The 'Cousins'

Part Eighty-Eight: Impasse!

A/N:  Adventures in South East Asia is the most enjoyable account of a lady travelling alone through the region. There's so much in this book besides the scenery, street vendors and temples to make this a most enjoyable read with humour a major element. This chapter is dedicated to Sarah (@voyageavecmoi)

http://www.wattpad.com/story/8061568-adventures-in-south-east-asia

                                                                       *   *   *

Chapter Eighty-Eight

IMPASSE!

Greg kicked closed the door to his room suffering from a mixed bag of emotions and a will to shut himself away from the spoken and unspoken barrage of accusations from Walt and Wayne about his relationship with Jess; and his desires to do good for others and himself. To ease his tensions he sounded off to the empty room. “Bugger it and Bugger them all”

He leaned his back up against the door to look around the room and experienced a sharp pang of disappointment that the boy was not sat working at the computer as he had planned and expected. The red mug Jess had drunk from yesterday caught his eye in the kitchen area, his gaze next swept across the computer desk where it latched onto the pencil and notepad that the boy had tossed to one side in great excitement after buying the bike on E-Bay. The room was still full of Jess in spirit, but the boy was not there in body.

“Was it only yesterday he sat there, it seems so much longer?”

Greg shook his head in disbelief, so much had happened in only a day.  His disappointments compounded when his eye came to rest on the bike parked against the wall at the bottom of the bed. He coughed to clear the lump in his throat. Seeing and touching the cycle would have been a delicious moment for them both to share tonight, building on the boy’s joy from when he first saw the bike on the auction website and thought it a profitable subject for a trade. Greg smiled when he recalled Jess’s fervent argument when challenged on its suitability as a trade item. 

But there was no distracting softness about Greg tonight, his face hardened and his lips formed a slit through which he whispered, “It’s all here for you Jess, ... all you have to do is turn up to get it.”

Greg pressed himself hard against the door, closed his eyes and yielded to another, greater awareness building within him. His mind ran over the summary of the details Wayne had given him about the ‘bio-gas from manure’ business he planned; his vision and concept whose time was now and the potential of which was limitless. Greg caught his breath as the full import of what Wayne was about dawned on him. This was to be a nationwide enterprise with the authority of a stock market quotation. And it was all there for him, Greg Mitchell, to put together, implement and bring to a resounding success. Anticipation rippled through him refreshing his sense of business adventure, drawing it out from wherever it had been hiding within him. 

Greg swayed gently under the intoxicating influence of a massive adrenalin rush that combined with an humongous buzz as he thrilled to the challenge of the task ahead in making it happen.

Greg welcomed this buzz like an old friend that had been lost, but was now found and returned to him. After the debacle of his divorce from his wife and her family business he thought it was a stir that might not happen for him again – until this moment. Greg knew that for him to sustain this buzz he had to feed it with commitment and total attention to every detail. ‘I’m more than ready for that and more!’  

With his face wreathed in grim determination, he pushed himself off the door to leap across the room and boot-up the computer. He drummed his fingertips impatiently on the desk while he waited for the machine to go through its opening sequences.