The 'Cousins'

Part Ninety: A Sting in the Tale!

 A/N: We rejoin Greg and Wayne Fisher in the motel room where they are at an impasse arising from Wayne's refusal to accept he had made a binding agreement with Greg at the diner on the way to Bamptonville from the airport - the major condition of which was to bring forward the launch of the IPO for Fisher's and with Greg ensconced in the new company owning 30% of the ordinary share equity and the task of creating a national franchise for Fisher's digesters and gasifiers to create bio-gas out of animal manures and other organic wastes.Greg was enthused with the possibilities and had already sent an email to his lawyer, Dean Halburton in Boston, to draft a formal document for the record incorporating the terms and conditions they had verbally agreed to and shaken hands on at the diner. The new agreement will replace their original contracts signed two years before when Greg funded Wayne's start-up enterprise - which contracts will be an encumbrance to the IPO unless changed. The new deal will do that and allow the placement to go forward. But Wayne has had second thoughts and now denies making a binding agreement. Greg, who lives by his word, is not only deeply shocked and hurt by Wayne's rejection of their new agreement, but cannot go forward with the Fisher's enterprise and threatens to withdraw. Neither are prepared to compromise and impasse resulted. Differences have not been resolved when we look in on them again, now read on:

A Sting in the Tale!

“You cannot be serious Greg, you just cannot mean that!” The upset and exasperation in Wayne’s outburst at the thought of Greg walking out on him was concealed under a wrap of hysteria that raised his voice an octave above normal. 

Greg did not answer and turned to face the fading magnolia paint on the motel wall behind his computer. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Wayne; the one person in his present world he believed was firmly on his side and thought he could trust had betrayed him by breaking his promise within an hour of making it. He allowed himself to wallow in the pit of self-pity with thoughts of retribution.

‘Renegade! Renegade! Renegade!’  Greg’s mind repeated the odious word with every pulse of his racing heartbeat while his stomach churned and his throat filled with foul tasting bile. He sensed a need to run to the bathroom to wretch and rid himself of the virulent bitterness of Wayne’s treachery, but he knew it would change nothing and forced himself to stand there in an endeavour to make sense of this changed situation and the chasm it created between the two of  them; a schism that would end their association and destroy his newly found hopes for a meaningful future.  His mind raced on:

‘Why stay here, move on. Everybody you want to help here makes it hard, if not impossible for you to do so; and those that you don’t help spread ugly rumours about you. Jess has deserted you. You thought you had a friend you could trust in Wayne, but he won’t trust you with the reason for his need for 100 million and now he’s stabbed you in the back by going back on his word. That’s got to be the last straw. Move on, there’s no place for you here.’

Wayne was shuffling from foot to foot, fiddling nervously with a button on his jacket increasingly uncomfortable with the quietness in the room as Greg came to terms with the shock of this situation and worked out what he should do about it; his silence racking up the tension in the atmosphere.

Greg’s mind seethed with ugly, negative thoughts in a vain attempt to assuage his hurt; his brain no longer registered what his eyes were seeing. The magnolia wall of the motel room became a vision of the iron bound oak door of the courtroom in England that had taken away his future only a few days ago. It mocked him once again, as if to underline the closing down of his latest opportunity for a fulfilling business future. Anger swelled inside as Greg bit his tongue to restrain himself from succumbing to his introspection and the impulse to physically attack Wayne.