The Path of Thought (standard:other, 2987 words)
Author: Colombianito	Added: Jan 08 2008	Views/Reads: 3049/2006	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Two friends and two different ways to make one's path through life.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

moved to Durham in the spring. Manny, Gregorio, Sandeep from India, and 
Doug from Mankato all rented a house near campus. Manny had hoped being 
in a town faraway from home, together, would be like being children 
again, exploring, bonding, playing but he didn't account for the 
difference of their situation, for the different people they had 
become. Manny was even more serious about school than he'd been in high 
school and spent much of his spare time with the guys from the band. 
Still, he was jealous of the quick and easy bond that was forming 
between Gregorio and Sandeep and the good times they seemed to have - 
scheming, selling and smoking pot, owning the local college bar scene, 
partying with girls. In one semester, a shifty boy from Delhi had built 
with Gregorio what took him, a boy from the heartland, years to build, 
Manny lamented.  For a year and a half, Gregorio and Sandeep were 
inseparable and it puzzled Manny how they managed to squeak through 
their courses – cheating, he assumed. 

Three weeks into the Fall semester, Gregorio and Sandeep announced to
Manny and Doug that they would be moving to California in four weeks. 
“What about school?” asked Manny and they said they were dropping out. 
Gregorio explained that he and Sandeep were joining Mari-O-B., former 
DJ at a popular Durham dance club, and together they were starting a 
company to sell music over the Internet. “The gold rush of the 
nineties” chanted Sandeep. Manny's face was red and without looking at 
Gregorio in the eye, said “good luck guys, send us a postcard,” and 
headed up to his room. He did speak with Gregorio two or three times 
before they left for California and even helped him to pack his 
belonging, not without expressing his disapproval of the idea. “Worst 
case scenario, I'm back here in a year,” was Gregorio's response. 

For nine months, Gregorio, Mari-O-B, and Sandeep spent day and night
cooped up in the decrepit warehouse they used as an office. Mari-O-B 
had assured them they would be able to turn it into a cool loft slash 
office in no time and hadn't they noticed how so many abandoned 
warehouse districts were becoming the hippest parts of so many towns 
thanks to the dot com bonanza? But their venture flopped. Mari-O-B 
wanted to take the hefty offer a major record label had made to buy 
them out but Sandeep threw his weight around and reminded them it was 
his family's money that had kept them going all these months and didn't 
they realize that the record label wanted to take them over because 
they felt threatened? Within six months, ten or fifteen groups of 
brilliant young people like themselves, not to mention record labels 
and computer makers, had come up with the same idea as they and their 
business withered and died. 

When Gregorio moved back to Minneapolis, he was broke and broken and his
father was very ill. He and his father went for daily walks by the lake 
and talked about Gregorio's mother and what a beautiful firecracker of 
a woman she had been and how she wanted Gregorio to grow up to be a 
racecar driver or an actor. Those walks, the love of his father, and 
those accounts filled with love and nostalgia slowly healed Gregorio 
and made him believe that life could be good again, like it had once 
been for his father and mother. 

Manny and Anna came to the funeral. Hundreds of people came to Lakewood
cemetery to pay their respects, and many came to greet Gregorio and to 
tell him how much his father had appreciated having him so close on his 
last days. 

Anna started having Gregorio over for dinner at least twice a week and
with less frequency, Manny would come too, though he often had to work 
late and lived almost an hour away. Manny had moved back to Minnesota 
after graduation almost two years ago and Anna beamed when she spoke of 
her son's determination and accomplishments in the short time he had 
been working as an accountant for an investment firm. “Manny has gotten 
so many offers from New York but there's just so much he can do here, 
so much potential. And close to me, which I love!” she bragged of her 
son. When Manny and Gregorio coincided at dinner, Manny tried to 
downplay his professional success though Anna was often sure to bring 
it up in conversation. “Manny can probably help you get a job at the 
firm, Gregorio,” she would suggest, “and with your experience running 
your own company and all...” she would add and this last part felt like 
a badge of merit given out of pity. 

“Gregorio, when you're ready, you know I'm here to help you, even if you
just want advice,” Manny would say, though he knew the last thing in 
Gregorio's mind was to sell his soul for a low-level white collar job. 

Manny met Diane at work. She was a tiny brunette with hazel eyes and
high cheekbones. She had left her Peruvian mother and Irish-American 
father in Chicago to go to college in Minnesota, where she decided to 
live permanently. Diane and Manny met in the back row of a conference 
room where together they made fun of the human resources woman that was 
giving them orientation on some benefit or another.  Diane was lovely 
and open, warm like an afternoon in June, and she loved Manny very 
much, though she made great efforts to get him to lighten up. She also 
came to love Gregorio, like a little brother. 

To introduce Diane to his mother, Manny thought it would be a good idea
to also invite Gregorio, fearing Diane's outspokenness and disdain for 
convention might put off Anna, and Gregorio would be a good reminder of 
how one can love a person whose ways one doesn't agree with. Dinner was 
scheduled for eight o'clock at Anna's house and it was a complete 
success by both Manny's and his mother's expectations as everyone got 
along grandiosely, especially Diane and Gregorio. The two of them 
monopolized much of the evening's conversation with talk about 
childhood anecdotes, the most amusing to Diane being Gregorio's 
retelling of Manny's stuttering at the sight of Laura McDonough's 
breasts when she flashed Manny and Gregorio in the school gym while 
their parents were at a PTA meeting one Friday night. 

“I love Gregorio,” said Diane on the drive back to Manny's apartment.
“He is so much fun, and he clearly loves you”. 

Manny nodded and then added, “I just hate to see what he's doing with
his life. He's doing nothing, really, you know?” he said, now looking 
at her. “He is feeding this gray cloud around him that's keeping him 
stuck, stagnant”. 

“Baby, you can't measure other people's success by your standards” she
said sweetly, caressing one side of his face. “He seems perfectly 
content to me. He's probably perfectly happy having his dad's house and 
he himself said he'll get a job when he runs out of money, when he 
feels like he needs it,” she added. 

Manny sighed. “Well, that's what he's telling you now, but I know him
better than you, he's wasting his youth” he said before turning the 
radio on. 

Diane tried to bring Manny and Gregorio closer together. It was her way
of honoring the lovely memories and the old bond she so enjoyed hearing 
about. She hosted get-togethers, invited Gregorio to parties with 
people from hers and Manny's work, set Gregorio up on dates. “He's 
practically Manny's little brother,” is how Diane would introduce 
Gregorio to people. 

Manny's concern for Gregorio continued to grow and he earnestly tried to
impart his positive thinking methods and techniques to Gregorio, who 
humored him by taking the books Manny offered to let him borrow and 
sometimes even reading them, but little change came to Gregorio's life 
style. 

“You have to think positively. You are in charge of your own experience,
you write your own destiny with your every thought, your every word,” 
went Manny's credo, to which Gregorio learned to nod and let his mind 
drift, thinking of something else, or nothing at all. “Gregorio, you 
can have what I have. You can have the job, the house, the girl, I 
imagined all of this and now I have it!” was Manny's promise and 
exhortation. 

“Give the guy a break,” Diane would plead with Manny. “That mental mumbo
jumbo is not for everyone. I for one find it scary, cult-like” she 
joked. 

Gregorio was chosen as best man at Diane's behest, not Manny's. Had it
been up to him, Manny would have asked Eric from work, a friend that 
was close enough, lived close enough, and a good person to have “in the 
family” for practical and professional purposes. Diane, offended by 
this attempt to desecrate her life's most sacred and happiest day, 
pushed back and won. 

“Thank you for being here, my friend. No, my brother,” said Manny to
Gregorio from the top step at the altar. “This is the culmination of a 
very concerted process of planning, thinking, and dreaming. I'm truly 
blessed, and I love that you're here with me,” he continued and then 
embraced Gregorio, sincerely. 

Manny and Dianne sat in the balcony at their hotel room in St. Thomas.
They had arrived two nights ago and had practically exhausted their 
stamina in a sexual marathon that kept them in the room for the entire 
first day. Now they were beholding a majestic orange sun beginning to 
set behind grey and green waves in the horizon. Manny stood up and 
looked down to the street five stories below them, where fruit vendors 
were starting to close their stands for the day. 

“You know? I'm starting to fear that Gregorio's negative energy is going
to get contagious. I almost wanna start keeping him at a distance, 
especially when we start a family,” said Manny solemnly, like someone 
announcing that they're quitting smoking. 

Diane looked hurt, offended. 

“Baby, don't be arrogant, I don't like it” she said, expecting an
answer. 

“I'm not being arrogant. Why do you defend him so much?” asked Manny,
defensive. 

“He is fine the way he is and I just think you should learn to
appreciate him, that's all” she said. 

Now they were both standing, looking down at nothing in particular. 

“You're always defending him. You've always had a thing for him, haven't
you?” asked Manny jokingly and he perceived immediately that his 
comment had not been taken as lightly as he had intended it. 

“You really are an asshole some times, do you know that?  You
patronizing jerk, preaching about the power of the mind and thoughts 
and your dreams and all that nonsense!” Diane's dilated pupils were 
daggers piercing Manny's own eyes.  “Do you know why I'm here right 
now, huh? Do you?” 

Manny was confused and ashamed, sheepish. “What are you talking about,
baby? I was just joking!” 

“For all your plotting our perfect little life, envisioning your perfect
little job, your perfect house, your perfect wife, you owe this moment 
to your poor pathetic sap of a friend! Did you ever notice, ever saw me 
become weary of your metaphysical baloney? Did you notice I cried at 
the company party when you told everyone about how we were going to 
have a boy and a girl and were going to live in Blaine and retire in 
Costa Rica? I was dying. I loved you but that was the last straw for 
me, I was ready to end things. I just don't live like that; I don't 
plan my life forty years in advance like that. It was Gregorio who 
talked you up. It was he who went to great lengths to explain your love 
for me, to justify it. You were a strict but loving big brother to him, 
especially in college. He made me see how meaningful it was that an 
uptight square like you was willing to make room in his life for the 
chaos of a free-spirited partner. And how introducing me to your mother 
and the way you looked at me, puppy-eyed during the dinner while I was 
likely embarrassing you, was such a clear intimation of your commitment 
to me and the risks you were willing to take just to be with me...you 
don't deserve him!” 

Manny wiped the tears from Diane's cheeks with his thumbs and kissed her
gently. “I'm sorry,” he said before embracing her. 

Next Monday, Gregorio received a postcard in the mail. The front read
“Greetings from Charlotte Amalie Harbor” and showed a picture of a dark 
blue night over a brightly lit beach whose streets snaked through 
darkened hills of undetermined height. On the back, a note from Manny: 
“My dearest friend, Just thinking of you and sharing with you this 
dream come true. Soon, Manny”. Gregorio smiled and placed the postcard 
on a cabinet, atop an overflowing pile of bills and unopened mail. 


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