Curing the Uncommon Man-Cold (25 page)

“No way to mistake Big Ernie for Kevin. She didn’t mention the man’s height?”

Christine shook her head.

“Must have been Kevin, then. How on earth did Kevin find out about the blog, or about Jason’s real name appearing recently?”

“Don’t know. That’s a question for Jason, if he ever talks to either one of us again.”

Amanda started to cry again. “What have I done?”

“Well, I think we cured his cold, in case that’s any comfort.”

If looks could kill
.

Christine went around to the side of the duplex and flipped up the breaker handle on the A/C compressor. Then she returned to the car and helped Amanda into her own apartment.

The crutches were set for someone several inches shorter than 5' 6", so Amanda had to slump quite a bit. With considerable difficulty, she made her way to the kitchen and put her purse on the table.

Christine remained near the front doorway, likely to give her friend a few moments and a little space.

It was difficult to move with short crutches since her right wrist hurt so badly, but Amanda hobbled down the hallway and looked into the guestroom. Even though she already knew Jason was long gone, she still had to check.

The small, cluttered apartment seemed quite empty. Also very quiet — except Mrs. Yodel’s incessant practice radiated from their shared wall and the HVAC ducts groaned from the reactivated air movement.

Christine closed all the apartment’s windows. “I can stay here with you tonight, if you like.” She looked around the living room and apparently had second thoughts. “Or you could come over to my house.”

“No, thanks. I want to be here. And I don’t need any company.” Amanda’s shoulders sagged. “If you’ll take that Q-tip thingy out of the cable connection, I think I’ll just watch TV a while and…” She broke down again. Too much all at once: office workload, wrecked car, busted toes, broken relationship, and King Louie had probably already left several demanding voicemails.

Christine fixed the coax connection and did not appear to watch her friend’s tears.

A few minutes later, Christine touched her shoulder lightly. “You’re positive you won’t let me stay?”

Amanda shook her head. “I think I’ll just nap a while or watch old movies.”

“Can I bring you something to eat later?”

“Yeah, that’d be wonderful. Supper.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Surprise me. Only don’t make it
healthy
stuff.” Amanda tried to smile, but it turned into a choked sob.

Christine hugged her for a moment and then departed. It was nearly 2:00 p.m. and she probably hadn’t had a chance to eat lunch yet.

On short crutches, Amanda hobbled around her empty apartment and wished she had someone taking care of her. She swallowed a pain pill with slightly less water than it needed.
Kahh!
Then she phoned her auto insurance agent and answered as many questions as she could, despite possessing no information on either of the other two drivers. Those details would have to come from the police report.

After watching the end of one movie on the Lifetime Channel, she snoozed through the beginning of another film. Amanda saw the rest of that movie and a portion of the one which followed. Each story made her weepy.

Mainly, after the pill kicked in, she snoozed.

When she woke again a couple hours later, Amanda was hungry but there was nothing available to eat besides rice cake crackers and a small can of tomato paste. She briefly considered sampling her own dental product.

Her toes throbbed horribly.

About 4:50 p.m., she phoned her office and left a detailed message for Louis. She knew he’d be gone by then.

When Christine reappeared around 7:00 with supper soup from the grocery deli, Amanda was on the couch sniffling at a movie with the volume very low.

“Have you been crying all afternoon?” Christine looked into her eyes.

“On and off. I was going to check my e-mail and Facebook, but I remembered my laptop’s still in my Jeep.”

“Well, you might as well write that off. Part of your vehicle looked like a mangled accordion.” Christine paused. “Well, your computer might’ve survived, depending on where it was. I can drive by the impound yard in the morning and check.”

“Thanks. In the meantime, could I borrow your laptop?”

“Don’t have it with me, but I can run it by tomorrow, if yours is definitely busted.”

Amanda muted the TV volume completely and put down the remote. “Thanks for helping me today.”

“You’re welcome.” Christine cleared her throat softly. “Uh, you know, I feel really bad about all that stuff we did to Jason. In hindsight, I guess we should have pulled the plug on about the third or fourth day.”

“Yeah, hindsight.” Amanda’s eyes clouded again.

“Should I stick around a bit?”

“No. Go.” Amanda’s hand made a sweeping motion toward the door, but her tear-stained face didn’t turn.

Christine set the front door so it would lock behind her and left quietly.

By the time Amanda got to her deli soup, it was cold. She nuked it for a minute and then ate. She tried dunking a rice cake cracker, but it soaked up so much liquid that it simply collapsed under its own weight.

About 10:00 p.m. Amanda finally checked her phone messages: one from Maria and one from Sunny. Three other messages were from Louis at work, but she’d have to wait until morning to listen to them. It would upset her too much to hear King Louie’s New York accent that late at night.

Chapter 18

August 20 (Thursday)

Jason was up before 8:00 so he could phone in sick.

His supervisor asked if he was feeling any better at all, since he’d already missed eight workdays. He made his voice sound a bit huskier and coughed a few times. “How much sick leave do I have left, Mizz Grunion?”

“You will have used nine if you can’t work today. You earn fifteen days a year, but ten days were taken in January, so you’d already be in the hole. Lucky you were able to carry forward five days from last year. Five plus fifteen, minus ten… and minus another nine. You’ve got one day left for the rest of this year.”

“Well, I might have to use that one tomorrow—”
cough, cough
“—’cause I don’t think I’ve got this thing licked yet.”

“Yeah, I understand those man-colds are pure hell.” Ms. Grunion probably rolled her eyes at the phone. “While you’ve been off, the new girl has had to handle all your calls plus her own. A person can process only so many billing complaints, you know.”

“I know. I’m sorry I got sick and everything. Maybe I’ll bring the new girl some M&Ms when I come back on Monday.”

“Well, you should bring her more than a 75¢ bag of candy. And you’d better be here Monday morning, because I’ll have to dock you otherwise.”

“Okay.”
cough
“Thanks, Mizz Grunion.”
Dang, what a grouch!

Over the past 22 hours, Jason had refueled his belly and carefully collected ten newspapers from the prickly holly bush near his front door. Several were soaked from the apartment complex’s automatic sprinkler system.

He toasted some frozen waffles and drowned them in syrup. Then he ate Cocoa Puffs out of the box for a couple of hours while he clicked through his 98 channels and licked his wounds of the past ten days.

It felt good to again have cable TV and a remote that functioned properly. Jason was especially pleased to note that
his
neighborhood was keeping digital cable, instead of retrofitting to analog.

Later, Jason logged on to Christine’s blog, where he read a few more entries. He licked the cereal residue off his fingers and posted his first and only blog comment. Then he logged off that site, intending never to view it again.

* * * *

Amanda heard a foot kick at the bottom of her apartment door and guessed it was Christine with both arms full. Since it would take her a while to reach the entrance, she called out, “I’m coming.” Amanda’s eyes were red from tears and lack of sleep; she’d been up most of the night watching sad movies. It was a bit after 9:00 a.m.

“I didn’t know if you’d eaten yet, so I brought some breakfast. Egg and cheese biscuits — one with sausage and one with bacon.”

“I might take both. Only thing to eat here is a can of tomato paste. Last week, when I cleared the pantry — which was already very slim — I really cleaned it out.”

“Well, these biscuit things will fill you up. Got any coffee brewing?”

“All the coffee left with you over a week ago. Where’s that black bag?”

“Oh yeah, in my trunk. I’ll go get it. In the meantime, here’s a laptop you can borrow. It’s Daniel’s. I didn’t get to the wrecking yard yet to check on yours.” Christine handed over the computer. “I’ll get that food bag while you’re logging on.” She hustled back out the door.

Amanda winced when her right wrist tried to support half the weight of the laptop. Once on the couch, she managed to open the computer and quickly logged on with the built-in wireless connection.

E-mail first, because she hadn’t read hers since Tuesday night. It was the usual spam, plus two messages from Louis and one from Maria. Another from Amanda’s sister Kaye. Also one from her mother in Arizona… which brought to mind that she really ought to tell Mom about the wreck. Something from Sunny with a subject line “cushaw guts”. And a message from Jason! She opened it. Scarcely a dozen words. Amanda began crying again.

Christine came in huffing slightly with the weight of the food-filled trash bag. “What’s wrong now?” She put the sack down with a thud.

Amanda pointed to the screen. “Jason broke up with me… by e-mail!”

“He couldn’t even man-up enough to call it quits in person?” Christine sat on the couch and put an arm over her friend’s shoulder. From that position, she could likely also read Jason’s short message but she properly remained silent.

Shortly, Amanda closed that message and lowered the lid until the laptop clicked softly, and then she stared at the device on her lap.

Christine broke the silence. “He wants you to send his pants and keys over to his mother’s house. You want me to take them to Margaret?”

When Amanda nodded, a few tears dropped onto the computer’s lid.

Christine didn’t appear to notice. “So, where did you hide those britches, anyway?”

Amanda sucked up significant nasal drainage and dabbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Where he’d never look — in plain sight.”

“Not plain enough.” Christine scanned as far as her head could turn in both directions of the living space. “Where?”

Tears usually dampened her appetite, but Amanda realized she was quite hungry so she opened one of the breakfast sandwiches. “The whole time Jason stayed in my guestroom, they were hanging on the left rail of the treadmill.”

“Good place. It’s a lot more level since you added those bricks.” Christine scurried down the hall, retrieved the slacks, and hurriedly returned to the couch.

Amanda’s face was blank. “I can’t believe I got dumped by e-mail.” A biscuit crumb fell to her lap.

“Well, you’re probably better off, Amanda. I don’t think Jason was the right match for you anyway.”

“He seemed pretty right, until he decided to invade my apartment despite my protests.” She took another small bite.

“A man’s true colors are revealed during a crisis, no matter what type or size of crisis.” Christine pointed toward the former site of Amanda’s tablecloth. “And you can wrap a man up in bright floral colors, but underneath… he’s just brown burlap.”

Though Christine apparently liked the sound of her metaphor, it didn’t make much sense to Amanda, who paid little attention to the brief philosophy lesson. “Uh, I don’t think I can read any of your blog right now.” She took another small bite of egg, but her heart wasn’t in the nutrition. “But I was curious about the buzz.”

“No more buzz… it’s dead. Took it down this morning, right before I came over here. Wrote my final post. Told everybody I’d unintentionally turned a minor illness into a major catastrophe, and explained about your wreck. Announced I was donating the money we’d collected to the local displaced women’s center. Somebody else had already posted something about the breakup.”

“Even our
breakup
is on the Internet now? Blistered butt-rash! I guess that was probably Jason’s post.”

“Yeah. But I wasn’t going to say.” Christine sat next to her friend on the couch. “I didn’t post anything on Wednesday, because of your wreck and hospital and everything. So the bloggers were buzzing, asking if anybody knew anything about
Missy
and
Marty
.” Christine sighed. “Since you last saw it — Tuesday, I guess — there’d been a new undercurrent. We’d already seen several bloggers urging us to drop the entire project. But this new thread was encouraging
Marty
and
Missy
to reconcile. It’s ironic — I guess they saw the break coming before Jason made up his mind on…”

“He sent the e-mail yesterday afternoon.” Amanda’s eyes filled again.

“In the last comment I read this morning, somebody wanted to pitch in on some flowers to be sent to
Missy
.”

Tears resumed.

Christine let her cry on the couch and then briefly shoulder-hugged her friend. “I guess we ought to get moving. Your doctor’s appointment is for 10:30, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, glad you remembered.” She sucked up the drainage. “Let me take a spit bath and wash my hair in the sink. Give me fifteen minutes.”

* * * *

Amanda’s regular doctor — plus several new X-rays — confirmed everything the E.R. doctors and nurse had said. Possibly a mild concussion, likely with no bad effects. Right wrist was strained but not sprained. Ribs bruised but not fractured. Three toes on right foot were fractured, but not broken. The doctor examined each toe — excruciatingly — and had her nurse re-splint them.

Amanda struggled to put on her ugly blue canvas boot with the wooden plank sole. “I still don’t understand how these three toes got injured from a rear-end — or right rear corner — collision.”