Damage Read Online Free PDF Page A

lost in thought, while Marco threw out more insults about Jake, the unreliable drunk bastard. The short man eventually returned to the kitchen, and the bartender to her book, leaving Ray and Becky to nurse their gin and tonics. The news about his friend had doused his high spirits, and a melancholy settled over him that matched Becky's already sour mood.  
    "I'm sorry about your friend," Becky said, breaking the silence between them.
    "You've met him before, haven't you?" Ray asked.
    "Just a couple times," she said, answering into her glass. "Has he always been an alcoholic?"
    "Ever since college," Ray said. "You should have seen him before that, though. Funny, and smart as a whip. He had such potential."
    "I thought you two met in college," she said.
    Ray shook his head.  
    "Jake and I met in first grade, three miles down the road from here in Mrs. Turnwall's class at Glen Meadows Elementary School. Teachers either loved him or hated him, because he was so smart. He never thought twice about showing them up if he felt like they didn't know what they were talking about."
    "So what happened to him?" Becky asked.
    Ray picked up Jake's key and turned it over in his fingers.
    "It's just..."  
    He struggled to find the right way to explain his friend. Becky turned to look him in the eyes. Ray took a deep breath.
    "It's tough when you're naturally gifted like Jake was," he said. "When we were kids, everything came easy to him. Math, science, music, sports... But when we got to college, he stumbled. I don't know if he stumbled because he drank, or he drank because he stumbled. All I know is he spiraled fast and all I could do was stand around and watch it happen."
    "You sound like you feel responsible for him," Becky said. Her words struck a nerve.  
    "We were all experimenting with alcohol, and pot, and God knows what else," he said. "I'm sure the environment we created around him didn't help."
    "Everybody experiments at that age, Ray," she said. "Most of us figure out the party ends when we enter the real world. It sounds like he's just wired differently. That doesn't make it your fault, or anyone else's."
    Ray put down the gold key and pushed his drink away. He leaned back on his stool, arms crossed, disgusted at the thought of his friend's many wasted opportunities and the number of times he'd tried to help. Jake had entered college with three small scholarships and the prospect of a full scholarship to study business and economics at UNC. He didn't even make it through one semester before his drinking went from weekend experimentation to nightly routine. Thirteen years later, his biggest challenge was holding a menial job at a local dive three miles from his elementary school.
    "Alcohol is just a crutch for him," Ray said. "Some people aren't designed to handle pressure."
    The conversation had taken the appeal out of the idea of hard drinking. After one drink, he said goodnight to Becky and within thirty minutes later, with the sunset painting the bottoms of clouds a wicked orange out his passenger window, Ray found himself driving south along Cotton Street, rolling passed stop signs in the historic downtown district of Glen Meadows. Three blocks down from the old mansions of the previous century he turned right onto a roughly paved lane lined by trailers and small houses that looked like they had been stitched together with spare parts. Halfway along, he maneuvered the car slowly along Jake's deeply rutted driveway and aimed his headlights at the front porch.
    Ray got out and knocked. He peeked through the windows when no one answered. Light flickered from the television in the living room. Either Jake wasn't home, or he was hiding upstairs, waiting for Ray to go away before coming back down. Ray gave it a few minutes before giving up and returning to his car.

Monday, Part I

    Unpleasant music surrounded him, just loud enough to draw him out of his deep sleep.  
    Most weekdays were the same. Up at six, shower, get