she said the name, and he asked me if I’d like to buy into his new restaurant.

Who’s Mark Goodwin? I asked.

"Texas Monthly wrote him up as the restaurant king of San Antonio, she said only glancing at me. Anyway, it turned out to be this place he’d bought and now is making a fortune with it. If only I could have chocked the money out of Toni."

That is a shame, I said and lit another cigarette.

You’ve really never heard of Mark Goodwin? She was looking at my roommate.

No, but then I’m not from Texas.

That’s true, she glanced at me with a brief smile. I’d like another Kahlua and cream.

I liked the combo playing that night at Broadway 50-50 and didn’t listen much more to Jennifer; she wasn’t my date anyway. But I think she mentioned dating another owner of something in town who had later been written up someplace else as a local giant. I’d had several drinks and didn’t really care as my thoughts wandered back to the play, Dylan, which had been well performed. Jennifer continued to talk to my roommate despite the music.

iii

Jennifer and my roommate had a brief affair which lasted about a month, but Jennifer carried it on when she spoke with others, for nearly a year. My roommate was President of the student government. Anyone influential like that was someone Jennifer had already dated or soon would. If I had met Jennifer before I had come to college and matured, I might have laughed and thought her absurd, but no one laughed at Jennifer because she did know many people in many places.

During the time she and my roommate were having their affair, Jennifer and I became very good friends. We never dated, we neither one wanted to date the other. We were simply friends and that was what she told me one evening after she and my roommate had terminated their brief encounter, as it was. We had gone to hear a Reggae group that was touring from Jamaica and Jennifer had heard they would be in San Antonio long before the rest of us. I didn’t know the name Bob Marley before that.

Did I ever tell you about my trip to Jamaica? she asked as we waited for the second set. That night she taught me how to dance to Reggae at the small bar.

Yes, several times.

How about the black man who was in love with me?

Yes, him too. I smiled sarcastically and drank my wine.

What a friend you are. She returned the smile.

I’d flirted with her before, but was never serious. I don’t know if I did it for her or for myself, and I thought this an opportune time, though sleeping with her had only once crossed my mind.

If I’m such a friend, how about coming back to my room and have another drink and then… I took her hand in mine.

You wish! She paused to think for a moment. Did I ever tell you what Theodore Travis told me?

Who’s he? I let go of her hand and sat back.

"That architect I dated from Houston. Anyway, he told me that friends have sex together, but buddies don’t. I guess that makes us buddies." She wrinkled her nose and bit the tip of her tongue.

Later she told me this Theodore Travis had told her they were buddies and proceeded to have sex with her on his dining room table. He had taken her to the ballet and out for a late dinner at Brennan’s. She dated him for a few weeks after that and then didn’t see him for eight months when they happened to meet at a cocktail party in San Antonio benefitting the homeless shelter. She was with a young doctor at the time.

I have never since heard someone call another a buddy without thinking of her with Theodore Travis, whoever he was. I guess it was true that her relationship with my roommate brought us together, though I don’t think I could ever fully explain the logic of a relationship between us. The first time I fully realized we were friends (pardon me, buddies) was the night Jennifer, myself and my roommate celebrated Christmas. It was just before my roommate and I left for the vacation. I don’t think Jennifer wanted us to leave because she would then be by herself in San Antonio.

She had sent us both out to buy something and had let herself in with her key where she decorated the pathetic four walls with everything she could fit in her car from her sister’s attic. She later said Toni hadn’t spoken to her for a week after finding everything missing.

My roommate and I returned a bit after eight to find Jennifer seated in the middle of our room with three glasses of wine and a bottle chilling in a silver bucket, no doubt her sister’s as well. She was wearing a long black dress that accentuated her dark skin and made her eyes seem even more penetrating than they had the night I met her.

She had placed a six-foot tree in front of the windows, red stockings with our names on them above our respective desks, presents beneath the tree, strands of silver ice sickles around the doors and book cases, and Christmas pillows on our beds.

Don’t stand there with the door open, she said in a soft voice.

I looked about the room while my roommate kissed her. It was tastefully done with all she had borrowed. My roommate was still having the affair with her and very pleased with the ambiance she had created. She lit two Christmas candles and we sat on the floor drinking her rosé.

I’d like to propose a toast, she said looking at me and I knew she was talking to my roommate. To two of the best friends I think I could ever have found. She smiled at me and bit the tip of her tongue while wrinkling her nose.

We opened our presents after that and my roommate, always preferring to drive at night, left for home at three that morning. Jennifer and I finished another bottle of wine and talked as we watched the lights twinkle on the Christmas tree. I woke about nine the next morning with an empty wine glass and Jennifer curled up with her heard in my lap. She hadn’t mentioned any of her other conquests that night.

iv

I met Collin Jennings at a school party the end of our freshman year. It was Collin’s roommate who introduced us.

Justin, I don’t think you know my roommate, Collin Jennings. He’s the writer I was telling you about a month ago, you remember, Tom Hansen said. I didn’t know Tom well and I didn’t care to; I had met him when I first came to Trinity and he seemed to have an uncanny ability for cornering me at parties after that to talk. He was terribly over weight, opinionated and, I guessed, wanted friends. I happened to be handy and would talk with him, but only to be polite.

Hi. I know we haven’t met. He said and clumsily took a drink from a stein of beer. It was raw pewter and etched with what appeared to be a foreign insignia, though I didn’t speak whatever language was written on it.

You’ll have to excuse Collin, he said putting his hand on Collin’s back as if to catch him from falling. He’s a bit messed up tonight. Drugs, you know.

Oh? I looked at Collin, I guess obviously.

Yes, I’m seeing how much pot one can smoke before falling down. His expression was serious and stern. I need to know these things, you see.

This seemed like something almost too absurd and I, as a curious writer, had to know more, or perhaps it was to talk directly away from Tom.

I’ll be glad to give you details, but first more beer. I followed him to his room of the apartment where he had a small refrigerator stocked with imported beers. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me. He was about six feet with a very solid build, though not athletic. He had dark brown