Please leave a hidden message after the tone

A group of women sitting around listening to replays of answering-machine messages might seem silly.

But we’re no sillier than a group of men sitting around watching instant replays of touchdowns on ESPN. You saw the touchdown the first time, and we heard the message the first time. Yet we both have a need to replay them with friends.

Last year, I started dating an investment banker who often traveled between New York and L.A. A few weeks into the relationship, he left me a message that went like this:

“Hey, it’s me. I’m at the airport and was just thinking about you. The weather is freezing and I’ve got that ... meeting tonight. I just want to go back to the hotel and ... with you. Wish you were here. OK, well, I ... you.”

The ... is where his cellphone went out.

Of the nine women who heard this message, nobody could agree on what the third ... was. The first ... was “dinner” or “business” or “boring.” The second ... was “cuddle” or “make love” or “watch ‘The Sopranos.’ ”

“It’s ‘love,’ ” said Sara of the third. “He said ‘I love you.’ ” Her theory was that when he said it spontaneously on the phone, he freaked out and hung up. “Did you hear how quickly he clicked off?” she asked. “He didn’t even throw in a ‘Bye.’ ”

“No,” Linda said. “He said, ‘I miss you.’ ” That made the most sense, but secretly I hoped Sara was right.

My friend Annie, who had just gotten out of a relationship and wasn’t feeling particularly romantic, said the missing words -- not word -- were “will talk to.” “There’s no goodbye because he was signing off with ‘I’ll talk to you.’ That was his goodbye.” We all rolled our eyes.

After much discussion about the is sound versus the uv sound (my friend Kate majored in linguistics), it was four for “love,” four for “miss” and one undecided. (Nobody voted for “will talk to” -- not even Annie.)

I had to find out what he’d said. After much strategizing, we all agreed that I should tell him I got his message, then casually mention that “certain parts” didn’t come through.

“Oh,” he said on the phone back in New York. “Well, I was at the airport and just wanted to say hi.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “But your phone kept going out. Was there anything I missed?”

“Maybe the weather report?” he said, laughing. “Why, what do you think you missed?”

The proper response here would have been, “Nothing.” Ordinarily, women are great at saying “Nothing,” especially when a guy asks, “What’s wrong?” But instead, like a sniveling ball of neediness, I played him the message -- and asked what the missing words were.

“Huh,” he said. “I can’t tell. Maybe ‘I’ll call you’?” We broke up two months later, and nobody ever said, “I love you.”

In this way, voicemail analysis helps us assess how a guy views us. We even chart the time-date stamps with the exactitude of our menstrual cycles -- all in the service of finding out how much we mean to him.

Tone, as well as content, matter. Like when another guy called and left this message (the name has been changed to protect the incomprehensible):

“Hey, it’s Jake. Rothman. You know, Jake. Just calling to, you know, say hi and wondering what you’re up to. And if you want to do something. Or something. I mean, not just something, but something

It wasn’t the smoothest message, but I was thrilled. Not only did Jake ask me out, but he sounded nervous. Really nervous. And as all women know, that meant the stakes were high.

Clearly, he was excited. And so was I.

Message received.

*

Lori Gottlieb, a commentator for NPR, is a TV writer and author of “Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self” (Simon & Schuster). She can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.