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Friday began as normal. After arriving in the office promptly at 8:24 a.m., I hovered by the kitchen vending machine. Every Friday at 9:07 a.m., the nice man from vending headquarters replenished the empty machine as several of my coworkers and I watched. Once he finished, we’d pounce, shoving in quarter after quarter, having learned long ago that feeding in even one dollar bill might require hours of patience. Depending on the upcoming deadlines pressuring us, sometimes the machine became barren again by 9:23 a.m.
As usual, once I’d secured my fair share I dumped my score in my desk drawer and sat down to quality-test the goods. But my next activity differed from my normal routine. Instead of mentally inventorying my home and itemizing the office supplies I needed to get through the weekend, I logged on to Brian’s brokerage account to get a quote for NUI.
Newie was down. I opened the computer calculator and punched in numbers. My heart dropped when I realized the impact. I’d lost thirty-two bucks so far. How much overtime would I need to put in to make up the difference? The idea didn’t even merit consideration. Besides, there must be other ways to make my situation less bleak. I could simply log out of the account and pretend I’d never checked up on Newie.
I felt instantly better once the numbers disappeared.
Deciding I’d had all I could handle of the stock market, I opened the solitaire game I played to while away the office hours. I’d barely accumulated any points before Henry stuck his big head in my cubicle. When he bent over to drop a stack of papers on my desk, the fluorescent ceiling lights bounced from his oily forehead directly into my retinas.
“Vanessa, I need you to shred these confidential documents,” he said.
I nearly pushed my computer mouse to the floor as I abandoned the game without any of my usual reluctance. Confidential documents should make for some good reading.
“I’ll run them through the copier right away,” I told Henry, reaching for the papers. Right after I cull out anything I can use.
Henry stiffened and pressed his palm in the center of the stack as I tugged at the pages. “Shredded, Vanessa. I need these papers shredded.”
I stared at him. What did he think we used the copier for?
“And I’m still waiting for those steering committee minutes I gave you to type Wednesday,” he admonished.
“Um, right.”
Henry’s eyes flashed before he departed.
I toted my assignment to the copy room and scanned the content. Disappointment settled when I saw that these papers all related to chrysotile asbestos in gypsum wallboard. Why didn’t Henry ever ask me to shred sexual-harassment complaints? Where were all the discrimination lawsuits? What did my boss really do around here anyway?
Although dispirited, I diligently fed the so-called confidential pages into the copier’s hungry jaws, wondering if I’d be stuck shredding documents for the rest of my life. Some day one of the other administrative assistants would come in here and find me dead, one ribboned arm sucked into the copier gears, my bloodied fingers dangling from the collator.
My only hope was to retire before this angry machine went truly berserk. And in order to retire, I needed Newie to reverse its current downward trajectory.
I thought back to Trevor’s visit. Hadn’t he mentioned something about whole groups of people converging on the Internet to talk stocks? Maybe one of those dorks had information I could use to reach my goal of a 25,000% annual return.
Once I finished the shredding task, I dumped the paper ribbons into the recycling bin and returned to my cubicle. Against company policy, I popped open an Internet browser and ran a search on day-trading chat rooms.
As expected, half the hits related to porn in some fashion. But after several false starts, I located an honest-to-goodness stock market, day-trading, Internet chat room.
I eyed the login box, which asked for a screen name. I certainly couldn’t use Vanessa Collins. Word might get around the geek community that a single woman had infiltrated their cyber-environment. Sure, I wanted to get laid, but preferably in real life by someone frequenting the gym too often to have acquired any decent computer skills.
But what name to use? A man’s name, I thought. Something that oozed high-grade testosterone. I’d have used Testosterone itself had it been believable.
I typed in ‘Butch.’ No, I might be mistaken for an aggressive lesbian on the prowl. I backspaced and tried ‘Hans’ instead. Innocent. Asexual. Perfect.
A chat window divided into three sections popped up. Lines of colored text flew by in the largest block. I could submit messages of my own using the bottom section, and a list of what I assumed were other chatters emerged in the rightmost sliver. To my surprise, almost nobody in the chat room possessed a realistic name. I could have called myself Testosterone after all.
I leaned closer to the screen, trying to make sense of the ‘conversations.’ One line didn’t necessarily correspond to the last, but before I could locate the line being responded to it disappeared off the top of the window. How could anyone read this fast? I reminded myself that these were experienced market geeks. They likely had nothing better to do than speed-read and touch-type. But after twenty minutes, I started getting the hang of it. I still had yet to attempt a line of my own, but at least I could read most of the words surfacing—which wasn’t to say I understood them.
Apparently nobody else shared my language problem. Interpreting ‘short sold YHOO at 42 1/8’ seemed like the most natural thing in the world to them. Or maybe these weren’t people at all but robots interfacing over a network.
I’d have stuck with the robot theory had the mood of the room not been undeniably human. I had to relax my rooted belief that these chatters were incurable nerds once I could follow the online exchange enough to pick up the enthusiasm. I might not have been able to discern the cause, but I certainly recognized the zest inherent in announcements such as ‘Yea!’ and ‘Wow, made two thou.’
‘Okay, guys, keep your eyes on PFEM,’ Mike54 told the crowd. ‘They’re announcing earnings at two Eastern.’
‘Got my Level II open,’ replied Sold2Soon.
I logged on to Brian’s brokerage account, located my own Level II window, and typed in ‘PFEM.’ My heart leapt when I saw that PFEM was up six dollars since yesterday. NUI had been down six cents, eight cents since I bought it Tuesday.
I stared at the chat-room window. Should I buy some PFEM? What was I supposed to be keeping my eyes on exactly? And what was PFEM?
Mike54 said, ‘Poise those fingers traders! PFEM’s webcast has begun.’
In most situations where I had no idea what was being discussed, I kept my mouth shut. After all, these conversations usually revolved around some work duty I supposedly had been performing for years. But a chat room was different. Here I was Hans, innocent virgin incapable of self-incrimination.
Spurred on by anonymity, I asked, ‘What’s PFEM?’
My question elicited garbage responses such as ‘a stock’ and ‘Hans, you an altar boy?’ The replies reminded me of the type of uninformative answer I received from Henry when requesting clarification on an assignment.
Since I didn’t want to alienate my new friends until after I’d multiplied my money into a decent nest egg, I suppressed my desire to tap out a reply peppered with obscenities and typed, ‘Thanks anyway.’ But before I could hit Enter, a line so mired within ticker symbols that I almost missed it popped up. ‘PFEM = Progressive Food Engineering and Marketing.’
I searched for a pen, locating one under a dusty Safe Sound administrative assistant manual. I flipped open the manual and scrawled the acronym on the inside cover.
‘MSFT’s consolidating, folks. Get ready for the breakout,’ Mike54 alerted the group.
I tapped out my next PFEM question. ‘What’s their business?’
The replies came instantly. ‘Who you talking to, Hans?’ and ‘Microsoft sells software. Duh,’ scrolled across the screen. Then Mike54, my PFEM angel, responded several lines later. ‘PFEM’s involved with agricultural biotechnology and crop protection.’
Crop protection? What would crops need protection against? I pictured executives dressed in three-piece suits hurling themselves on top of unharvested ears of corn as locusts swarmed overhead.
‘Okay, folks, PFEM’s getting ready to report earnings,’ Mike54 said.
Should I buy? I needed Beth here beating me over the head with a clear signal as to what action to take. I didn’t have enough time to look up whether farmers expected this to be a heavy locust winter.
‘Yowza!’ exclaimed Mike54. ‘PFEM’s revenue for 3rd quarter is 3X last year.’
‘Just bought 600 shares.’
‘It’s headed into the stratosphere!’
‘PFEM’s up 9 points,’ said Mike54.
Nine points? Four minutes ago it was six. I wondered if Mike54’s monitor could be upside down. Surely a stock couldn’t go up that quickly. I couldn’t even inhale a chocolate bar that fast.
‘Holy mackerel! Just made eight grand on PFEM,’ RoboticBoy responded.
My heart skipped a beat. Eight grand? I wondered if RoboticBoy was single and enjoyed casual sex with flat-chested divorcées. Would he be turned off by the name Hans?
I minimized the chat-room window, revealing my own Level II. What I saw caused my eyes to bulge out of my head. Not only had PFEM risen nine points, it was up nine points since I’d checked it four minutes ago, a total of fifteen dollars since yesterday. I felt as if I might be sick from this missed retirement opportunity.
I watched with disbelief and slight nausea as the Level II kept updating, PFEM’s share price growing at a faster rate than E. coli in my mother-in-law’s infamous potato salad. I tried not to think about the profits I’d missed out on by buying the sluggish NUI instead of the skyrocketing PFEM.
With an equal mixture of excitement and dread, I pulled up a quote for MSFT, hoping to see bad news. If I’d lost less with NUI, at least I could derive some comfort from the fact that my track record as a day trader, however short, wasn’t as bad as it could be.
Unfortunately, MSFT was up twenty cents.
But not one to be discouraged so easily—especially since that would mean returning to work—I readjusted my strategy. I’d simply get quotes on tons of random stocks and make notes on which ones had fallen more than Newie. Then I’d figure out how much more I would have lost if I’d invested in one of them instead. That was the only productive thing to do.
With renewed vigor, I waited for the ticker symbols to spill from the chatters’ keyboards so I could add them to my collection of potential losers. I’d only fetched quotes on two additional stocks—both disappointingly higher—before fellow administrative assistant Kelly poked her three-inch steel helmet of hair into my office.
“There’s a boy in the lobby with blue hair, a nose ring, and tattoo-coated arms,” she announced with menopausal awe. “He looks like something out of a science-fiction movie, and he’s here to see you.”
“Hmm,” I murmured, my interest piquing. This visitor sounded exactly like my type. Although, after realizing yesterday how long it had been since I’d had sex, any man equipped with at least one arm, tattooed or not, would be my type.
I threw the administrative assistant guide back on the floor where it belonged, leapt out of my seat, and dashed down the hall. As I hustled through the Safe Sound corridor, I tamped down images of RoboticBoy come to whisk me away to his PFEM-funded mansion.
I scampered into the lobby, skidding to a halt when I spotted my visitor. The outlandish boy looked to be a few years but a full generation younger than me, somewhere in his early twenties. His short-sleeved shirt exposed the body art etched up his forearms. Rings glinted from every one of his facial protuberances. Like Kelly, he sported a hairstyle defying both gravity and natural genetics. Unlike Kelly, his spiked, aqua hair appeared to have been styled on an alien planet rather than an eighties big-hair salon. He could easily pass for a research experiment gone horribly awry.
His refreshing deliciousness appealed to my inner corporate prisoner, who remained trapped until five o’clock. For the first time, I found myself almost glad to be separated from my evil, cheating, brunette bastard of a spouse. Now I could flirt wildly and engage in passionate, guilt-free sex with strange creatures.
And here stood the first boy toy on the agenda.
I wondered who had sent this outrageous gift to me. Beth, undoubtedly. I sent a silent thank-you to my thoughtful sister.
As I approached, Blue Hair peered at me from under mascaraed eyelashes. I slowed down and willed my pumps not to catch on any carpet fibers. Had this boy’s arms not been stacked with three wide boxes and a skateboard not been wedged under his armpit, I wouldn’t have minded tripping to give him the chance to rescue me from contracting one of the many diseases housed in this filthy carpet. But with his hands occupied, I wasn’t taking any chances.
He watched me with slitted eyes. “You Mrs. Collins?”
“Ms. Collins,” I corrected.
He yawned.
“But call me Vanessa,” I urged. The screech in my voice sent a shudder through my body. I gulped and tried again. “I mean, call me Vanesssssa.” As I said my name, I slunk closer and stuck my lips out.
Blue Hair’s mouth quirked. He’s trying to control his animal lust, I realized with a start.
“I’m Beth’s sister,” I said. “Beth’s younger and single sister.”
He shifted the boxes, lifting them higher. “You’re wearing a wedding ring.”
“Am I?” I twisted the ring around my finger, but couldn’t move the blasted thing past my first knuckle. I pulled harder, feeling my face contort from the strain. Although I didn’t want Blue Hair to see me postured in such an ugly manner, I needed to get rid of this damn ring.
I had to rotate the stubborn band several more times before I managed to wrench it off my hand. My finger swelled up and turned a bright red.
I slipped the ring into my breast pocket. Now my front looked lopsided, but I only had the one pocket. Skirts were made to be removed by blue-haired youngsters, not as storage for items acquired during marriage. At least the boy would no longer have to worry about me being off-limits.
I waggled my bare left hand. “All better now. See?” My finger had begun returning to its normal color, the pale band where my ring had been for the past five years gleaming like a misapplied bleach strip.
The boy swallowed, causing my pulse to quicken. His salivary glands must be kicking into overdrive.
“Um . . . Mrs. . . .”
“Ms.,” I corrected in a harsher tone than intended. I softened my voice. “Ms. Collins. But I want you to call me Vanessa.” I stuck one hand on my hip and extended an elbow toward him. “Vanessa,” I purred. “Or you can call me Ness for short.”
“Ness,” he repeated. “Like Loch Ness.”
“Right!” Encouraged by his initiative to develop a mnemonic phrase to remember my name, I leaned closer and ran an index finger down the edge of his skateboard.
Blue Hair stepped backward, squeezing his boxes so tightly his knuckles blanched under the stark green ink of his finger tattoos.
Alarmed, I retracted my hand. This was not a good sign. Were men no longer the horny bastards they’d been in my youth? Where had Beth located this timid boy anyway?
Or perhaps I wasn’t sending off the right vibes. After all, it had been years since I’d flirted with anyone but Brian. I was merely out of practice, I assured myself. I should lay off a bit to give this boy the opportunity to pursue me. Yes, that was a good idea. Men liked being the aggressors.
“So, how can I help you anyway?” I asked, scaling back my tone from near giggling hysteria to cool aloofness.
“I’m Eat Me Catering,” he said. “You told my sister Evelyn I could bring by some food samples.”
My brain clicked with comprehension. So Beth hadn’t sent this boy after all. But the situation was turning out even better. A boy toy who could cook. Food and sex all rolled up into one delicious package. What could be more perfect?
The boy let his skateboard fall onto the carpet before sliding the boxes on top of the lobby coffee table. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a couple sheets of paper and a pen. “This printout describes the food. I included some finger sandwiches, salad samples, and my soon-to-be-famous stuffed mushrooms. There’s a handful of strudels—apple, blueberry, and strawberry—in one of those boxes together with these doughnuts I developed a recipe for.” He tried to smooth out the papers before offering them to me. “I just need you to sign that you’ve received the goods.”
I took the pages and pen from him, experiencing a thrill as our fingers brushed during the handoff. The sparks sizzling between us left me so dazed I had to take a moment before my eyes could focus on the words blurred before me.
The boy noticed our physical chemistry too. For several seconds he inspected me, eyes squinted with what could only be lust. Finally, he opened his mouth. This is it, he’s going to ask me out! I held my breath in giddy anticipation.
“There’s no charge.”
“What?” I’d certainly felt an electrical charge between us.
Blue Hair pointed to the pages in my hand. All my restrained sexual desire had been transferred into a fist now clutching his papers hard enough to crumple them.
“There’s no charge for the food, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
No, I hadn’t been thinking that at all.
“I just need you to sign so my parents—I mean my venture capitalists—don’t think I ate the items myself.”
Disappointment weighed in the pit of my stomach. This slow boy had better hurry up and make his move. Once I signed this form, who knew when his next opportunity to ask me for casual sex would be. It would be almost another month before the holiday party. That was certainly enough time for some other bachelor to sweep me into his bedroom.
The boy tapped his foot. “Look, lady, are you going to sign or what?”
My heart free-fell toward my feet. Lady? Lady was not the term of endearment I had hoped to receive from this hunk. What had happened to our chemistry? What had happened to the phrase he’d devised to aid in his ability to recall my name?
Blue Hair plucked his skateboard off the carpet. “I really need to get going, if you would just sign. Please.”
Good God, I thought. This boy had used the exact same tone of voice I’d adopted with my parents as an adolescent, back when they insisted on butting into my life when all I wanted was for them to hand me a twenty. Surely I wasn’t old enough to inspire such hostile timbres.
With shocking clarity, I realized Blue Hair thought of me merely as an old, dried-up hag. He likely figured I suffered from a hearing impairment as well, seeing as how I continued to ignore his requests to sign the form in hand.
Gripping the pen to hide my despair, I located the signature line and scribbled a name. Whose name didn’t really matter. Blue Hair had likely forgotten my carefully enunciated moniker anyway, now that he’d taken to referring to me as lady. With the true nature of our relationship visible, I just wanted this reminder of my lost youth to leave me alone with the food.
The free food, I amended, my spirits boosting a bit.
The boy grabbed the form and scooped his pen out of my hand. His relief showed in the swagger he adopted as he made a dash for the exit.
“Can I get your phone number?” I called out as he distanced himself. “In case I want you to feed me—I mean cater the party?”
Blue Hair picked up his pace. “Get Evelyn to call if you need to reach me.”
When he got close enough to leap into the elevator and mash the Close button should I try to hurl myself at him, he risked a quick glance backward and affected a lopsided smile, a hope-you-hire-me final entreaty, before the elevator whisked him away.
Dejected, I lifted the boxes he’d left and began the long trek back to my cubicle.
* * *
Half an hour after my encounter with the frightened Blue Hair and zero hours from the time I was supposed to have been freed for lunch, the celebration committee congregated. I had to tread carefully as I made my way to the conference room. Not only did the bulky catering boxes weigh me down, but the lunch hour generally triggered a mad stampede for the elevators, especially on Fridays, when the more daring employees could be caught leaving for home.
Somehow, I made it to the conference room with only a slight bruise, acquired when one sprinter jabbed his briefcase into my ribs as he tried to swerve around my unwieldy baggage. I doubted he even noticed the collision. He didn’t slow down or apologize at any rate, not that I could blame him. My decrepit body blended in perfectly with the ancient office fixtures.
I set the Eat Me boxes on the conference table. My fellow committee members watched as I lifted the lids. Tantalizing aromas wafted through the air, drowning out the stench of body odor entrenched from a recently dispersed industrial hygienists planning meeting. Nobody knew what they planned for. They certainly weren’t coordinating deodorant shopping.
“These are from Blue—Evelyn’s brother,” I explained, staring at the wedding ring now wedged back on my finger. “They’re Eat Me Catering samples.”
Soft oohs and aahs welled up around the room. One of the women rummaged through a cabinet in search of disposable utensils and plates. Evelyn shut the door before any stragglers could pick up our scent. She needn’t have worried. At four after twelve, Safe Sound headquarters had cleared out entirely.
The first box contained appetizers. Although they’d been sitting around for half an hour, stuffed mushrooms expelled their buttery fragrance as if just emerging from an oven. Beside them, bite-sized sandwiches oozed melted cheese and juicy cold cuts. Lumped together, the dozen or so slim rectangles might pass as an appetizer, but alone I doubted one sandwich could satisfy a chipmunk.
Four clear containers sat in the second box, each filled with some type of salad from potato to pasta. The salads were perfect. The miniature vegetable gardens fit nicely with my dieting plans while the thick sauce they floated in looked delicious.
As promised, doughnuts and strudels of all flavors made up the third box. I felt the jolt of opportunity lost when I realized I could have brought only the first two boxes and consumed the desserts myself without anyone ever being the wiser. Or would Evelyn mention to her brother that I’d only shared two boxes, leading them both to wonder what I’d done with the third?
A flush crept up my cheeks. I hoped Evelyn and her brother weren’t close enough for him to relate this afternoon’s tale of elderly lust.
The others didn’t seem to notice my embarrassment, although they did share my affection for desserts. Bob, the lone male member, reached into the box and scooped out a giant strudel, balancing the wedge on a plastic fork as he transported it to his plate. The fork nearly snapped in two, but Bob had obviously performed many similar feats in his lifetime and managed the transfer without losing a single crumb.
I popped a mushroom into my mouth. Delicious. I closed my eyes for one heavenly second, questioning whether these were ‘special’ mushrooms, the kind grown in the basements of shady characters. And the stuffing! Bread crumbs and butter melted harmoniously together like a newlywed couple—
My eyes flew open. Bad analogy.
The others eagerly went about tasting the samples and taking guesses as to the fat content and calorie counts of each item. Even Bob joined in, claiming he’d need to spend an extra hour on the stair-climber today. I wondered if he removed the animal hide from his skull before exercising, allowing the sweat to accumulate on his scalp, or if he let the raccoon lie there and hoped it didn’t slide off.
“Mmm, Vanessa. You need to taste this apple strudel,” Bob told me around his mouthful. He broke off a tiny corner and held the fork out to me.
“Er, no thanks.” I didn’t think I’d ever have the appetite for apple strudel again after watching the way Bob slobbered at his. I reached for a doughnut instead.
Evelyn lifted another strudel from the dessert box, showcasing it around the room like a saleswoman on the Home Shopping Network. “There are two more apple strudels in here. Anyone want them?”
The other women and I shook our heads, our eyes transfixed on Bob. I tried to look away but couldn’t. The barbaric display was too mesmerizing.
Evelyn turned to the savage. “Bob?”
Bob reached out to capture the gift.
I bit off a chunk of my doughnut and chewed. Whatever Blue Hair had done to this doughnut was fantastic. He certainly had a wonderful instinct for mixing ingredients.
It was really too bad I’d never personally get to see his hands in action.
