by J. L. Salter
But what about the long run? Or even the medium run? After she’d finally blasted her boyfriend out of the apartment, what next? Would he just keep going in the opposite direction? Would he follow his buddy Kevin to hotel happy hours and cruise for desperate traveling business women? Would Jason just wash his hands of their entire relationship?
If so, would that be good or bad?
On good days, that would be bad… for their relationship to end. But on bad days, that would be good… to step back, get free, and start over. Maybe someone not as needy. Both Margaret and Christine had clearly indicated their expert opinions — except for the control freaks, almost all men are needy. Some reveal it in different ways. Was it so bad that Jason’s manifestation was one or two viruses each year? She could do worse. What if she’d been attracted to someone like Kevin, who could be faithful for only about 24 hours at a stretch?
Nope. If she got mixed up with someone like Kevin, she might really need to handle him like a cushaw!
Later, in her office, Amanda quickly scanned the central blog for Day Eight. The comments seemed to be shifting. More bloggers were saying — in slightly different ways — ‘You’ve gone too far just to teach him a lesson. End it, one way or the other.’
She logged off and resumed the business of evaluating and ranking grant applications.
* * * *
At the apartment, Jason finally plotted his departure.
Step one: find pants. He searched everywhere. Amanda must have had a secret compartment or floor safe… perhaps a hidden attic hatch. After searching for nearly an hour in every nook and cranny, Jason was positive his trousers really were at the cleaners as Amanda had said. All this time he’d thought she was lying.
Having no keys and no pants complicated his escape logistics, but he thought it must still be possible. Guys in movies frequently escaped without street clothes.
Jason wondered how to start a car without a key. Hot-wire it. TV criminals do it in about fifteen seconds with no tools besides fingers. Could he do that? Uh, probably not.
What about walking or running? How long before somebody gave him a ride? Well, in his saggy pajamas with several days of whiskers and a stained shirt, probably no one.
Who else could Jason call to pick him up? His mom! No, she wouldn’t come for him. That woman had no sympathy for his illnesses or the unbelievable situations he occasionally found himself in. No help there.
Kevin was his only hope. With trembling fingers, Jason again phoned his closest buddy. He waited seven rings. Voicemail. Crud!
He left a “mayday” message. But this was late August, so Jason wouldn’t hold his breath for rescue. He knew his pal pretty well — Kevin probably wouldn’t respond until next May 1st.
* * * *
At work, Amanda was drowning in grant applications. As arranged the previous evening, Christine brought sandwiches and they ate lunch in Amanda’s office with the door closed. Amanda would have preferred the staff lounge, but they certainly could not talk privately in that space.
Their sandwiches finished, Amanda rose to put the empty wrappers and napkins in her trash can.
Christine plopped onto the newly vacant chair and logged in to the blog. “Just checking the latest tallies on Burn-Witch. I need to gauge my popularity.” She clicked on one of the links.
Amanda returned and looked over her older friend’s shoulder. “The most recent entry is Burn the Witch — 37. After yesterday’s burst of activity, yours isn’t growing as fast as the others.”
“Hmm. Let’s compare that to the Kick-Marty serial, which is the first one they started.” Christine clicked a different link and her eyes scanned down the block of comments. “Uh, here it is. Kick Jason Out — 119. That’s about three times the number wanting to burn me.”
“What?” Amanda yanked the wheeled chair backwards — nearly causing whiplash for her friend — and peered closely at the screen. “You said Jason!” She touched that name on the screen like it contained an evil spell. “It is Jason! How did they get Jason’s name? You said we’d be known only as Marty and Missy — never identified!”
Christine scooted forward again, partway. “Must be a lucky guess. Jason’s a pretty common name.” She looked like she was straining to remain calm. “Let’s check another link.” Christine clicked. “What the heck!”
“Not another Jason reference!”
“The Lighten-Missy link now has YOUR name!”
“Where?”
Christine pointed to the most recent serial. “Look! Lighten Up, Amanda — 54!” She pointed again, as though the first gesture didn’t take.
“Move over!” Amanda looked where her friend had pointed. Then she shrieked. “Oh, no… they’ve got my name, too!” It had to be restated. She stared, stunned. “How?” Amanda yanked on the seat again and positioned her face near the screen. “How the hairy hell did they get my name?” When she swiveled the chair and put a hand on each of its arms, that effectively bracketed her older friend.
Christine looked pale, unusual for someone who made two weekly visits to the tanning salon. “I don’t know. This isn’t even our blog.” She twisted away from Amanda’s hold and scooted back to the computer. She clicked a link. “See, here’s our blog. No real names here.”
“Click back to the other one.” Amanda barked the instruction like a riled police officer. “And pull over.”
Christine rose hurriedly.
Amanda perched on the edge of her own office chair and read a few comments. Then she scrolled down and read a few more. Tears. “They’re talking about me like I’m on reality TV.”
Christine leaned in again. “Yeah, and some of them want to vote you off the show.”
“That’s not the least bit funny.” Icy.
Christine pointed to the screen at the bottom of the comments. “This is what I call a shadow blog. It only exists because of our blog.”
“So who’s operating this shadow?”
“No way of telling. They can’t find my name, as creator of our blog… and I can’t find theirs. I mean, unless somebody cozies up to a computer geek, like your co-worker said yesterday.”
Amanda scrolled back up to the top. “There, that’s a name.”
“Not a real name. All of us blog creators use pseudonyms. See, this blog was created by Simon-Sezz.”
Amanda clicked back to one of the other links. “This other site doesn’t seem to have our names yet.” She pointed. “This one’s been solely Free-Marty… and they’re up to Free Marty Now! — 61.”
“I bet it won’t be long. I’m sure the hardcore bloggers check all these other links sooner or later. If they’re logging on to our main site, several are bound to be interested in the other comments and these tallies.”
Amanda turned away from the screen and faced her clearly rattled companion. “You swore there was no way our actual names would ever be associated with this blog, but here we’ve already seen both real names. Who knows what else they’ve already discovered about us. Probably addresses and places of work.” Amanda was getting louder. “How did these cranks get our real names?”
“Settle down.” Christine checked that the office door was closed all the way. “Your boss is right around the corner.” She returned near the chair where her dejected friend sat with head in hands. “Look, this blog of ours went viral, much faster and wider than even I predicted. We’ve had thousands of hits. There was always a very slim mathematical possibility that somebody just happened on our blog who also knows that Jason is at death’s door with a cold and you’re at wit’s end trying to cure him. And maybe they put two and two together.” Christine paused. “But this makes me think somebody actually did sleep with a turbo-whiz-bang computer geek just to bust this thing open.”
Tears burned Amanda’s eyes. “Why? Who? You said it was foolproof!” She felt like slugging somebody, beginning with the first tanned, large-bosomed woman she could reach.
“Amanda, I’m really sorry. I had no idea. I read all the stuff a
bout blogs and it sounded secure enough to run the shipping schedules for Fort Knox.”
“Evidently not! Not if some horny, pimple-faced computer nerd can figure it out! Unless one of your numerous confederates spilled the beans!” Amanda plopped her head on the desk and pointed weakly toward her door. “Just go!”
Christine muttered regrets as she grabbed her purse, opened the door, and scurried out of the office. She practically collided with Louis, who stood nearly inside Amanda’s doorway.
Louis watched Christine hurry away and then turned again toward Amanda’s office. He waddled in, plopped down in the guest chair, and exhaled loudly. “Catfight?”
Amanda looked up. “Oh, grizzled gonads!” She put her head back on the desk.
Louis just sat there. Unlike nearly 90 per cent of his other drop-ins, this visit by her boss actually had a point. “You’re still going to the teleconference tomorrow, aren’t you?”
She looked up, suddenly quite sober again. “Actually, I was figuring to pass. They’re going to have a handout package anyway and I’m really swamped. So I was hoping you could go without me.”
“I’m not going.” Louis acted like everybody already knew this. “You’re the only one we’re sending.”
“I thought we’re both supposed to be there.”
“Well, I’ve got this other thing…”
“Couldn’t you send someone to take notes? June? Gayle?” Amanda was practically begging.
“No, we need someone there who’s actually working with the grants.”
“And you can’t make it?”
When Louis shook his head briskly, his chin flesh waggled and the awful toupee shifted almost imperceptibly.
Amanda sighed heavily enough to rustle some papers on her desktop. She took a deep breath and counted to a zillion, very slowly. “Where is this dang conference, anyway?”
Two hours passed. Though Amanda had tried to refocus on her work, she suddenly realized she’d already read the budget section of the grant application in her hand. Maybe several times. Not able to concentrate.
Now that the identities of Marty and Missy had been discovered — somehow — and leaked out through several of the shadow blogs, Amanda figured it was time to pull the plug on the project. What was the point of going on? The entire scheme was more taxing on her than it had apparently been on Jason, and he showed no signs of leaving (even under all the duress).
Now that Amanda realized some of the blog readers knew her identity, she began to suspect most of the people she encountered also knew the truth. Wonderful to comprehend her co-workers had likely discovered she was the frantic, desperate woman with the pseudonym Missy.
But which co-workers? Gayle? Joan? King Louie? Others? It seemed as though all of them looked at her funny today. Was that because they knew? Or because she was acting paranoid? Or both?
The boss gave her the funniest looks.
That figured. Louis Erie is probably Simon Sezz.
* * * *
Kevin Haywood, Jason’s buddy at GCEC, stopped in at one of the upscale hotels along Nashville’s Fourth Avenue. The Nashvillage had the best lounge, with evening happy hour at 6:30 when a convention was using the facility. The hotel provided free drinks for its customers, and Kevin pretended to be staying there. It wasn’t really all that artful, however, since the evening manager didn’t care who drank up that huge facility’s sizeable booze budget.
Bill, an also-divorced acquaintance, saw Kevin and they struck up a conversation while Bill waited for a female business traveler to return from the powder room. “You ever read blogs?” Bill kept his eye on the restroom door.
“Not much, unless somebody e-mails me a link to something particular. Why?”
“The other day at work, a buddy was talking about some guy somewhere who’s really sick with something. So he goes to his girlfriend’s apartment to recover. But instead of taking care of him, the girlfriend — and her best friend — conspire to make that guy’s life a living hell. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff they do to him.”
“What stuff?” Kevin didn’t really care. At work, he’d heard a snippet about a similar blog.
“Well, I don’t remember everything, but they’re starving him, for one. And they keep sending over cleaners and other kinds of technicians to interrupt his recovery. Plus, get this — they turn off the A/C during the day!”
“And the stupid schmuck puts up with all that? He deserves whatever they dish out.” Kevin was distracted as another attractive female entered the drinking space. Happy hour during conventions was absolutely the best time to cruise.
“I don’t know.” Nearly a head taller than most of the men present, Bill scanned the room to see if anyone looked better than the woman still in the restroom. “At first I thought the same thing. But the more I read on that blog, the more I felt sorry for him, kinda. I mean, he’s as stupid as a headless hen, but give the guy a break — he’s sick.”
“What’s he got?”
“Well, it sounds like a regular ordinary flu. But the blog keeps calling it a man-cold… whatever that is. You ever hear of a man-cold?”
Kevin shook his head. “I’ve heard that mumps is different for grown men. But I thought viruses were pretty much gender neutral… you know, men and women get the same basic germs. Maybe this is new, like that weird version of swine flu or something.”
“Not sure. Whatever it is, the girl — and her devious friend — are running this sap through the grinder. They might actually be trying to kill him.”
“So where is this? Out in California somewhere?”
“Blog doesn’t say.” Bill rose up on his toes to look over the milling crowd toward the restroom. That made him temporarily about seven feet tall. “What the heck is keeping her?” He focused again on Kevin’s question. “Could be anywhere. Could be right here in middle Tennessee for all I know. I guess this new man-cold virus could hit just about any ole guy.”
“They give any names on this blog?”
“The guy’s named Marty and his girlfriend is Missy.”
Kevin smiled slightly. “Sounds like a real sweet honeymoon.”
“Yeah, but when I saw it this afternoon, there’s a link to a different site. On that other blog, somebody claims they figured out who Missy and Marty really are.”
“So what I.D. did those other bloggers come up with?”
Bill briefly closed his eyes to think. “Uh, the girlfriend is Aretha, Amelia… no, uh, Amanda. And the poor stupid schmuck they’re terrorizing is named, uh, Jared, Jacob… no, uh, Jason. I think. Yeah. Amanda and Jason.”
“Well, good luck to both of them. They probably deserve each other.”
The taller man’s attractive female acquaintance finally approached from the restroom and Bill bade a hasty farewell to Kevin.
Kevin sipped his drink and spoke to himself. “Stupid slug. Imagine letting a girlfriend keep you holed up in her apartment with no food and no A/C. That Jason guy is an idiot. Pure-D idiot.” Kevin absent-mindedly scanned the lounge area again. “Jason!” He pulled out his phone and listened to voicemails, including Jason’s from that morning. His eyes growing larger, Kevin grabbed a new drink and hustled down the hall, past the exercise area, to the wireless Internet room. Two work stations and only one was occupied.
He did a hurried blog search with keywords Marty, Missy, and man-cold. There were nine hits. One was about cartoon characters.
Kevin remembered enough of what Jason had previously explained that he fairly quickly put it all together — the Missy and Marty of recent blog fame really were Amanda and Jason!
Now that he was finally aware of what was happening to Jason, Kevin was in a quandary. Should he sit back, scan the blog, and just briefly enjoy monitoring his buddy’s misery? Or should he jump into action to help his beleaguered friend? He debated silently. If I was being terrorized by fanatics and lampooned on the Internet, I’d want my buddy to come rescue me. Kevin decided to rescue…
But the woman at the ne
xt computer looked up and smiled. Kevin smiled back. What the heck… Jason can wait ’til morning. Pretty nice looking and her drink was in the same kind of plastic cup he had from the happy hour lounge.
“How you doin’? Welcome to Nashville! Can I get you a refill for that?”
She smiled again and nodded.
Kevin forgot he even had a friend named Jason. He hustled to the lobby, got two more drinks, and briskly returned to the hotel’s computer room. He handed her one of the cups. “I’m Kevin.” He put his free hand in his pocket for the 2x3 schoolchild photo. Then he assumed his well-rehearsed sad expression.
“Sandy.” She sipped the remainder of her first drink and picked up the new one. She looked into Kevin’s face. “Something wrong?” Sandy nodded toward the computer he’d recently logged off.
“Oh, no. Well, it’s just I really miss my son.” He pulled out the photo with a practiced movement. “He’s with my ex in Memphis. If it wasn’t for e-mail and Facebook, I’m afraid we’d lose contact completely. His mother doesn’t want me in his life at all.”
“Aw, that’s not right. A boy needs his daddy. Let me see.” Sandy reached for the photo.
That nearly always hooked them. Once they touched the picture, they belonged to Kevin. He didn’t respond verbally; the sad face always worked best.
“He’s so cute. How old?”
“Oh, he was about six when that was taken.” Kevin just picked a likely number. It wasn’t even his child, of course. He’d swiped the picture from Lost and Found at work last spring. Ever since, that little photo had become his ticket home at many hotel happy hours.
Chapter 16
August 19 (Wednesday)
Amanda watched as Jason stared at the morning’s food possibilities: flax, hemp, and hummus. Obviously averse to those selections, he might have to default to celery again (with a dab of toothpaste for flavor), but it had become limp and turned light brown. It would take some otherworldly additive to make that palatable.
