Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 10:12:28 -0400 From: Sean Williams Subject: The Trap, Chapter 2 "Listen, you little shit!" yelled Chairman Gruder in front of a stunned Board of Directors. "Listen up and listen good. I saved this company from bankruptcy on more than one occasion and I safely carried it into the globalism of this century. It is because of me that you have a company to inherit and your slut of a mother has an unlimited bank account to draw from. I am Fitzpatrick Chemical and I'll be damned if a 21-year-old testosterone-infused preppy rich kid like you stands in the way of my plans for the company!" Colby Fitzpatrick, scion of the wealthy Fitzpatrick family, shrugged and swiveled irreverently in the Chairman of the Board's chair at the head of the table in the boardroom. "You really need to try and calm down, Dr Gruder," he said. "I mean, we wouldn't want you to excite yourself too much and say... rupture an aneurysm, now would we? Who would take over control of the company if that were to happen? That's right... ME. Continue." "I'm going to need you to get up from this chair, right now," said Gruder. "We need to start this meeting immediately so that we can get the merger underway..." "Yes, the merger," said Colby. "That's exactly why I need to be here. Someone needs to represent the interests of the Fitzpatrick family while talks about the merger are underway. With my dad locked away, you've managed to cut us out altogether. It's amazing that we hold more than fifty percent of the shares in the company, but have no pull at all in this company anymore, thanks to you. The reality is, we deserve... we need our say in the merger talks and I am here to see that we get them." Chairman Gruder laughed: the long, mirthless laughter of a man that had seen and done it all. It was said that he had killed a man with his bare hands. It was spoken that he knew how to disembowel a man using only a toothpick and a can of cheese whiz. There was convincing evidence that he had climbed Mount Everest. Alone. Some whispered that he was a Russian spy and had spent time at Guantanamo. No one knew precisely how old he was. He could have been thirty-five of he could have been seventy-five. One of the secretaries, who shall remain nameless, swore that she used to be a waitress at a nightclub in the Castro district of San Francisco and had seen Chairman Gruder in flagrante delicto with two Brazilian transsexuals in the club in the 60s, and she alleged that he had gray hair back then. Colby did not know what to make of the laughter, but he knew he wasn't getting up from the chair. "What's so funny?" he asked, his discomfiture clear to those closest to his end of the table. "Don't you understand that the merger is already underway, you twerp? As long as the Feds approve it, we might see Kobe-McNamara and Fitzpatrick Chemical merged by the end of the week. You're a little too late, my boy. Supper has already begun and we've started without you. Now why don't you skip back to Princeton and convince one of the tasty little co-eds there to do your laundry for you." Chairman Gruder laughed again and his guffaw was joined by the laughter of several other board members. Colby turned to Arun, who stood in a corner of the board room, and asked: "Is that true?" Arun, who wanted nothing to do with Colby at this point, decided that he would say nothing, but when he saw the hurt in Colby's eyes that his silence engendered, he nodded and said: "It's true." "Well," said Colby, hopping up from the Chairman's chair. "I guess I better be off then. I have a polo match to go to." "Giving up so easily?" asked the Chairman, with a malign grin. "No, I'm just so bored," Colby replied, trying his hardest to look as unmoved as he could. Arun knew better. "For one thing," Colby continued, "you bought the wrong flavor of frappucino, and being in the same room with all of you old foggies is sapping the life out of me. Especially you, Dr. Gruder." "Well, as long as you leave immediately, I don't care what you say about me." "Round one: Chairman Gruder," whispered Arun, out of the hearing distance of the others. Soon afterward, Colby walked out into the hall, in a cold sweat. "How could I not have known that the merger talks had progressed this far?" he asked himself. "They obviously already filed the paperwork with the SEC. Weeks ago. Finals! Gruder must have scheduled the talks during finals week, so I would be too busy to get involved..." "Dude, are you okay?" asked Arun, appearing suddenly in the hall where Colby leaned against a glass wall. The wall overlooked the expansive atrium of the Fitzpatrick Chemical building, at the center of which was a pond and a plaque commemorating Colby's great-grandfather, who founded the company more than seventy years before, at a time when his nation was just emerging from the greatest Depression in its history. The company had survived World War II, the Cold War, the Vietnam War. In the recent decades, Fitzpatrick Chemical had bucked the trend of moving its plants and factories overseas to cut labor costs; it maintained its plants in Indiana, Minnesota, and Texas, employing American workers that would otherwise be out of work. Fitzpatrick Chemical paid the price for this loyalty to its people: with labor costs going up and numerous other competitors in the chemical products/pharmaceuticals industry, the company simply was not as profitable as it had been twenty years ago. This was America after all, business trumped all, and this misguided sympathy for the company's workers was step one toward corporate destruction. Fitzpatrick Chemical needed to merge to survive, many among the Board of Directors had begun to whisper months before, an opinion of which Chairman Gruder was a primary supporter. It was he that had orchestrated the upcoming acquisition of Fitzpatrick Chemical by Kobe-McNamara. All Gruder needed to do was keep the pesky Fitzpatricks out of the picture and pave the way. If Fitzpatrick Chemical merged with Kobe-McNamara, it was only natural that many of those American factories and plants would be closed, the workers laid off, operations moved overseas. The enlarged company would probably also sell off the Fitzpatrick headquarters in California. All would be lost. The company probably would not even bear the Fitzpatrick name anymore. There would be nothing. All so Gruder could become president and chairman of the new company, as it spread its tentacles around the world. "Do you believe that this company means something?" asked Colby. The beaten look that his face had taken on aroused the interest of the clerks and employees that walked past them in the hall. "I'm a lowly intern, Colby," Arun replied. "I don't mean anything. This company would probably grind me up and serve me as hamburger in the cafeteria if they needed to." "I don't think you would make a tasty hamburger, Arun." "What's your point, Colby?" "I think this company is important," said Colby. "Because your family owns it," said Arun. "You just want to keep control." "Not just that," Colby corrected, shaking his head vociferously. "We give people jobs, we send their kids to college. We have an obligation to these people. Fucking Gruder doesn't understand that. It's just dollars and cents to him." "Ah, the crown prince has an unruly Prime Minister to deal with," said Arun, with a laugh. "I'm serious." "This is a corporation, Colby. If you need to merge to stay competitive, then guess what? That's what you'll have to do." "I don't think we should merge. I don't think it's good for the company." Arun shrugged. "I understand why you feel that way." "I don't know what to do, Arun," said Colby. "Gruder is just too good. He check-mated me." "You don't really believe that, do you?" "Of course, I do." "Well," Arun began, "if Gruder had cut you out of the equation as thoroughly as you seem to think, then why would he need to blackmail you with the Norwegian? Clearly, he still feels threatened. And if Gruder feels threatened then that means there must still be something that you can do." "Like what?" "C'mon, Colby," said Arun, leaning against the glass beside the heir to the throne, joining him in some sort of momentary fraternal bond. "You're the one that goes to Princeton. You should be able to think of something." And think of something Colby did. Five hours later, Colby was on a private jet to Seattle. The jet was one of several of which the Fitzpatrick family and the company executives had access; it was staffed by a flight crew of eight, all of whom wore the livery of the Fitzpatrick Chemical corporation. Beside Colby, there was only one other passenger. "Dude, how the heck did you know I was in California?" said the other passenger, leaning his seat back to the maximum reclined position, which was almost completely flat. "That's so fucking weird. Do you have like, deja vu or ESPN or something?" "You mean 'ESP'?" Colby asked, laughing to himself. He looked away and shook his head. "That's extra-sensory perception, Troy. ESPN is a channel on cable. And deja vu... that's something completely different..." "Fuck it, Bro," said Troy McNamara, son of the President of the gargantuan Kobe-McNamara Pharmaceutical Corporation. "You knew what I meant. Why do you have to be such a fucking brain all the time? You don't look like a nerd but, God bro, you're such a fucking dweeb!" Colby sighed and gazed out of the window. He could see the sequioa forests of Northern California out of breaks in the clouds as the jet dipped above and below twenty-five thousand feet. "You look good though," said Troy, sizing up Colby. Colby wore a black polo shirt and camouflage cargo shorts: sort of preppy on top and surfer on the bottom. Troy wore a Harvard shirt, which he was bulging out of. "I can't believe you called me, man," said Troy. When a waitress from the flight crew walked from the captain's cabin to the staff area in the rear of the jet, Troy turned and slapped her in the backside. The attractive young woman, visibly perturbed, hurriedly scurried away. "Ha! You think we might get some pussy up here? You know, like a James Bond movie? Octopussy or something. That flight attendant was pretty hot, bro. She might let us tag team her, I mean, we're both pretty rich. Everyone has a price." "What the fuck am I doing?" thought Colby to himself. "Troy is such a douchebag. I can't believe I have to do this..." "What's wrong, man?" asked Troy. He leaned across the space that separated his and Colby's chairs, which faced one another. "Nothing," Colby replied, sitting up straighter. "I'm just so happy to see you, bro. That's all." Colby placed a hand on Troy's thigh and looked up into his eyes. Troy, a year older than Colby, had the typical look of an Abercrombie & Fitch model, but without the twinkle in his eyes. Behind his heavy lids and blue eyes there was only a vacant stare. He had curly blond hair that was cut short and he was tanned from head to toe, courtesy of Joe Schmoe's Orange Tanning Solution: $4.95 a can. Even rich kids use the cheap stuff. Colby and Troy had been classmates at prep school in Massachusetts. Although Troy was a year older, they had been in the same year at school because Troy had had to redo a year of junior high school. He was possibly the dimmest witted member the McNamara clan had ever produced, in its thousand years of history. In spite of being one of the dumbest people that Colby had ever met, Colby had to admit that Troy was still pretty hot (in that homogenized frat boy type of way), and that sleeping with him, in order to get information about just how far along the merger was and what Colby might be able to do to stop it, was not as onerous a task as it appeared on paper, or in one's one mind. Besides, Troy and Colby had already experimented with one another as horny preps at Throckmorton School in Massachusetts. Indeed, for a time, Troy had sincerely believed that he had met his soul mate in Colby Fitzpatrick. "I mean, I swallowed your cum, bro!" Troy had told Colby one night, a statement which preceded a declaration of undying love. Colby and Troy had gone their separate ways after graduation, with Colby heading to Princeton and Troy heading to Harvard, thanks to his family name and a sizable donation from his father. Troy would not have gotten in otherwise. If a place at Harvard was based on merit, Troy would have promptly been accepted for the position of official hand-jobber for the men's gymnastics team. "Do you seriously want to fuck up here, dude?" asked Troy, getting up from his seat and walking the two or three steps over to Colby's. Troy pushed Colby back in his chair and straddled his lap. He snuck a hand under Colby's shirt and ran it up and down his chest, and finally, down to his crotch. "Is that really what you wanna do?" "Yeah," said Colby, turning white as a sheet. All he could think about was Arun. "Yeah, that's what I wanna do." As Colby, now settled back in California, drove home from the airport in his Maybach, all he could think about was Arun. "What the fuck did I do?" he kept saying, over and over again. He called Arun, but the phone went straight to the answering machine. Again. Again. And again. Colby had no desire to leave a message; he didn't know what to say; but eventually he got up the nerve to say what he felt. "Arun, pick up the phone. I need to talk to you. I know you don't trust me, but I need you right now. Please, baby. Please pick up. You're all I have right now." Colby held his phone to his ear as he parked his car at the Fitzpatrick residence and walked into the house. A maid took his jacket and asked him if he would be eating. There was lobster and crab flown in from Maryland in the kitchen, she said. No, Colby didn't want any. He just wanted to sleep. Colby walked up the flight of stairs to the second floor, where the family bedrooms were and he soon reached his own suite of rooms, which overlooked the rose garden in the back of the house. It was two in the morning at this point and the room was pitch black when he opened the door. Something did not feel right to Colby as he walked in, but he chalked it up to being tired. After trying Arun one more time, Colby gave up and tossed his smart phone onto the bed. "Ouch!" Colby heard seconds later. "What the..." whispered Colby as he turned on the light. Laying before Colby was the Norwegian, as naked as the day he was born, handcuffed to Colby's bed by both wrists. His cock was semi-hard, with a touch of precum leaking out of the slit at the top. A treasure trail of dirty blond hair lead from the Norwegian's thick, meaty pecs down to his crotch. "Hi, honey," said the Norwegian. "You're home!" [TO BE CONTINUED] [Usual disclaimer: Do not read if it is illegal to read material of an illicit... blah, blah, blah. I suspect it is too late for a disclaimer anyway if you've made it this far. I'd like to say thanks for all the positive feedback I've gotten so far. I will try not to disappoint you all. All I can promise is to keep the narrative unpredictable, as that is what I always do. Many of you already know me, I am just your run-of-the-mill struggling writer in the big city. Please send any comments to the e-mail address above. Thanks again for reading.] COPYRIGHT 2011 Sean Williams