The Road Least Traveled

by Jerry Cole

  The metaphor was cringeworthy but the point was well and truly driven home, and once again Greg had no reply. He nodded respectfully, and did not interrupt Dwyer, who after taking another sip from his glass, was only too happy to carry on talking.

  “I’ve spent a lot of time talking to a lot of important people in my life,” he said. “It’s the nature of the beast in this game. Some can be reasoned with by showing them how what they’re not happy with can be turned around and made into something that can benefit them. Others need a different approach. Son, I’m not sure what your approach was, here. And maybe you can enlighten us.”

  Greg nodded, and he stood up and fastened the buttons on his suit jacket. “Mr. Dwyer, I am truly sorry for letting you down,” he said. “I understand that you’re disappointed in that I wasn’t able to finish the project, and while I agree that if we’d pushed Betty too much further it wouldn’t have been long before we’d have been alerted to what was lying behind that wall, I also must agree with you when you say that I compromised my position and I deceived my teammates.”

  He turned to Eddie, who was staring at him with a blank face, one Greg could not read. “Eddie, I owe you an apology, too,” he said. “I can promise you that the fault with the hydraulics was merely a coincidence. I’m the last person who would want to do any harm to that incredible machine, but I can’t say I wasn’t happy when I knew what the fault meant. You went across the world to head up a project and you kept Betty from being damaged when you were all on your own and those guys were gunning for you. When I arrived, you got right on board, and you pushed yourself and your team and it was a pleasure to watch you work.”

  He didn’t wait for a response, and instead turned to Marty. “Marty, as my partner in this business, you trusted me enough to leave the project in my hands. You were doing your best out there and I thought I could do better. I was wrong. I wanted you out of the way so I could do things the way I wanted. I thought making contacts and buying off some important local government names could get me anywhere. And I was stupid to think that, because they were playing me the whole time. I cost the company money in that regard too.”

  He paused, and looked down at the ground. His heart was beating so fast he was sure he could see the tie dangling down his chest quivering like the chest of a tiny mouse. He swallowed, and then looked up, addressing all three men together.

  “I made some stupid choices when I was out there,” he said. “And I regret some of them. But not all. I don’t regret sending everyone home that day and calling in a group of people who have spent their whole lives searching for buried treasure. And I don’t mean that figuratively, either. I mean real, buried treasure. These guys live in poverty. I’ve seen it. They drive battered old bikes and live in apartments with no furniture and they hope their moms can cook them something because they can’t afford to buy anything to eat. They don’t want to become CEOs and drive flashy cars and wear designer clothes, because that’s not what makes them happy.

  “They’ve lived for the moment they could uncover a piece of history underneath their city that could change the lives of more than just them. Because of what they’ve found, books will have to be rewritten, and they’ve only just begun to excavate what could turn out to be a the greatest historical find in the whole of history. I’ve seen with my own eyes an ancient civilization built with such precision and skill that it’s nothing short of a masterpiece. And while I’ve let you down, each one of you, and Turbo Metro Drilling as a whole, I don’t regret stopping the work and giving those guys the chance to make their dreams a reality.”

  He stopped, and when nobody spoke, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a long white envelope. He placed it on the desk, in front of Richard Dwyer.

  “This is my resignation,” he said. “It’s effective immediately. I take full responsibility for my actions and I don’t seek any kind of severance pay. This job was my life, until I learned that there’s a magic out there that I’ve been privileged to see in action in a city with so much beauty and history, and we’ve only skimmed the surface. I am truly sorry that the project has not been completed to this company’s high standards, but I fell in love out there. I fell in love with a legendary story, but it turned out that it wasn’t a story after all. It was real. And all it needed was for someone who had the ability and the means to make it real. You only need to look at the news to see that we’ve contributed to making a small country feel like it rules the world, the way it did thousands of years ago.”

  Greg was aware that he could stand and talk for the next ten years and the three stony-faced men in front of him would remain unmoved, and he stopped.

  “Thank you for the opportunity I’ve been given. I’m going to take what I’ve learned and move on. I’ve cleared out my desk, and Henry has my laptop. He’s the man to move this forward now. I believe TMD’s time in Europe isn’t over. And I wish you all the luck in the world.”

  The woman from Human Resources had stopped writing, and Greg wasn’t sure if it was because she couldn’t keep up with his speech, or because she was moved by his words, but he didn’t care. He reached out to Eddie, who shook his hand. He did the same to Marty, who also returned the gesture, but when he held his hand out to Dwyer, the president sneered at it and instead picked up the envelope and tore it open.

  Greg didn’t stay a minute longer. He turned around and left the room, took the elevator to the ground floor, and walked out of Turbo Metro Drilling, no longer a CEO. In fact, he was officially unemployed.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  In the back garden, Greg and Henry sat side by side, their backs toward the house. In front of them, Henry’s three daughters conducted a tea party on a large yellow blanket, where dolls gossiped and sipped imaginary beverages from small plastic cups.

  From behind them, Gaby brought a tray of tall glasses and set it down on a table in front of her husband.

  “You okay keeping an eye on the girls while I run to the store?” she asked, and Henry stroked her butt with a flat hand.

  “Sure,” he said. “Greg and I got this covered.”

  “I bet it takes you back to watching Molly play when she was a kid, huh Greg?” Gaby asked, and Greg nodded slowly.

  “It’s like yesterday she was sitting with her friends doing exactly the same thing,” he said, staring at Henry’s kids as their vivid imaginations played out in a series of eerily acute conversations with each other. “Now she’s off to college and she’s traded that imaginary tea for a whole lot of vodka.”

  Gaby laughed and left the men to look after the girls. A few moments later, Greg heard her car reversing out of the driveway and out of the carport. Once she was gone, Henry reached for a glass of iced tea and passed it to Greg, then took the other for himself.

  “So what are you going to do now?” he asked. “Marty told me about your little speech. Quite touching, so I hear.”

  “Shut up,” Greg laughed. “I meant it. I feel kind of dumb when I think back to what I said, but I really meant every word. It was another world out there, Henry. We don’t know the half of it.”

  “I’ve never seen you like this before.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Henry pursed his lips, thinking carefully. “It’s like you’ve experienced some kind of afterlife,” he said. Then he shook his head. “No, not so much an afterlife. More like a glimpse of a parallel life, like you’ve been somewhere where you’re a totally different person. I don’t recognize you.”

  “Come off it,” said Greg. “I’m still the same guy. I just got a huge wake-up call when I was over there, is all. I saw that there’s more to life than making tons of cash for a company that spends its life destroying things. I mean, we tell ourselves that we’re helping to create something incredible for a city, but really, we’re shifting tons of soil without seeing if there’s anything in it worth preserving. Sure, we have the guys analyzing it as it comes out, but Henry, if you’d seen what I’ve seen, you’d know
that by the time Betty got a hold of it and dragged it out of the earth, it would have been completely destroyed.”

  “I refer you to my earlier statement,” Henry said, raising his eyebrows. “I don’t recognize you.”

  They stared out at the garden in silence. Suddenly a thought appeared in Henry’s head. He gasped and turned to his best friend.

  “You met someone out there!” he exclaimed. Immediately Greg flushed, and blinked three, four times, before scoffing.

  “What are you talking about?” he said dismissively. “Don’t be crazy.”

  “You did!” Henry placed down his glass and turned his chair so that instead of being beside Greg, he was now facing him. “You met someone out there and she touched your heart, am I right?”

  Greg said nothing. Henry slapped his knee and roared with laughter.

  “I’m right!” he exclaimed. “That’s what this is all about! Of course, you don’t give a shit about some dead woman and her palace of pretty floors. It’s the woman digging the floors up that you’ve done this for! I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. God dammit, Henry, old boy, you’re getting blind in your old age.”

  He prodded Greg’s knee. “When you opened that door, you had the face.”

  “The what?”

  “The face! The lovesick face! The one where you’ve left a hot woman at the airport and she’s captured your heart and gotten you fired—”

  “I resigned.”

  “Whatever.” Henry was grinning with the excitement of a small child. “I’m right, aren’t I? What’s her name? Is she Greek? Is she hot? Does she look like that sexy chick who runs around raiding tombs with her tight brown pants and a utility belt?”

  “Knock it off, Henry,” Greg pleaded, but his face gave him away.

  “What’s her name?”

  Greg uttered the word he’d managed to avoid in the two weeks since his return to the U.S.

  “Alex. Alex Petrou.”

  “Alex, hey?” Henry beamed. “Sexy little history geek by day, hot little minx by night?”

  Greg looked down at the glass in his hands, and stared for a long time at the tiny bubbles that had formed on the surface of his drink. “Henry, Alex isn’t a woman. He’s the lead archaeologist.”

  “Huh?” Henry looked confused. “He?”

  “I don’t really know what happened,” Greg said quietly. “He’s the reason I went out there. He caused so many problems for Eddie. Alex is the reason I got on the fucking plane and went halfway across the world. I hated the guy before I’d even met him. But after a couple of hours of listening to him, I couldn’t stop.”

  “Whoa, whoa.” Henry held up his hands. “Take it back. Are you telling me you’ve fallen in love with a guy?”

  Greg couldn’t look Henry in the eye. He stared at the floor. Fallen in love with a guy. Henry had finally said it. He’d dragged it out of Greg without even realizing. Greg was in love with a guy. As the gravity of the realization dawned on him, Greg looked up at Henry, open-mouthed in shock.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “I fell in love with a guy. An incredible guy. And he told me he loves me, too, and I walked out on him. It was the best day of his life, I don’t doubt it, when he found the palace. And I turned it into a fucking stupid drama.”

  “But… but…”

  Greg had rarely known Henry speechless. “I didn’t want to lie to you,” he said. “You’re my best friend. But how could I tell you something like that? All these years I’ve been going from one woman to the other, and I’ve never once taken it seriously. And I spent one evening with this guy and felt like I’d known him my whole life.”

  “You’re gay?”

  “I don’t know,” Greg said, shrugging. “I don’t think so. I haven’t even thought about that. Am I gay?”

  Greg stuck out his lower lip like a kid in a spelling bee who was trying to remember in which order the letters of the word went before he blurted them into the microphone.

  “Maybe I am. I never thought I was, but Alex gave me something I’ve been missing. He gave me a purpose out there. He taught me so much in such a short space of time.”

  “Taught you what?” Henry asked warily. “How to suck a dick?”

  “Henry,” Greg sighed. “It’s not a joke. I’ve only just realized it, right at this moment, when you said it just now. I’m in love with him. I don’t know what to call it at the moment. It’s brand new to me, too. I don’t think I want to put a name on it. But I fell in love with a man and the crazy thing is that I don’t feel bad about it.”

  “But all the beautiful women out there…” Henry cried out, and as he said the words he knew it was hardly a valid argument, but the confusion was etched onto his face in the deep frown lines between his eyebrows.

  Greg laughed. “Yeah, there are beautiful women out there,” he agreed. “I married one. I’ve slept with quite a few. But nobody has come close to making me feel the way Alex did.”

  He leaned forward and patted Henry’s hand. “Nothing has to change with you and me,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you over this. It doesn’t mean you have to watch your back around me or anything.”

  “I don’t know if I can process this,” said Henry, and he stood up and went into the house. Greg didn’t move. He continued to watch Henry’s daughters playing on the blanket. By now the conversation had moved on from the way the dolls liked to wear their hair and which of the three girls was their favorite, to what the dolls would like for Christmas. Henry’s oldest daughter also reminded the party that they were to also include Hanukkah gifts, which made for a long and detailed conversation.

  Greg gave Henry twenty minutes alone before he went into the house to find him. Henry was on the couch in the den, staring into space, the way Greg had spent a lot of his time in recent weeks. He tapped on the already open door.

  “Can I come in?” he asked. Henry nodded.

  “I didn’t mean to just get up like that,” he said, his voice gruff. “I just wanted a second to collect my thoughts, you know?”

  “I get it,” said Greg. “I’ve not even come to terms with everything myself yet. I literally only realized the truth after you did. I’ve spent the last two weeks ignoring how I feel because I thought I’d let everyone down. But the only person I’m really letting down is myself because I’ve been too scared to just go with it, and see where it leads me.”

  “You’re still going to come to the club and play golf, aren’t you?” Henry asked, and he looked so concerned about it that Greg could only laugh as he took a seat next to his best friend on his couch.

  “I will forever beat you at golf, buddy,” he said. “Nothing’s going to change. I haven’t changed. Not really. I’ve just discovered something I didn’t even know existed for me. But you’re the first person I’ve told. And I only knew I could tell you because I love you. You’re my brother. Well, my brother from another mother. A very paranoid, Jewish mother.”

  Henry laughed and seemed to wipe away a tear from his eye. He put his arm around Greg and slapped him on the back.

  “We need to get back to the girls,” said Greg. “They’re discussing Christmas and Hanukkah presents. They’re out to bankrupt you.”

  “Oh, God,” groaned Henry. “If Gaby has another girl I’m going to have to get you to find me a Greek lover, too. Only one a little less hairy than you, if you don’t mind.”

  Chapter Thirty

  It wasn’t a difficult decision to make. Once Henry knew the truth, Greg began to tell him even more about his time in the city of Thessaloniki. And once his friend had gotten over the shock, Greg let him in on the secret that was still kept firmly under wraps, even among the team back in Greece. Henry was both impressed and interested. Greg knew he hardly did the story justice but he got out a map and showed Henry where Alex had taken him on that very first evening, and how he had revealed the captivating story of what could, and what had now been proved really did, lie beneath the surface of the old empty lot, the size of a football field,
that nobody was allowed to build on.

  Even the media had not yet put two and two together, and from the many articles Greg perused online he couldn’t see anything definitive that led him to believe that journalists were any the wiser as to the potential implications of the discovery. Greg enjoyed watching from afar as every day brought more news, news of another mosaic, another beautiful piece of priceless art finally seeing the light of day, or at least of a strong lamp, once again after three thousand years. The colors in the photographs, Greg knew, were nothing like those that could be appreciated with the naked eye, but just looking at the pictures gave him goose bumps. There were faces of gods and goddesses, legends and stories told by tiny pieces of tile expertly put together to create huge canvases on which legends walked.

  From what Greg could make out, the palace expanded far beyond the circumference of Betty’s shield, and the tunnel had been widened out. Some of the concrete slabs that Betty had carefully laid as she made her way through the dirt were lifted up again in order for the team to expand their search to include a much wider area. Betty herself was back in the U.S. and TMD was immediately requested to begin work in Seattle, where a new metro was very much needed and where there was a much slimmer chance of them coming across three-thousand-year-old ruins that could throw a figurative wrench in the works.

  Occasionally Greg would see Alex in the photographs online; a dusty face lit up with the beaming smile Greg had first fallen in love with. Eyes lit up with joy and excitement as the next sweep of a brush could uncover yet another unexpected treasure. Greg often reached out and touched the computer screen, stroking the picture of Alex’s face and wishing it was the real thing. Since his return to the U.S., he’d heard nothing. He couldn’t blame Alex for the silence; after all, Greg had made it abundantly clear in the hotel room that Alex’s feelings were not reciprocated. How wrong I was, Greg agonized. I should have told him how I feel.