Men Seeking Women Read online

  Ann Marie looked down at the letter, then back up at Claude, who was busily swinging from the ceiling bars in his cage. On the wall above him was a sign reading GENETIC ENGINEERING PROJECT #5C, TEST PATIENT CLAUDE. “You . . . you typed this earlier?” she asked.

  Claude dropped to the floor and waddled to the front of his cell, reaching out his hands, grabbing Ann-Marie’s arm in his. They stayed that way for some time, staring at each other, Claude holding her hand tightly, warming her body with his fur. He smiled widely, his sharp canines poking down past his gums.

  And as she looked into those eyes, those brown globules shining back at her, she saw the love she had never before seen in a man’s eyes. She saw the commitment buried deep within him, and she saw the fierce intelligence that had drawn her to his side in the first place. This was the male for whom she’d been searching all her life, only slightly fuzzier than in her dreams.

  So he was shaggy, he was drooling, he had lips larger than his ears, and he probably had a shorter natural life span than most men she’d previously dated, but he was Claude, and he was her husband, and, most of all, she loved him.

  Their kiss was beautiful, and Ann-Marie barely felt the slobber.

  The keys were an easy matter—right there on the wall, hanging down for anyone to grab—and the cell popped open with a refreshing click. Claude jumped into her arms, his mouth slavering all over her face, and Ann-Marie staggered back from the sudden weight. But she laughed as Claude’s lips spread wide in an approximation of a chortle, and she knew that everything was finally going to be okay. Mother would be happy. Father would understand, in time. And the world, if they had a problem with it, could summarily screw themselves. Let Ellen have her Ulysses. Ann-Marie had her Claude.

  But on the way out of room 242, as she poked her head out the door to check for the other scientists—Claude right behind her, holding her hand, waddling along as best as his short bowlegs could carry him—Ann-Marie noticed a leash and collar sitting on one of the lab tables, and in a moment of impulse, stuffed the whole thing into her purse.

  Just in case, she told herself. Just in case. Ann-Marie Moore had finally found herself a male, and this one wasn’t getting away.

  PAYBACK TIME

  Gary Krist

  On July 19, when Osiris Software came in with second-quarter results three cents better than Street expectations, I thought I might be in love. Osiris was one of three Nasdaq small-cap issues I’d been following on the message boards for months. The company made a software program called dIsis, which the prospectus listed as “a turnkey integrated software platform facilitating the creation of customized Internet appliances.” To tell you the truth, I was never exactly sure what that meant (I first thought it had something to do with programming VCRs so you could control them via the Web), but the stock was a rocket, moving 5, 10, even 20 percent from one day to the next. I started trading it mainly because Osiris was the name of my girlfriend’s cat.

  Anyway, with the positive earnings surprise, shares were up four-and-change by the regular market close on July 20. I was long the stock two thousand shares, which meant that I made eight thousand dollars that day—enough to replace my old IBM ThinkPad and consider getting laser surgery to correct my lousy eyesight. And it was all because of Terra Incognita.

  “Terra, baby,” I posted on the Osiris message board that night. “I don’t know what to say. I’m speechless with gratitude.”

  She replied within a half hour: “hey, just doin’ my part to make y’all rich. ;)”

  Octogon7, another regular who’d gone long on Terra’s bullishness, oozed his admiration: “T.I., how do you always KNOW??”

  “that’s my little secret,” she answered. Then she posted the public toll-free number for a recording of the shareholder conference call.

  We were, to put it mildly, in her debt. Terra Incognita was our source, our gold mine, our inspiration. She first showed up on the Osiris board in early spring. I liked her from the beginning. It was obvious that she did her homework, but she wasn’t one of those arrogant show-offs who typically commandeer the tech-stock message boards. She admitted that she didn’t understand the product from a technical standpoint (who did?), but she obviously followed the company’s press releases and analysts’ reports. She had scoped out the competition and knew where they were on the time line toward product launch. And best of all, she had no problem sharing her wisdom with all and sundry on the message board.

  I wasn’t used to this kind of treatment. Just before Christmas, my longtime girlfriend Laura—the one with the cat named Osiris—had moved from Washington to take her dream job with a small production company in L.A., leaving me with her half of the rent to pay. My own supposed dream was to become an architect, to build stadiums and sports complexes for Olympic-style events, but it was a dream on hold until I could get together enough money for grad school. Meanwhile, I was stuck at an incredibly banal job editing an in-house journal for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. With one or two exceptions, I hated everybody I worked with, most of whom were middle-aged career federal employee types—the kind who wore bow ties and ate cheese sandwiches at their desks for lunch. The pay was lousy and the working environment Kafkaesque. I was miserable enough to consider moving to L.A. myself—except that Laura never asked me to.

  Trading was something I’d been doing on and off for about two years, ever since my grandmother in Bethesda died and left me a thousand shares of GM. I considered myself a position trader as opposed to a day trader, which meant that I bought real companies whose stories I believed in and then actually held on to the shares for days, weeks, or even months. Thanks to Uncle Sam’s lenient hours, I could usually arrange to leave work by 3:00 P.M. and get home in time to make a few trades before the closing bell; other days I just brought my laptop to work and traded during lunch hour. And it worked out pretty well. Some months I made almost as much on the market as I did at HUD.

  Then Terra Incognita came into my life: “hey, anybody hear about a possible deal with totura electronics?” This post went up on a Monday in early March. It was, as far as I could tell, her first appearance on the board. And it created a stir:

  Deal? Deal?? Do tell. Totura would be a major coup. 2nd largest IA producer in Japan

  —visigoth9

  you mean “deal” as in buying a stake in Osiris or “deal” as in commitment to buy the platform?

  —My2Bits

  the latter

  —Terra Incognita

  BULLSHIT ALERT!!! t.i., you’re new here. can you give source, or is this just unsubst. rumor??

  —Phil-R-Up

  my sources are good, but will have to remain nameless.

  —Terra Incognita

  yeahyeahyeah. who are you, and why should we believe you??

  —Phil-R-Up

  She never replied, and everybody assumed that she was just another jerk trying to drive up the share price. But then, three days later, Osiris put out a press release announcing a three-year licensing agreement with Totura. The stock reacted by jumping 18.8 percent in a day.

  told you so.

  —Terra

  Suddenly, Terra Incognita had our attention:

  you can’t see me, t.i., but I’m groveling in the dirt right now. humblest apologies for ever doubting you.

  —Phil-R-Up

  terra!!!! your great!!!!!!!!!!!!

  —AxelBroder

  We are in awe of you, terrawoman, and await your further commands.

  —Jay3000

  That was when I looked up her profile. It was pretty bare—no real name, no e-mail address, no favorite stocks or favorite books or favorite quote. Under hobbies, she had listed one thing: social work.

  I wrote a private e-mail to visigoth9, a.k.a. Warren Enright, a guy I knew electronically from a couple of other stock boards. He worked for a medical supply company in Chicago and was constantly giving me dubious tips on biotechs. “So what do you think?” I wrote. “You think she works for t
he company?”

  He answered right away. “Not likely. She’d be putting her job in jeopardy, and for what? Probably she got a one-time friend-of-a-friend piece of insider intelligence. We’ll never hear from her again.”

  But Warren, as per usual, was wrong. Over the next few weeks, Terra became a regular poster. And she was always pretty damned impressive:

  don’t be fooled by the 1Q drop in marketing costs, guys. major change in strategy. before, they were going for end-consumers. now marketing focus is on trade shows and direct selling to IA manufacturers. more bang for the marketing buck that way.

  —Terra

  That one I hopped on myself:

  Excuse my single-mindedness, T., but you’ll have to translate. Are you telling us to buy or sell?

  —HUDDITE

  i’m not saying either one. just a little enlightenment fyi.

  —Terra

  p.s. don’t apologize, i like single-mindedness in men. it’s one of those charming characteristics you all share with dogs. (and i LOVE dogs.)

  Dear Terra:

  Arf! Arf!

  —Jay3000

  I wrote another e-mail to Warren: “I just don’t get it. Why is she being so fucking nice? I mean, what’s in it for her?”

  “Peter, haven’t I explained to you the concept of reciprocal altruism?” The summer before, Warren had read a few books about evolutionary psychology, so now he was an expert on human nature. “She engages in knowledge-sharing behavior because she knows, consciously or unconsciously, that she’ll eventually benefit from the same kind of behavior in others.”

  This pissed me off. “Bullshit! She won’t benefit, at least not on THIS loser board. Come on, Warren, before Terra, did anyone ever post any news that wasn’t already factored into the stock price?”

  His answer shot back: “Okay then, what if she’s setting us up? We all learn to slavishly follow her advice, then one day she posts some bogus news about a takeover bid or something, so we all buy like fiends and drive the price up. She sells at a huge profit. Meanwhile we wait for news that never comes. Stock price sinks again, and she buys at the lower price. Classic manipulation.”

  This was possible, I thought, but I didn’t want to admit as much to Warren. Besides, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. Terra just didn’t seem like the type.

  That night, after getting back from a very depressing dinner with my mother and my hotshot-lawyer brother (don’t ask), I found a message from Laura on my answering machine:

  “Hey, Peter, it’s been a while since we talked. Guess what? I got a raise! Twenty dollars a week! Big deal, right? Anyway, call me. Osiris misses you. He misses the way you used to scratch that nick in his left ear. I miss that too. Bye.”

  I thought about calling her back, but it was late, and after all the wine I’d drunk in self-defense at dinner, I was beat. So I just erased the message and went straight to bed.

  Over the next few days, the Osiris message board was humming:

  hey, t.i., why don’t you post your real name and phone #? at very least, e-mail address?

  —hi-tek

  sorry, hi. no way. a girl’s gotta be careful.

  —Terra

  Please tell us you’re not a 56-yr-old man with dimpled thighs and lots of body hair.

  —eddiehaskell

  i’m not a 56-yr-old man with dimpled thighs and lots of body hair.

  —T.

  are you a 56-year-old man WITHOUT dimpled thighs and lots of body hair??

  —prozacboy

  look, i am 100% female, 100% under-forty, and 100% uncomfortable with this line of questioning. can we please talk about the prospects for a 1Q earnings warning next week?

  I read this exchange late on a Thursday night, sitting in my dark living room, watching little winged bugs crisscross the glowing blue glass of the monitor. I was supposed to be editing a journal piece on the falling number of federally subsidized housing units in major urban areas, but I couldn’t bring myself to open the file. I kept thinking about this Terra. I imagined her as tall, athletic, from somewhere in the Deep South. She’d be appealing, but not fantasy-beautiful. A crooked nose, maybe; a wry expression. With an adoring dog—a mutt, say—watching her every move at the computer.

  I opened an e-mail window:

  Dear Laura:

  Hey, got your message. How goes the new job/new life? Things are OK here. Washington is doing its usual spring thing—lots of flowering trees, azaleas, etc. etc. Work at HUD? Don’t ask. I’m supposed to be editing something right now, but I’m procrastinating. Not that writing to you is just a form of procrastination. I miss you, too. Do you know how long it’s been since I touched a woman’s

  I shut down the computer, took an Ambien, and fell asleep on the couch watching Conan.

  It was about a week later that Terra turned Cassandra:

  bad news, guys. word is that 1Q revenues are gonna be down, repeat DOWN. expenses were down too, so actual earnings (i.e. loss per share) could be in line w/consensus, but the street isn’t gonna like it. please protect yourselves.

  This post went up at a little before 5:00 P.M.—after the regular close, but not too late to sell in the after-hours markets. Within minutes, I got an e-mail from Warren:

  This is it, Pedro. This is the set-up. She’s probably sold short a shitload. Watch the stock sink on this rumor, then she’ll buy at bargain prices and wait for the stock to soar again when earnings are announced on Thursday and they’re totally kickass. Mark my words, boyo, and DON’T FALL FOR IT!!

  —Warren

  I hesitated, I really did. I reread Terra’s post three times. I was long 1,500 shares. News like this could easily shave six points off the price. I could lose almost ten thousand dollars if I didn’t trust her and she turned out to be right. On the other hand, if I did trust her and it turned out that she was just doing a head fake, I could miss out on a big run-up. But I just couldn’t see Terra doing that to us.

  I logged on to my brokerage account. Osiris was already down a point and a quarter from the regular close, on heavy volume. Panicking, I dumped as much as I could, in two-hundred-share lots. By the end of the after-hours session, I’d managed to unload 1,200 shares at various prices ranging from 183/8 to 171/8. And I wasn’t alone:

  ok, t.i., I sold it all, mostly at a loss. hate to be disloyal to old osiris, but nasdaq ain’t no charity bazaar.

  —hawk71

  I went short 2K shares. Terra, gal, you better be right.

  —Intel-Inside

  No disrespect, everybody, but this is caveat-emptor land. If they knew revenues were gonna be down, wouldn’t management preannounce a warning? N’est-ce pas, Terra?

  —visigoth9

  She didn’t answer—not that night and not for the next few days. Meanwhile, Osiris recovered, hitting 18 on Tuesday, 191/4 on Wednesday, and 21 by midday on Thursday. I still had my last three hundred shares, and was starting to have doubts after numerous skeptical e-mails from Warren.

  “Hey, Peter, it’s Laura. Are you on vacation or something? I should call your mother and find out. Anyway, nothing in particular to impart. The other day I met somebody who was teaching at UCLA. He said they had a pretty decent architecture department over there. Thought you might be interested. Okay, call me.”

  I was at home, watching CNBC, when Osiris earnings were announced after the close on Thursday. The results were more or less just what Terra had predicted: Revenues were down 20 percent from the year-ago period, and the net loss per share was a penny worse than the First Call consensus. The stock, needless to say, was massacred in after-hours trading.

  o ye of little faith

  —Terra

  I wrote in myself this time:

  So do we buy now, on the bad news? Acc. to CNBC, management claims the revenue dip is just a one-quarter anomaly. Terra, your thoughts?

  —HUDDITE

  She answered right away, and even used my name this time:

  huddite, you
know I don’t give investment advice. but this reaction seems overdone. next few days will be rough, but I think osiris is longterm attractive at anything under 16 or 17.

  Next day, I bought back my 1,200 shares, and 500 more, at the price of 115/8.

  Peter:

  So sue me, I was wrong.

  —Warren

  Having saved our collective asses, Terra began to attain mythic status on the board. Early in May, somebody even started an “I Love Terra” message thread (typical post: eddiehaskell: “we need a picture, terra. have pity on us. WE NEED TO SEE YOU!!!) Meanwhile, speculation about her became rampant. Everybody had his own ideas about who she was and how she knew what she knew. Intel-Inside thought she might be some Russian cleaning lady who emptied Osiris’s garbage every night. Skidmarc was convinced she was the sixteen-year-old wunderkind daughter of CEO Lance Osborne. prozacboy said he’d accept Skidmarc’s explanation, but he wanted her to be fourteen, not sixteen, with a short skirt and long, skinny legs. (“Take it to alt.pervert, asshole,” Jay3000 told him.) Meanwhile, My2Bits (who had always seemed like the dad of the message board group) wrote: “Hey, maybe she’s just a smart savvy investor who knows her stuff, ever think of that, gentlemen?”

  To her credit, Terra ignored this particular discussion thread. And through late spring and early summer—as Osiris’s share price struggled in a trading range of 11 to 17—she just kept giving and giving and giving:

  re today’s WSJ piece on burn rates: even burning 5-6M per Q, osiris has enough cash on hand to go 12 or 13 Qs; meanwhile insider buying is strong (see figures on yahoo-finance). plus, release of dIsis 2.2 should help short-term revenues.

  —Terra

  gee, we love it when you talk dirty to us.

  —the reverend charles

  Then, in early July, I had a dream about her. It wasn’t a dream, really—just a fragment—but it was vivid. The two of us were in a canoe. I was in the stern; she was turned away from me in the bow, looking ahead. We were on a lake—Kitchamee Lake in northern Minnesota, where I used to spend summers as a kid. It was getting dark. The surface of the water was like a membrane, flat and unbroken, and there were submerged reeds everywhere that hissed as we passed through them. Bats swooped all around us, squeaking weirdly into my ears. “Terra,” I said. “Don’t you think we should go back? It’s late.” She didn’t answer, but I could feel her ahead of me in the twilight. “Terra?” I said. “Terra?”