Curing the Uncommon Man-Cold Read Online Free

sounded like Sherlockella Holmes solving a dastardly crime. “Prime example. Get it.” As she looked around, her eyes were wild with the excitement of a case. “Does Jason keep any girlie mags here?”
    “Here?” Amanda held out her hands, palms up, like they might hold some clues. “I don’t think so. Why would he keep nudes in my apartment?”
    “He’s a man. Check the garage.”
    Of the fourteen apartments in the complex of duplexes, only six units had private garages… for thirty dollars more each month. Amanda needed that space for things left by her downsized parents, so her car stayed outside in the parking lot. “Why the garage?”
    “Prime hiding places: toolboxes, high shelves, places you wouldn’t normally look.”
    “I don’t have any toolboxes.” Amanda sighed heavily. “Tell you what, I’ll collect what little food’s in the place. You go look for dirty pictures.”
    Christine rubbed her hands together. “Thought you’d never ask. I’m an expert at this.”
    Amanda could tell. And it scared her a little.
    Both searched for nearly fifteen minutes.
    Christine came back empty-handed except for a small notepad with a Gil Elvgren pin-up on the cover.
    “One of my dad’s old tablets, from a tool supply company. This thing’s over fifty years old.” Amanda checked the calendar inside.
    “Can’t be too careful. We’re confiscating all of Jason’s visual stimuli.”
    “He’ll just turn on TV.”
    “Not after 7:00.” Christine checked her watch. “In about thirty minutes I’ve got a cable guy coming to disconnect.”
    “Disconnect my cable?”
    “Relax. It’s only my sister’s husband.”
    Amanda clutched her friend’s forearm. “Do your sister and her husband know about our secret cure project?”
    Christine shrugged. “Just enough for them to cooperate with this particular phase.”
    “That’s way too much for anybody else to know! This was supposed to be just between us. But now twice as many people are in on it!”
    “Not a problem. My brother-in-law only talks about sports. And my sister doesn’t even know you. Besides, who’s she going to tell?”
    Amanda tried to recall the statistical maxim about how fast information spreads when each person learning a secret tells just one other person. It was roughly equivalent to the bubonic plague epidemics in the Middle Ages. Then she realized her friend had already moved on, so Amanda shifted to more mundane matters. “But there’s a big fee to get my cable service back!”
    “He won’t really disconnect anything… just disable it.”
    “How?” Amanda looked puzzled.
    “Never mind. Check our blog later this evening and I’ll try to post our Phase One efforts.” Christine snapped her fingers. “Oh, your laptop. Keep it with you at all times. Lock it in the trunk of your car while Jason’s awake. Never let him near it.”
    “Okay, I’m ahead of you on this part: no Internet or video games. But how do I explain where my laptop is?”
    “In the shop. Tell Jason he spilled coffee on the keyboard and it stopped working. That way it’s his fault.”
    “But he didn’t spill anything.” Amanda shook her head. “He won’t believe that.”
    “What he won’t do is remember… either way. Men are always guilty of something, so it feels pretty natural to be accused of just about anything. You watch. If it’s necessary to tell him about the bogus coffee spill, he’ll look like a third-grade boy caught putting tadpoles down a pretty girl’s blouse.”
    Amanda sat at the table with a loud sigh. It was like hunkering down in the middle of a whirlwind. She wondered what else was involved in Phase One but was too frightened to ask.
    No matter. Christine was bubbling over to tell. “I’m taking all the booze in the apartment. Hot, cold… open or not. No alcohol whatsoever. Not a drop.” She also produced a handwritten list of her strategies, arranged by category. “It’s still a work in progress.”
    Amanda scanned