Curing the Uncommon Man-Cold by J.L. Salter

with that endeavor, she got a clean fork and sampled the scrambled tofu. She rolled it in her mouth a bit, chewed slightly, and then decided it needed more of a sluice action than a chew. So she sluiced down a little. “Ack!” She turned quickly and spit the remainder into her hand.
    “What’d you say?”
    “Back. I said back . Back behind you is some more tofu to clean up.”
    “Oh.” Jason returned to his duties like a prisoner forced to mop his cell before his own execution.
    Amanda discreetly dumped the remaining contents of the pan into the trash and covered it with two paper towels. She found herself making the kahh sound, though much quieter than Jason’s rendition.
    She grabbed her purse. An egg sandwich would be nice this morning on the way to work. Maybe with a fried potato patty. And freshly brewed coffee. Ha.
     
    * * * *
     
    When Amanda got to work, she phoned Christine and reported on her enterprising breakfast.
    “Where’d you find acorns? And how on earth did you grind them?”
    “I took a page from your plan — I made it up. It was just weak tea with a little salt added.”
    “Well, necessity caused mothers to invent things. I’m in traffic. Gotta go. Bye.”
    The call ended before Amanda could correct her friend’s mangled quote. All of a sudden, she didn’t remember how it really went. Sheesh. Not enough sleep.
    In the middle of Amanda’s lioness yawn, Louis walked in, plopped down, and started talking about how far behind he was because he didn’t have her evaluations.
    The pressure at her office was intense. The other workers — all female except the boss — were civil, but not really friendly. No one was assigned to assist her and nobody voluntarily helped. Some, including her Yankee supervisor, actually hampered Amanda’s productivity. His frequent drop-ins were very distracting and nearly 90 per cent were pointless. During most of the usual year she could cope with these typical circumstances, but during Hell Weeks everything bothered her. Especially King Louie .
    “Well, Louis, I’d be farther along if you could carve out a couple hours of clerical help for me during these grant reviews. Gayle or Joan probably wouldn’t mind helping if you’d let them. Or one of the other ladies.”
    He was already shaking his head. Sometimes when he shook his head with particular vigor, Amanda thought she could see his toupee shift slightly.
    “And I could get more done without all the interruptions.”
    “You mean like phone calls to and from your darkly tanned friend?”
    Amanda yawned again. It was either that or scream at King Louie.
    Later, during an afternoon break, Amanda quickly checked the blog and scanned Christine’s update — very little posted. There were more comments, however, from blog readers. Most were excited and optimistic that someone was finally undertaking a cure for the uncommon man-cold. A few predicted the project’s total failure. As one blogger — presumably female — wrote, rather pithily: ‘ A man’s a man. You can thump ’em, but you never really know what you’re getting. When a melon goes sour on you, only thing to do is toss it out. ’
    One comment, presumably from a male, in a different vein: ‘ What you two are doing to that guy is hateful. Somebody ought to slap you silly! ’
    She clicked on the link to Kick-Marty, the adjunct blog discovered yesterday. The new tally was Kick Marty Out — 15 … an overnight increase of only four.
    Back to work.
     
    * * * *
     
    Possibly worse than her office stress was that which waited in Amanda’s apartment. Since Jason’s invasion, she’d lost all her solitude and was getting hardly any rest during the night. Until Monday evening, he had been her sweet and comfortable — but not always remarkable — lover. Now he was her noisy, uninvited leech. That image bothered her, but it was accurate: Jason stuck to her, sucked out her resources, and wouldn’t let go.
    Amanda was near complete exhaustion as