We Were (eBook)

We were rich artists, athletes, winemakers, litigators, lovers.

Gillette Edmunds (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
260 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-3394-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Gillette Edmunds brings you his debut novel 'We Were', a dramatic tale about living fast, blinders on. In this story, four close friends, pursing their dreams in California, lived on the edge - their lives were filled with wealth, sex, alcohol, and thrill. Only one friend, Mitch, makes it out alive. In this book, Mitch writes his friends' stories as they could not.

Gillette Edmunds is the author of 'How to Retire Early and Live Well With Less Than a Million Dollars' (Adams Media, 2000), 'Comfort Zone Investing' (Career Press, 2002), 'REITs for the New Decade' (various e-book web publishers, 2001), 'Retire on the House' (John Wiley & Sons, 2006) and many articles. 'How to Retire Early' sold more than 80,000 copies. 'We Were' is Gillette's first novel. Gillette has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University and was a ghost writer in 1980-81. He grew up in Albuquerque, attended the Newport California Rock Festival in the summer of 1968 and moved to California in 1969. Gillette is married and has three adult children.

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It wasn't murder. It wasn't suicide. It wasn't an accident. What happened?Living fast in California in the late 20th century, the fun never ends until it does. Timo, Fernando, Rob and Mitch leave New Mexico for college in California to pursue their dreams. Timo, a world class athlete, brilliant scholar, proud Latino has a shot at fortune, fame and fabulous women. The investigation was inconclusive. Confident, beautiful Fernando, with playmates and princesses falling for him, chases his dream in Napa Valley. No one foresaw what really went down. Tall, nervous Rob becomes the pot boss of Santa Barbara, a Buddhist priest, a successful artist. He vows to not make the same mistakes on the outside that got his cellmate arrested again. The nurse said it wasn't a disease. Mitch, entangled in affairs and fired from a fabulous job, tells the story of how it all went so wrong for his beloved friends.

Textauszug

Timo and Mitch
Tina and Karen

1979

Business school was dismal. Tina wasn’t. Tina was my buddy. We had fun together. We hung out all the time; sat together in every class. Frankly I thought she was kind of dumb but really sexy and funny. I invited her to my apartment to study one night.

Two years before, I wobbled out of a bar on Mason in a rainstorm, no raincoat or umbrella and saw a for-rent sign. Up three stories of a grey stairwell with flickering lights, the landlord opened the door to my home for the next five years: last painted in the fifties; bubbling linoleum floors and counters in the kitchen and bathroom; pock marked mushy wooden floors; rent at the low end of my range.

Standing in the doorway, cute as shit, Tina made a humpback and pointed towards the couch, the one I found on Larkin. “I have never known a Stanford person who lived in a hovel. This is like a medieval slum. Is this place infested with the plague?”

She insisted I put a clean sheet over the couch before she sat on it. But she couldn’t stay seated and after about 15 minutes she left. After that we mostly studied at her Nob Hill apartment, which her parents owned. The night of the Moody Blues, a few months later, might have been the only other time we studied at my place.

More than Rob, my high school buddy, and his girlfriend Harmony, Tina had a party, a gathering, a get together at her place on Nob Hill and in Atherton and at bars and restaurants, all the time. And she begged me to invite Timo, my formed doubles partner, to every one of them. She couldn’t call him herself. He was engaged to Karen and they lived together.

“We need Timo, because he is your friend and we need more Stanford people, to improve the quality of the gathering. It’s like using the good tequila in the margarita. The poopie margarita mix tastes a lot better.”

“Timo is the good tequila?”

“Yes. Besides, I can’t call him. His girlfriend will be jealous.”

She had the smile, the sparkle in her eyes, great posture showing off her perky breasts and butt. Of course, I invited Timo.

Tina’s parents met at Stanford. Her father was in engineering, and her mother was getting a PhD in Chinese studies. Her mother was half Chinese, her father a blond, blue eyed, German. They were classic Stanford nerds, though the term “nerd” wasn’t used back then. Tina has amazing brown, yellow, orange hair, light tan skin, sparkly blue Asian eyes. Ok the girl is cute, and exotic. She doesn’t know the story. But she is an only child, rare in the baby boom era, born to a 40-year old mother. Miscarriages, career devotion by both parents, little interest in raising children. Despite the massive house in Atherton, nannies and help, they sent her to boarding school on the East Coast. She landed at San Francisco State as an undergrad, partially as an act of rebellion and mainly because she had partied too much to make it into Stanford where her parents wanted her. Then they build the house in Oahu and retired her sophomore year at State.

Kelley and I were done. I thought when Timo was finished playing with Tina, she would bounce my way. I really wanted her, just for a fling or a few flings. I started inviting Timo to all her parties to speed the process. And he started showing up. But he did not throw Tina over. He was engaged to Karen and he was clearly sleeping with Tina, a lot more than I knew then.

Timo was clerking for a big firm in San Francisco after his second year of law school. We were at a party in the Sunset hosted by an administrator from his firm. The house shared walls on both sides with neighbor houses. Wide wooden steps led up to two bedrooms, a tiny bathroom, a living room and kitchen all on top of a garage and raw basement. Tina didn’t know about the party. Well, I didn’t tell her and Timo didn’t invite her. The party was all lower level people from the law firm and their friends. People were flowing down the steps on to the sidewalk under the fog. Karen was there. A legal secretary named Mitzy was petty high. She was also very good looking, quite tall, very buxom, very blond, not Timo’s type. She was paying a lot of attention to Timo right in front of Karen. The crowd was so thick, Karen probably did not notice. Karen left. She was sick, maybe a flu or cold, but clearly sick. I left. Then a few hours later Timo came by my place and called Karen to tell her he was too drunk to drive home and was staying the night with me. He had not had a drink. Timo often drank nothing. Other nights, too much. I talked to Karen too, to see how she was feeling. Timo didn’t tell me about Mitzy until after I hung up with Karen. But it was just going to be that one time.

“You see, I have this opportunity,” he said. “Actually, Mitch, I am getting a lot of opportunities these days. I assume your friend Tina has told you about us. That came about rather awkwardly. I need to take advantage of these opportunities as they arise.”

Someone knocked on the door, Timo opened it, Mitzy stepped in, kissed him and he pushed her out into the hallway. I heard them laughing as they faded down the stairwell.

The next day I thought about telling Tina about Mitzy and then she would throw over Timo and hop in bed with me. But I didn’t tell anyone. Timo and I had been friends since childhood. Timo, a world class tennis player, kept me as his doubles partner when better players were available. I wasn’t going to tell his secrets for the slight chance that Tina might fall my way. Yet it occurred to me every time Tina and I studied at her place.

I was more focused on Tina than Timo at that time. The night of the Moody Blues was two months after Mitzy knocked on my door. My Tina obsession took a blow the night of the Moody Blues. She clearly wasn’t interested in anything more than a friendship with me. We stopped studying together around then. Nothing was said. I didn’t know how to talk about being hurt, disappointed, upset, angry. I made excuses to study at different times and places. She did too. We still sat together in class. We still made fun of our classmates as we walked to our cars. I stopped going to her parties and then I heard she stopped having parties.

Let’s see. The daughter of a very famous San Francisco athlete was a client of Timo’s firm. Timo signed a big employment contract with them after graduation. They were the premier litigation firm in the Bay Area, maybe in the whole United States. They also had a business section and a PR department. Renee was her name. Her mother had been a fashion model. Renee was starting a marketing business with her parent’s support. She could have been a fashion model. Renee was the best looking of all of them, and they were all gorgeous. This is still painful. I am just going to sketch what went down. Maybe.

What happened to Timo happened to me in a much smaller way. Timo graduated Phi Beta Kappa at Stanford, then at the top of his law school class, Stanford Law School. He was a very fit, proper, athletic guy and good looking enough. Even when he moved to San Francisco, he ran at least ten miles every morning before going into the office. He wasn’t beautiful like Fernando, our high school Romeo, but he was rugged, chiseled, sharp brown eyes, bushy dark eyebrows. He could trace his roots to Spanish royalty. And he was clearly going to make a lot of money and be a huge success. Women ready to get married to the right guy, just started throwing themselves at him. And not ordinary women. Very desirable, hard to get, top notch women.

Timoteo knew what he was worth. “Someday I do want to settle down, have a family,” he would tell them. “Today I need to build my reputation, work long hours. Be patient with me. It will work out for us.” What he didn’t tell them was that there were others.

One of the first nights he was living in the city, we were drinking downtown, at Lefty O’Doul’s. We loved reading Lefty’s pitching and batting stats.

We were in the big room in the back. The bar was crowded, loud, but we were at a table away from the tourists. I remember a few good-looking tourist girls across the hall. Mostly we were alone, drinking San Francisco ale in pint glasses. Timoteo always sat tall in a chair and brought a beer to his lips carefully. At that time, he was still transitioning from tennis pro to lawyer.

“I was supposed to be Poncho Fucking Gonzales. Make a million, restore the family fortune. It was going to be good. Then I didn’t have the speed, the quickness. I could see the shots, but I couldn’t get there to make them. Younger players, hitting harder. Fuck. Jesus Christo. My father’s voice in the crowd, every time I miss a shot, which was never.”

He slowly drained the entire beer and went to the bar for two more.

“The next round is on you,” he said.

“You and Karen are still together, engaged, but you are living apart?”

“It’s all good. Karen and I need to make some adjustments. I have been living off her. Now I need to live off my own income. There is a lot more money in litigation than in tennis. It’s going to be a lot of money.”

He and Karen still occasionally lived together in Menlo Park as they had for almost a decade, but now Timo had this nice apartment in the Marina to...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.7.2022
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-3394-4 / 1667833944
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-3394-1 / 9781667833941