Feeding Frenzy
A corporate shark swims about competitive deal "pools" seeking acquisition "targets" until love calls with a Siren Song.
It’s her!
She’s calling me again with her unmistakable beautiful song.
“I’m coming for you, my love.
“I’m coming!”
“Good morning, Mr. Carcharias.
“It’s another beautiful day.
“Are you awake?”
It would be a “beautiful day” if for once, I wasn’t awoken by these imbeciles. I’ll pretend to be asleep and maybe they’ll go away.
“We’ll let you sleep, Sir.
“When you’ve lived as long as him and made his kind of money, he deserves rest.
“Let’s wheel him out on to the patio so when he awakes, he’ll see his beloved sea”.
They left and I open my ancient eyes hoping to see “her”. She’s gone and so is her song.
Today isn’t “the day” we’ll be reunited.
The breeze and the sweet smell of the ocean invigorate my elderly body. My mind is sharp and is a constant reminder of the drudgery of each day. I miss my youth and the action of the “hunt” when I chased my “target” until the sweet moment when I looked straight into its eyes, deep into its soul, and we both realized that I won!
I was born into a pool of aggression and was raised in a “cold water flat” in one of the worst neighborhoods you can imagine. I fiercely studied and fought my way out of the neighborhood and into a scholarship at a prestigious prep school. I lived and studied with the off spring of the elite who were sharper and smoother than me but I quickly learned the ways of their world.
The best college in the nation was recruiting on campus and I was determined to get accepted! Everybody assumed the smartest kid in our prep school was going to get selected. His name was “Pudgy”.
Pudgy was brilliant and came from a long line of scholars. Academics were second nature for Pudgy. What nature provided Pudgy in brains, nature deprived Pudgy in physique and athleticism. Pudgy was tall, overweight, uncoordinated, and always wore a stupid grin as if he was “in” on the joke and we weren’t. We all hated Pudgy.
Each student was required to engage in team sports. I thrived in the most physically demanding and aggressive sports. Pudgy chose to walk about the playing field boasting his stupid grin and staring into space. I seized the opportunity to defeat Pudgy. I ran my “pattern” and “accidently” hit Pudgy fast, hard and low from behind. He fell like a fallen tree and I rejoiced as I heard the “snap”. The blood oozed from the protruding bone as a crowd gathered around. As Pudgy lay crying, he looked deeply into my dark, cold eyes and knew defeat.
The crowd remarked,
“Poor Pudgy!
“Why didn’t he stay away from contact sports?”
His injury was so severe he withdrew from school and I was admitted to the most prestigious college in the nation.
College was easy and I was bored. I was required to take many courses of general interest which were a waste of time. I knew my calling. I’d find a profession in which I could “eat what I killed” and the harder I worked, the greater would be my reward. No “9 to 5” for me. I demanded 24/7 action, adventure, and travel.
I deliberately befriended those who were stronger and wiser than me. They “schooled” me in the ways of “moving” through life with brains and style. I graduated at the top of my class and was accepted into the most prestigious business school in the world. I was happy in business school because I could focus only on subjects which prepared me for my future. I flourished. I knew the answers to the questions even before asked. I was told I had a knack for business and deal making. When I graduated, I was hired by the best investment banking firm in the world.
My first job was identifying acquisition “targets” in our firm with high expectations. We were taught to have a single purpose in mind,
“Eat or be eaten!”.
We were taught that some targets of opportunity are too weak to defend themselves and their “parts” are of greater value than the sum of their whole. It was difficult for many of my cohorts to understand the “what, when, and how” of recognizing a target and many of them failed. It was second nature for me. It’s easy to identify those targets which are slow, weak and bloated. These easy targets diverted the attention away from the real targets of opportunity that I had a penchant to find. I could just look into the “eye” and “soul” of a target and see weakness. Each piece of the target had value. I’d take the choice pieces for myself and leave the “scraps” for the competition. I was smart, fast, and deadly.
I thrived.
Throughout my life, there were many attempts to “hook” me. The hook was hidden within a target seized upon by the competition seeking the easy deal. I took delight in watching the competition writhe in pain as they feverishly attempted to extricate themselves from the hook.
Women were plentiful. I loved the chase, relished the conquest but abhorred the “messy” “morning after”. Women were adept at hiding their hooks beneath their beautiful curvaceous exteriors. I enjoyed watching my competition struggle to extricate themselves from the hooks of these feminine “predators”. It was always expensive and my competitors were never the same afterwards.
I lived for work because I had to keep moving! I worked constantly and loathed free time. I awoke at the same hour every morning seven days per week. I completed my exercise regimen while planning my “moves” of the day in my head. My wardrobe was bespoke. I abhorred small talk and didn’t “suffer fools”. I eschewed social events and I rarely attended parties. On the rare occasion I was suffering though a party, I would make it a point to survey the women, select my target and proceed to conquer. All the better if she was my competitor’s wife and the hostess of the party!
I traveled the globe seeking opportunity. Although I was at the “top of my game”, I was bored and longed for the deal of a lifetime. One evening after a long day of business, I heard a beautiful feminine voice whispering a song emanating from somewhere out in the horizon. It was melodic and inviting but was interrupted by a thunderous explosion. Throughout my career, I relied upon my instincts for seizing opportunity from unexpected sources and I set out to discover the source of the song and explosion.
The deal of a lifetime lay before me resembling a large gray behemoth marked “35” sinking and below it laid as many as 900 targets. I reveled in the challenge and I quickly went to work on
the herculean task before me. My immediate objective was to provide an efficient inventory and warehousing of the parts. I surveyed the landscape and determined that 5,400 square feet would adequately secure the parts and provide for cost effective storage and efficient retrieval upon resale.
My herding of the targets was quick as they were too weak to find an “exit strategy”. My work was punctuated by the beautiful feminine song which had turned to a cry but I had no time to ponder it.
Once the warehousing and inventory was complete, I calculated the resale value of the component parts and adroitly performed the time value of money and depreciation calculations in my head. I concluded that an “auction” would be the most time and cost-effective method of resale and proceeded with the marketing.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before the competition arrived and the targets were now ready for resale. This deal would make the history books and I was responsible! The auction produced dramatic attendance and I began negotiating the resale of my inventory for days and nights. I was in my element! I sold and negotiated with time out only for minimal sleep and meals with select members of the competition.
We ate nearby and our meals were punctuated by the female song which had become a dirge. One of my competitors was consumed by the voice and said,
“What about her?” with a perverse salacious look on his face while pointing to a woman.
The woman was beautiful with long flowing golden hair which reached her waistline. She moved gracefully and sang softly but with melancholy. The moon served as a natural key lighting of her performance as she sang a slow, painful tribute to the fallen. What a talent! I was transfixed.
A competitor made his move for her and I saw that unmistakable determined look in his eye. If she was going to belong to anybody, it would be me! Just as he moved towards her, I came up fast, hard and high in front of him and looked deeply into his cold dark eyes. Time stood still and the other guests were frozen with fear. She stopped singing. Seconds turned to minutes as my competitor and I stared deep into each other’s soul taking an inventory of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. I could feel his heart beat, count his beads of sweat, taste his blood after I dismembered him, and calculated the profit from his resale. One of his eyes began to quiver and then the other. I knew it would be seconds before they rolled back in his head accepting defeat. He excused himself and left humiliated.
I bid my guests adieu and moved toward her. As I came upon her, she looked into my eyes and said,
“So, you’ve moved in for the kill and to take the last pound of flesh from the bone!
“I’m ready”.
It was too easy for me and I was reminded of the many hooks I successfully avoided throughout my career. She had moxie and no fear. No begging, pleading or last-minute bargains. I never met anybody like her. There was something elusive about her unlike the many others who threw themselves at me as if their feminine charms were enough. They never were.
“When I look deep into your eyes, I see the capacity to be humane, caring, and loving.
“Let me help you become what you deserve to be, someone great!”
Somehow a complete stranger was able to see me differently than everyone else, including me. I fell in love.
We embarked upon a whirlwind romance which changed me forever. As we traveled, she showed me a softer, sweeter side of life and her touch always calmed me. We enjoyed visiting sunken ruins and remote deserted islands. I reveled in her beauty as the full moon or setting sun provided a natural back light to her flowing golden locks. She told me stories of the sorrow she had witnessed and the consolation she provided to the grieving. She told me about the fear she saw in the victim’s eyes when they realized the “end” was inevitable. She trembled as she recounted their begging and pleading for just one more opportunity to say “goodbye” to loved ones.
Always last on the scene, she was there to console the wounded, sick and dying but too late to call anybody to their rescue. She tried in vain to show me how the whole was greater than the parts and attempted to show me how together, we could achieve her humanitarian aims. She said I could accomplish far more by helping the weak survive and prosper but I knew my strong suit wasn’t philanthropy. I just listened, watched, and followed her from catastrophe to tragedy and rejoiced in being with her.
We were vacationing at a luxury resort in South East Asia. We swam in the pristine clear warm waters, rested, and loved each other. I began to sense miniscule changes in the color of the sea, humidity, and wind which others were oblivious to. I knew that trouble and opportunity were soon to arrive. I pleaded that we should leave but she wouldn’t hear of it and began her melodic
warning song. Upon the horizon, a wall of ocean was rapidly moving in upon the resort. Within seconds, the entire resort was in ruins and being thrown about by the waves. Targets were frantically floating about and I knew it wouldn’t be long before the competition arrived as this was a deal rich with profit for the taking.
She began frantically moving about the carnage crying for help. Her determination was admirable and heroic but inefficient for the urgent task at hand. I argued that we must rationally and quantitatively assess the catastrophe in order to be most effective. I quickly performed a random sample of the victims and calculated the number of possible saves to be minimal. We could only save the most vulnerable. She wouldn’t hear of it and began moving about the carnage attempting to save everybody.
I focused her attention upon a frightened, crying, child grasping a door which was being thrown about by the waves and shouted “save the child!” With all her strength and determination, she grabbed the door and guided it to safety just as the competition arrived. It was now out of our control. Safely on shore, she leaned into me and wept uncontrollably as I cradled her in my arms. I cocked my head up and saw the deal being completed on the horizon and didn’t miss being left out of this one. I saw life through the prism of her eyes and I fell deeper in love with her. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t thinking about the next deal. I was thinking about her.
One day she coughed! She grew weaker with each passing month. There was no saving her and she knew it. Rather than indulging in self-pity, she worked harder. She was courageous. I couldn’t lose her but there was nothing I could do. She was the mirror in which I could see and measure myself.
One evening on a volcanic island in the South Pacific whose glass like sand sparkled in the moonlight and the warm trade winds gently blew her hair about, I asked her to marry me. Being married to this wonderful woman for even a brief time was better than being married to anyone else for a lifetime. She looked deeply into my eyes, brushed my lips and face with her frail hand and said,
“I’m flattered darling.
“We’re different people and it will never work.”
She passed away peacefully.
I threw myself back into my work to forget and I became increasingly wealthier. I longed for her to be by my side. I funded philanthropic endeavors as if they would bring her back to me. I was lonely and eager to replace the camaraderie and love I had with her.
I couldn’t find another love like her so I settled and bit the hook with another who’d serve as a substitute. As years turned to decades, my offspring and their offspring were more like Pudgy than me and I lamented the dilution of our gene pool. What incredible children I could have raised with her! Divorce was inevitable and I welcomed it. I was alone again and old.
Everything is still and quiet now. A warm breeze flows in from the ocean and comforts me. My skin is alive and tingles with anticipation because I know she will “call” me soon.
Suddenly, the breeze blows the curtains open and I hear the beautiful familiar song which is taking me back to the moment when I met her for the first time.
She is calling me and I have to join her. Now is the time to let go and return to my beloved.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my story. It won’t be the last of its kind as there are many of us and you’ll know when we meet because you’ll look into our cold dark eyes and know defeat.
I take one final deep breath and close my eyes forever.