The 'Cousins'

Part Seventy-Nine: Greg Under Siege.

The man now languishing at a picnic bench, behaving badly, anxious to get home rather than strip him bare with questions about the business and where it was going on from the IPO was not the man he knew. 

“But where are you now Greg?”

“Pardon?” The man in front of him turned around to make Wayne realise he had spoken aloud. He stammered an embarrassed apology before sinking back into the depths of his thoughts.

‘Greg had been top-dog, one who could hold himself up in any company, politicians and businessmen had his number and sought his advice. What happened to you Greg? You’re like a stranger to me.’

Wayne looked over his shoulder, across the rooftops of the parked cars to see Greg sprawled across a picnic bench; the nervous tapping of a hand on the table while the other raised every few seconds to display a wristwatch suggested impatience; even at a distance. Wayne looked on in dismay, his disappointment hardening. He needed a business colossus and saw in that moment only a petulant schoolboy not able to have his own way.

‘A thousand incisive questions you could and should’ve asked me in the first five minutes after we met, each one bringing further questions as your vision sharpened that would bring out an idea or a mistake or clarify an uncertainty, but all you did was ask me for a job. You! Greg Mitchell, asking ME for a job.’  That thought left a bitter taste of regret in his mouth, he swallowed and shuffled automatically forwards another ten inches with the line towards the cafeteria servery.

Wayne knew that Greg had always striven for the biggest and the best of everything. He never wasted his time on small-beer. ‘So what are you doing wasting your time and talents in a Prairie backwater fooling around with Ma and Pa businesses to support a boy you never knew existed two weeks ago? You should be out there in the world with your hair on fire building a corporation to replace the one you lost.’

The question fazed Wayne. That boy seemed to be the key to Greg’s condition. Elbury had told him of Greg’s determination to put the boy through school. Had this kid become Greg’s lifeline following the loss of Bailey’s and his wife, Victoria, or the present object of his desire and passion? Was Greg’s obsession with the boy lustful or sentimental? Does Greg himself know? Elbury thought not.

Wayne’s thoughts were interrupted as a tearful young girl broke through the line in front of him to search for her parents.

He took another flat-footed half-step forwards and considered Greg’s state of mind. It was unlike the old Greg to have rambled on and divulged as much as he had done about his teenage relationship with Graham. He had always been so guarded about his personal life. It told Wayne that Greg was no stranger to man-on-man action. He had taken a formidable knock at the hands of the Bailey’s, enough to sink most men. Greg always seemed stronger than others. He had taken bad business knocks before, but not a knock that robbed him of his personal life and his position, his every reason for being. ‘Had it done for Greg? How much of him was left? Can I risk divulging my ultimate plans to him, plans that included a big part for Greg in their implementation.’

The worst of it was that Greg himself did not seem to know which way he wished to go. Elbury thought it likely that Greg was on a path to gay romance since the boy appeared to be associated with that activity. When they had spoken on the phone earlier from Chicago airport, Elbury had warned him of the tire blowout incident and the rumour circulating that seemed to bear the name ‘Gleitner’; who allegedly provided illicit sexual services at a price and might be warning Greg off the boy. ‘Could this kid be seducing Greg in his present, weakened state? Has Greg fallen for the kid’s charms? The boy’s welfare seems to be the paramount priority in Greg’s mind. Has this boy rekindled the old, youthful stirrings of Greg’s involvement with Graham? Is Jess the new Graham in his life? If so, does it matter? This kid is undoubtedly the key to Greg’s motivations. We will see. I’ll check them out together. As things stand from what I see right now, my head says I can’t use Greg! My heart says I must give him this weekend to show me otherwise. I owe him at least that.’