Curing the Uncommon Man-Cold (4 page)

Amanda examined the box. “I can’t deliberately starve my boyfriend, even though I do wish he’d go home.”

“We’re not starving him. That’s the beauty of our plan. He’s going to starve himself.”

“How do you figure?”

Christine acted like she was explaining civics to a child. “We’re providing legitimate, nutritionally healthy foods, along with other items that sound yucky but actually are perfectly fine to eat. But here’s the key — everyone knows men won’t eat stuff like that.”

“None of them?”

“Okay, 85 per cent of American men won’t eat healthy stuff.” Christine had to close her eyes to manufacture that statistic. “It’s his own mind that defines things as inedible… and he’ll refuse to eat most of it. So it’s not that
we’re
starving him. We’re feeding him, but he won’t eat. Ergo, he’s starving himself. Satisfied?”

“I don’t know.”

“Amanda, this is a win-win situation. Pay attention. We know he won’t eat much of this, if any… so he’s got two choices. One, he leaves. You win — your apartment is yours again and you can concentrate on surviving your current problems at work. Two, he stays several days and eats healthy food for the first time in his life. You win again — he’ll lose that spare tire and you’ll have a more proportioned boyfriend.” Christine paused. “Speaking of… with him playing all those sports, he shouldn’t be growing a belly.” She seemed oblivious to all the bulky professional football and baseball players, many with considerable stomach girths.

Amanda ignored that familiar observation about Jason’s paunch, but she was coming around about this cutting-edge diet. “What about some of those truly awful things, like tree roots or whatever you had on that list?”

“I didn’t list tree roots, but it’s not a bad idea.” Christine added a note to the tablet. “Look, this is about illusion. Jason wouldn’t know arugula from coyote weed. We tell him something’s a tree root and he’ll believe it. We simply produce the illusion of tree root. In reality it’s just asparagus tips or something. He’ll never know. Illusion. Men are suckers for it.”

“Christine, you seem to be banking on my boyfriend being quite ignorant about non-traditional food. What if Jason isn’t as stupid as you think?”

“You probably don’t want to hear my answer. Suffice it to say that men, in general, are pretty dense about food details and most have remarkably unsophisticated palates.”

“Okay. You’ve convinced me Jason won’t be poisoned and he won’t be starved. But I still feel awful about ganging up on him — two against one.”

Christine smiled. “It’s actually three against one. You, me, and his own mind… all working together to cure Jason and get him out of your apartment. When a man won’t use his own brain for the good of womankind, it’s perfectly allowable for us to use his mind for our own purposes.”

“Sounds like Jason’s going to be an unwitting brain donor.”

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Amanda remained fretful. “You’re probably right that Jason won’t eat stuff like this.” She pointed to the tablet. “But why are you restricting his intake quantities so drastically?”

“Feed a fever, starve a man-cold.”

Amanda started to correct. “I don’t think…”

Christine waved her manicured hand.

In the language of manic individuals, that signaled the subject was dead.
Don’t waste any time trying to get back to the matter
.

Over the next several minutes, Christine explained a bit more about her intentions with the blog and they discussed some of the possible strategies to keep Jason off balance. The goal was not to evict him outright, but to make him so uncomfortable that he would leave on his own.

Amanda had asked as many questions as she could formulate. Finally, she repeated her gratitude for the assistance.

“You’re welcome. I wish I’d had a wise friend to help me cure Daniel.” Christine sounded wistful. “So this is something I’m giving back… to the community, so to speak.”

“Which community is that?”

“Wives and girlfriends of males struck down with this incurable disease. Only now we’re finally close to a cure and women will beat a path to our blog to get it. Give me a couple of hours to get everything entered and then you log on this evening. Here’s the web address I’m using.” Christine left in a blur, smelling heavily of potpourri. The beer bottles clinked loudly in one of the two large bags she carried.

Amanda reflected on her occasional crises; she’d often been resigned — possibly even content — to have a bossy older sister take care of things for her. Her real sibling Kaye, eight grades older, had practically raised her until leaving for college when Amanda was ten. For the past five years Christine, a dozen years older, had played that big sister role. Being occasionally dominated by an older female, whether sibling or friend, affected Amanda in two distinct ways. It often made her furious, so she’d snap or growl or fume until the takeover attempts subsided. But it was sometimes comforting, on a complex and confusing journey, to be able briefly to let go of the wheel. With an experienced elder steering, Amanda wasn’t as responsible for the incidents if her
vehicle
careened into people or things.

Through the still-open doorway, Amanda watched her mentor depart. Some friends stay with you in the hospital. A few will keep your kids when you’ve reached the absolute end of your rope. Some buddies will loan a car when yours is in the shop. But it takes a very special girlfriend to launch a full-scale campaign to cure your significant male’s desperate illness. Amanda thought she might even cry.

But that moment was interrupted by Jason bellowing from the guestroom. The creature was awake!

After assessing Jason’s dire situation, a half degree of fever, Amanda left for the pharmacy at 6:55 p.m. It was an aspirin emergency but she only had the three other common non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

Chapter 3

Shortly after 7:00 p.m., while Amanda was resting, a panel truck drove up and parked one duplex over. The bogus cable technician arrived at Amanda’s apartment and rang the bell six times.

Jason trudged to the door and opened it. The technician burst in, took the remote out of Jason’s hand, and toweled it down with a disinfectant wipe. Then he turned off the television.

“Hey! I’m watching that show. They’re going to vote somebody off the island tonight.”

“Maybe so, dude, but you ain’t gonna be there. We’re converting your street from digital to analog. This whole neighborhood’s down ’til they work out the bugs.”

“Analog again?” Jason looked perplexed. “Uh, why would they go back?”

“Bugs, dude. Digital systems have bugs — those chips the government put in all the new TVs to monitor what you watch. Somebody keeps track of all that. Goes on your record, dude.” As he explained these matters, the would-be technician tinkered around behind the television.

“The V-chip does all that? Keeps track? Goes on my record?”

The faux tech gave him a look like Jason was the last human to receive the briefing. “Where have you been, dude? When you apply for a job or a truck loan — whatever — they look that stuff up. They know exactly when you watched the shopping networks and how many times you looked at porno channels.”

“What if you just flip through the channels and it lands on porn by accident?”

“Dude, try that story on the creep holding up your truck loan and see if he’s convinced.”

Jason was so worried he didn’t stop to consider that the government agency allegedly monitoring this particular TV’s use would be keyed to Amanda’s records… not to his. “Uh, how long did you say it’d be out?”

“Nothing but snow for couple of weeks. Maybe longer.”

“How about the local channels?” Actually, of three area affiliates, Jason watched only the station with the island survival show. He specialized in the other 95 channels.

“Sure, if you can travel back in time and find some rabbit ears.” He thrust forward a clipboard. “Sign here, dude.”

It was a brilliant performance.

* * * *

Amanda walked back down the hallway seconds after the phony cable tech left. Already awake from her short nap, she’d been waiting just inside her bedroom door.

Jason stared at the TV snow for a few minutes and tried the full range of channel numbers three or four times. One experiment involved clicking the numbers in reverse order. Apparently he somehow hoped that could bypass the problem. It didn’t. He tried clicking all the channels quickly, and then tried the same thing slowly. Still only snow. Jason gave up and dropped the remote like it was obviously defective.

In the kitchen, Amanda attempted to open the aspirin bottle. She’d selected the cheapest generic brand available, the kind so chalky it melted the instant it touched a human tongue.

Jason trudged over to the kitchen and exhaled through his mouth. His breath smelled like larvae-eating creatures that dwell in muddy water.

Amanda turned away from that noxious odor, finally wrestled open the bottle, removed a half-pound of cotton, and plunked two tablets on the counter. Enough dust shook loose to comprise almost a third aspirin.

He frowned at the bottle’s label and poked both pills with his forefinger. “They didn’t have the good ones with special coating?”

“All out. Evidently the community is on the verge of an epidemic. Man-colds have every woman in this county flocking to drug stores.”

“Dang, I didn’t know it spread that fast. The doc yesterday didn’t seem all that worried.”

“They’re trained to control the panic. If word got out, people would be hoarding vitamin C and Kleenex.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Amanda was amazed that Jason’s critical virus included a deflector shield for sarcasm. Normally he would pick up on such a response and attempt to formulate a tart reply of his own.

When Jason poked the tablets again, more of the contents flaked off. “I’m going to need something better than prune juice to wash this down.”

“Tap water is on the Christine-approved list. No calories, no carbs.”

“But I can’t stand the taste.” Whiny.

“There is no taste. It’s water.”

“My sensors crave flavor, Amanda.”

“Sensors? I figured that ghastly halitosis had already neutralized your delicate sensors.”

He missed that one also. “Okay. Taste buds, whatever.” Jason stuck out his tongue. It was coated with regularly awful evening breath plus bitter and corrosive post-nasal drip.

She handed him a disposable plastic cup.

He filled it to the brim and then placed the cup on the counter. With a paper napkin, he brushed both pills — and as much residue as possible — onto his dry right hand. Then Jason picked up the cup again in his left. He eyed the contents of each hand as though the timing would be infinitely precise.

“You going to juggle those or swallow them?”

Jason grunted. He threw the tablets — not a gentle plop like some people use, but an actual toss — all the way to the far regions of his throat. Then he slapped his right hand on the counter and raised the cup to his mouth. Each time he quickly ingested a large swallow of water, his Adam’s apple moved over two inches. Then he made sounds like “
gerrh… kahh
” and slapped his hand on the counter again. Then three more big swallows of water. Finally the aspirin had seemingly reached his gullet. Jason clawed at the outside of his throat for a moment, as though that might help the dissolving descent.

Amanda watched all this with considerable curiosity. She’d never imagined a person could incorporate so much theater into taking two uncoated aspirin.

Jason took a final sip and put down the water. Then he turned, stretched his throat, and extended his streaky tongue. He made the
kahh
noise again. “The coated kind’s a lot better.”

Later, Amanda served up another lukewarm mug of consommé and three generic rye crisps. She decided to save the new rice cake crackers for the next day.

With television out and no catalogs to leaf through, Jason decided to return to bed. He slowly trudged down the hall… limping.

Amanda was very curious about Christine’s blog but hadn’t had a chance to check it yet. Her instructions were to keep her laptop hidden while Jason was awake.

It was a little after 9:00 p.m. when the window-rattling snores assured Amanda that Jason was asleep. At that hour, she didn’t feel like piddling in the parking lot to retrieve her laptop from the trunk of her car, so Amanda called Christine at home. “I’ve been thinking. Doing all this stuff sounds awfully complicated and expensive. I don’t have any money to speak of.”

“Not a problem, really. I’ve got some mad money. Plus, like I said, I’ve started a blog and expect lots of donations.”

“Donations? To us? Because Jason has a virus?”

“Sure. In return, the donors can access the results of our efforts.” Christine acted like everybody knew this. “I think you’ll find the sisterhood is very generous.”

“You make it sound like a coven.”

“Not those kind of sisters. I mean the poor schlubs like you and me who’ve had to endure a husband or boyfriend with a man-cold. Those sisters.”

“Well, you’d mentioned a blog at least twice but still haven’t explained.” Amanda sat on the couch and put her feet up. She switched the phone to her other ear. “What’s on this new blog?”

“I’m posting daily updates, so our grateful readers can see what works best.”

“You don’t mean with our names and everything. Uh, I don’t thi…”

“Relax. I’m just using pseudonyms.” Christine began whispering. “You’re
Missy
and he’s
Marty
.” She returned to normal phone volume. “Besides, there’s no pix and nobody even knows where we are.”

“Slow down. Nobody knows…
Who
nobody?”

“The World Wide Web, doofus. Our blog is going continental. Might even be global, except I’m not doing any translations.”

“You mean you’re writing stuff about Jason’s sickness and what we’re doing to blast him out of my apartment… and posting it on the Internet?”

“Amanda, what the heck did you think I meant by
blog
?”