Trapped

by Annie Jocoby

  But, at the same time, I wasn’t on the greatest footing with my dad. The reason for this was that, although he wasn’t saying as much, I knew that he was pretty pissed at me for the mess I got everybody in. It wasn’t the time, just yet, to ask him for the $20,000 investment that I would need to buy into the co-op, considering how tense everything was.

  Still, I wanted to get down there and check everything out.

  So, imagine my surprise when I went to the co-op and saw Henry Jacobs leaving the premises. I ducked my head, hoping that he wouldn’t recognize me. Why I felt the need to hide, I didn’t know. I only knew that I felt the need to disguise who I was.

  It didn’t work.

  “Ms. Gallagher?” the little man said to me.

  “Hello, Mr. Jacobs,” I said. I felt my face flushing red, and I put my hand up to my cheek involuntarily.

  “It’s good to see you. You’re looking well.”

  I bit my lip and looked down at the floor. While I was surprised to see him, I also felt hopeful yet angry at the same time. Hopeful because I thought that maybe he was there to see Luke, for whatever reason. Angry because I still blamed him for my artistic breakdown. All those years of feeling like a fraud and failure because of him…I couldn’t forgive him.

  I looked up and he was examining me, as a scientist might examine a subject in an experiment. He had taken off his glasses and was chewing on the end of the frame. He shrugged. “Bad habit.”

  “Well, it’s good to see you too, Mr. Jacobs,” I said. “Uh, if you don’t mind….” I tried to politely excuse myself, but he apparently didn’t get the hint. He still stood there and carefully examined me.

  “Ms. Gallagher,” he finally said. “I came down here to apologize to Mr. Roberts. Do you know him?”

  “Yes, yes I do,” I said. This conversation was taking a turn for the surreal, that was for sure.

  He took a deep breath. “I think that I might have, as a critic, become a little too immersed in the political side of things. My objectivity has not always been as on-point as it should be. Sometimes there is pressure put upon critics where there really shouldn’t be, and people get hurt because of it.” Then he paused. “I think that you probably know where I’m going with this.”

  “I think that I do,” I said, although I really didn’t. Did he want to print a retraction of his scathing critique, some nine years after the fact? It would be just a little late for that, wouldn’t it?

  “Ms. Gallagher,” he said, “I’m not sure if you have a platform for your work anymore, thanks to me. But if you do, I would be more than happy to review it, wherever it is that you decide to display it.” He gave me his card. “Here’s my card. Please call me whenever you get a chance to show your work, and I’ll guarantee you that I’ll write…a more honest review of your work than my previous assessment.”

  I cocked my head and looked at him quizzically. “Thank you, Mr. Jacobs, but, I confess I don’t understand what is motivating this.”

  “Have you ever had a near-death experience, Ms. Gallagher? Have you ever been at a point in your life when you think that you are going to die, and then you didn’t?”

  I thought back to when I was a baby. Would that count? It probably would, considering that I was cognizant of what was going on. “Yes, I guess so.”

  “Well, then, you know what I’m talking about. It changes you, Ms. Gallagher. It makes you realize what’s really important in this world, and what isn’t.” He didn’t elaborate further, though. “Well, I’m very glad to have run into you. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you this, but you’ve been on my mind a lot lately. Call it serendipity to run into you this way.” He bowed his head a little. “Good day, Ms. Gallagher. I hope to hear from you soon.”

  At that, he turned on his heel and walked away, his hands in his pocket, and whistling a little tune.

  I shook my head. That had to be the oddest thing to happen to me in a long time.

  And probably one of the most wonderful things as well.

  Chapter

  Luke

  I was standing in the lobby with JJ, and she asked me to go to her studio to share a bottle of wine with her. “It’s time to celebrate,” she said. “Let’s call all the other guys in here, too, and tell them the great news.”

  At that, she called everyone and asked them to meet us in her studio. One by one, everyone showed up, and JJ told them the news.

  “Guys,” she said. “I’m gathering you all here to tell you that we’re going to have a very special guest at our little fund-raiser, and this special guest is going to help us get the word out about it. I predict that this might be a turning point for our little David organization, because Goliath is joining forces with us.”

  “Really,” Arthur, a photographer, said. “Do tell.”

  “Henry Jacobs will be attending our fund-raiser. And he told Luke here that he’s going to help us publicize it. So, everybody, let’s make a toast, and then you all have to get to work. Because, just out of the blue, we’ve gotten the best offer that we ever could hope for, and it seems that this little fund-raiser is going to be better attended then we had ever dreamed.”

  At that, everybody started chatting excitedly and drinking. “Henry Jacobs, here? I never thought that would happen,” said Connie, a sculptor.

  “I finally might get somebody to actually care about my work,” said Ravi, a painter who specialized in hyper-realism.

  I smiled, happy that I could have made this happen. And astounded that it did happen. I never actually thought that anything positive was going to come from that Matthew Jane showing, yet it was. It was, and I wasn’t the only one who was going to benefit from it.

  Then, in the middle of all the celebration, Dalilah walked through the door.

  I went over to her and gave her a hug. “Dalilah, you won’t believe what just happened.”

  “Henry Jacobs was here,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  “How did you know?”

  “I ran into him outside. He all but apologized for his unfair critique of my work when I was 11, and told me, in essence, that he was eager to give me a second chance. He said that if I ever got a chance to display my work, he will, quote ‘give a more honest review of my work’ un-quote.”

  At that, I picked her up. For just that moment, Nottingham and his threats were forgotten. This was a happy moment for both of us, because we both were getting a second chance to display our work for all to see. And both of us were getting our chance to really get some positive attention, assuming that Henry Jacobs was truly willing to give both of us a positive review.

  Dalilah was laughing. “I don’t believe this. I mean, it was just a few days ago that I thought that the world was ending. It might still be ending, but today, I just feel happy. I feel happy for you, and for me. We both might get the chance that we never got before.”

  “Well, now you have something concrete to take to your father if you want him to invest. Tell him that this entire co-op is on its way, if the fund-raiser goes as well as I think it’s going to now. Your dad will be more than happy to give you the $20,000, now that he knows that he’ll get his investment back.”

  “Of course, you know that he would be more than willing just to give me that money, even if he wasn’t sure if he would get a solid return. It just helps me to know that I’m not asking him to piss in the wind.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” I said with a smile. “Well, you and I have work to do. You need to talk to your dad about buying into the co-op, and you need to get your butt in your chair and start painting again. It will take your mind off of what’s going on with Nottingham, at least a little bit. Hopefully it will, that is.”

  At that, Dalilah and I excused ourselves and went into my studio.

  Dalilah went through my paintings, one by one. “There are some that I’ve never seen before,” she said. “Let me help you get the ones together for the fund-raiser.”

  I went up to her, and lifted up her shirt. She wasn’t
wearing a bra, and her breasts were swelling more and more by the day. I ran my hand over her burgeoning tummy and stroked it lightly. “God,” I said, “you’re so sexy these days, I just can’t even believe it.”

  Dalilah turned around and smiled. “Right back atcha, there,” she said. And then she turned serious. I could see that he eyes had turned into two pools of lust. Her lips were on mine, hungrily devouring them. I could feel my cock getting harder and harder as she kissed me.

  Before long, we were tearing off each other’s clothing hungrily. We fell on the couch that I had just brought into the studio, and I was inside her almost immediately. We animalistically merged ourselves on the sofa, until I felt myself spilling my cum into her. Breathless, we both sat up.

  “Well, Luke, that was awesome, as always,” she said. “But we need to get to work.”

  Which we did, spending the rest of the day carefully choosing my paintings to show, while listening to music in the background. As we talked and laughed the entire day, it was just like old times. As if there wasn’t a Sword of Damocles hanging over our head.

  Which it was, of course. There was no denying that. But, for those few hours, it was as if there wasn’t a care in the world.

  A week went by quietly. Dalilah and I readied ourselves for the other shoe dropping, but it never did. There never was an announcement that the prosecutors were looking into the death of Paul Lucas, although we both held our breaths in waiting for just such an announcement.

  In the meantime, we also prepared for the fund-raiser. Dalilah was becoming more active by the day in helping out, and she was close to asking her father for the money for her to be able to join the co-op as well. She hadn’t asked him yet, however, because she was worried about the tension that was still between her and Ryan. She knew that he was still angry with her, so she felt intimidated to say anything to him.

  We also found out the real reason for Henry Jacobs’ change of heart. When Dalilah told me that Henry told her that he had a near-death experience, we decided to find out if there was anything on the news about it. It turned out that there was, but, because we were in London at the time that it happened, we didn’t know about it.

  So, we Googled it, and the news articles turned up immediately. An intruder had broken into his home and shot him when Henry tried to defend himself with his personal gun. The bullet came very close to nicking his aorta, although it didn’t quite, and he had a touch and go surgery. The article indicated that Henry felt that he was lucky to be alive.

  I smiled. “So, the old fart has a conscience after all. I wonder if he told Nottingham to stuff it, assuming that Nottingham’s pressure was what caused him to ignore me in the first place.”

  “I’m quite sure that Nottingham’s pressure was the reason why Henry ignored you,” Dalilah said. “After all, he said something to me about how politics had colored the way that he has critiqued shows, and he wasn’t going to let that happen anymore. Well, good for him, being more independent like that. I wonder how the paper feels about him being more independent, though.”

  I shrugged. “Who knows? It seems that politics plays a part in too many things these days. How naïve of us to ever believe that anybody can be truly objective, when there’s always money and pressure involved in everything people do anymore.”

  “That’s very true,” she said.

  Then, one day, while Dalilah and I were readying ourselves for the big fund-raiser, she got a phone call.

  From her father.

  The security team had given him their report.

  Chapter

  Dalilah

  My heart was in my throat when I got that phone call from my dad. “Dalilah,” my father said on the phone. “We need to talk.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk.”

  “Not here,” he said. “Let me meet you at a restaurant of your choice there in your neighborhood.”

  I didn’t know if I liked his tone of voice. I prayed that the security firm found something. Something juicy. Something illegal. Something that would give me ammunition and would force Nottingham to back the hell off.

  “I’ll be there in an hour,” I said, after my dad told me that he was in town, so he could be in my neighborhood as soon as possible.

  I looked at Luke. “That was my dad. He said that he got the report back from his security firm.”

  “Let’s go,” Luke said.

  At that, we went down to the restaurant, ordered a whiskey sour for him and soda water for me, and waited for my dad.

  He appeared within the hour. He looked happy, and I felt my heart soar. Perhaps things were going to go our way after all.

  Luke and I stood up when he arrived in the place, and we all sat down.

  “Okay,” dad said, “let’s get down to business.”

  I nodded, feeling optimistic yet terrified all at the same time.

  “Your hunch was correct,” dad said. “Nottingham made several extremely suspicious transactions that coincided with important FDA announcements. Not just one, but around ten. Three of transactions involved him buying thousands of shares of stocks in pharmaceutical companies just before these companies announced the approval of a new drug. The other seven involved him completely dumping stocks just before the FDA announced negative news about these same companies. In four of these incidents, he dumped stocks for pharmaceutical companies that were involved in class-action lawsuits right after he dumped the stocks. In the other three of these incidents, Nottingham dumped stocks right before product recalls.”

  I rubbed my hands together. “Oh, this is great. This is awesome! Sounds like we have the smoking gun!”

  My dad nodded his head. “It would be pretty difficult for him to explain that all away. Too many incidents for him to say that it was all a coincidence. At any rate, there’s enough there to get the SEC sniffing around him pretty hard, and I predict that Nottingham isn’t going to want that.”

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Let me set up a meeting with him. Now that I have him dead to right, I predict that he’s going to back off of everything.”

  I called Nottingham right after I had my meeting with my dad.

  “Hello, Blake,” I said.

  “Dalilah,” he said, coolly. “Pleasure to talk to you.”

  “Oh, no, it’s my pleasure,” I said. “Shall we meet? I have a few things that I need to talk to you about.”

  “Seven o’clock,” he said. “At Nobu in Tribeca.” At that, he hung up.

  I rolled my eyes. My father was still sitting there at the lunch table. “Can you get your limo to take me to Nobu tonight at seven?” I asked him.

  “I’ll get right on it,” he said, and then called his driver. “Okay, it’s set. Now, how are you going to approach this?”

  “I will just tell him that we have evidence that he’s been engaging in many acts of insider trading, and that I would put in an anonymous tip to the SEC if he doesn’t back off. God knows that the information that we have just might be the tip of the iceberg. Nottingham could be facing some serious prison time for just these transactions. Just think about the possibility of there being even more.”

  My father sighed. “Yes. Well, I guess we have to live with the morality of this. After all, if he’s engaging in high-level fraud, we really should report him. Yet, we’re not going to, because we know that if we do, Nottingham is going to turn around and contact the prosecutors about Paul Lucas, and we’re all going to be in hot water.”

  “By the way,” I said to my father. I had long since gotten a new phone, but I had given my old phone to the security team to try to debug. “Did they find the bug in my phone – your security team?”

  “Yes,” my dad said. “It was microscopic, but they found it. Your phone is safe to use if you want, but I know that you’re probably still leery about it. If you want, they can destroy it.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I already have all the information off of that phone that I need. Have them destroy it completely. I don’t want to
take the chance that there might be something else on the phone that they might have missed.”

  “Will do,” dad said.

  We talked for a few more hours, and, at some point, I brought up the possibility that he might invest in the co-op by giving me the $20,000 buy-in. “You’ll get the money back, dad, and thensome,” I said. “With Henry Jacobs supporting Luke and me, we should really be able to make a go of it.”

  My dad warmed to the idea. “Sounds ideal for you, Dalilah,” he said. “It’s always been my dream that you would find your way. It sounds like you finally are. You’re going to have a baby, and it sounds like you might have found a really good group who will help you with your career. And a solid relationship with a great guy like Luke, here,” he said, putting his hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Now, if we can just get this pesky Nottingham situation under control, you might just be on your way, Dalilah.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “A pesky, tiny problem like Nottingham has to be vanquished before I can feel that I’m able to breathe.”

  That would come later, of course. At that moment, I was savoring my time with my father and Luke.

  I arrived at Nobu right at 7. I took several deep breaths as I walked into the restaurant. Nottingham was already there, of course, drinking some hot Saki. “Hello, Dalilah,” he said as I arrived at the table. “It’s good to see you. I hope that you’ve been going to your prenatal appointments and doing everything right. Our baby has to have every chance.”

  “My baby is fine, according to my latest prenatal visit,” I said. “It’s a girl, in fact,” I said, and this was true. That was confirmed with a sonogram.

  “A little girl,” he said. “That’s going to be great.”