The 'Cousins'

Part Ninety Three (Alpha) : Largesse and Lies

Part Ninety-Three

A/N: I regret the length of time between posts. Please accept my sincere apologies. The book is very involved, with a multiplicity of characters exercising their influences on the plot.  A reader can easily become lost. For that reason I have written a short (?) summary. This chapter will be split into Wattpad sized sub-chapters, the next following on directly from the one before. I hope you will enjoy the story and do please let me know your thoughts. Thank You!

The story so far: 

On Friday 20th April 2007 Jess woke in his dorm full of beans following his success placing the air-con unit for sale with McKendrick’s stores. He was also basking in the center of attention with his peers over the sports bicycle he was buying to sell with Greg.

   However, all this fell foul when he went down to breakfast where he walked in on Melissa stirring up the cafeteria against Greg and himself because of the foul rumour started by Wes Chandler that Jess and Greg had been in bed together: a false rumour given wider publicity by Felix Gleitner’s machinations.

   College Principal Armstrong is running scared of possible adverse publicity and grounds Jess; forbidding him to have anything to do with Greg on pain of expulsion. Jess has now no alternative source of income other than working for Gleitner and he agrees to do the Sunday Photo Shoot.

   Gleitner is in Lincoln fixing up details for the Sunday Shoot with the film crew when he’s told of Jess having agreed to the shoot and meets the boy later to hear it for himself. He feeds Jess a story that this is the start of a show business career- if he’s good enough and arranges to meet next day (Saturday), for ‘training.’

   Ali and Thomas from the condo have overcome their reluctance to work for Greg and turned up to start fitting out the old stable Mayor Denton has given them to use as a waste oil processing plant.

   They are seen working by Chad Grozier who hurries off to Harry’s bar to report to his fellow rednecks that the jobs promised them in Greg’s oil plant by Mayor Denton have been given to the ethnics- causing considerable resentment against Denton and the waste oil project.

   Mitt Fawley is having a bad day. He needs to get ownership of the condo and sent his GM(Walt) down to persuade the owners to leave. Walt has had it with Fawley and will not lie to the condo dwellers, they sit tight and Fawley fires Walt who moves out of the company house where he was living and into the motel.

   Fawley needs that condo for him to demolish and build a road through the cleared space to link his plant with the I-80 junction at the Truck Stop service area, enabling him to build the new chicken processing plant he’s planning. He has an amorous fancy for his book-keeper Trish, who verbally plays around with her boss, but that’s as far as she’ll go. Fawley promised her Walt’s job if she’d spend the weekend with him in Tahoe. She had no intention of going but encouraged Fawley in thinking she might; never thinking he’d fire Walt, but he did just that and booked a double room in a cosy retreat in Tahoe for next weekend.

   Fawley stops off  in Harry’s, joining in with and encouraging the rednecks in their dissatisfaction with Mayor Denton by declaring an open bar with the drinks on him. The mayor is a stumbling block in his plans to get the permission he needs to build a road through the condo. Fawley gets carried away and announces he’s running for mayor, which is greeted with enormous, alcohol fuelled enthusiasm by the bar flies.

   Now the real mayor’s running scared after he hears of Fawley’s frolics. He’s up for re-election soon and only carried the last vote on a tiny majority. He knows if the rednecks, and the crew who don’t normally turn out to vote decided to do so and voted for Fawley, he’d be out of a job.