Scissor Link, Georgette Kaplan [best 7 inch ereader .TXT] 📗

I’ve troubled you enough for one day.” Janet went to her toiletry bag on the nightstand and dug into it, coming up with some sleeping pills. She kept her back turned to Wendy, like a child believing that what you couldn’t see couldn’t hurt you. “I’m going to try to get some rest before our plane leaves.” She stopped with the bottle in her hand. “I’m very sorry, Wendy. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s all right. No harm done.” Wendy smiled reassuringly at her and did a little shimmy. “Want to spank me? Maybe something else? That leather belt of yours looks fun.”

“I should sleep.” Janet poured out a few pills and dry-swallowed them. “Maybe in the morning, if there’s time before our flight.”

“Yeah. Sure. It’s okay if you need to blow off some steam, Janet—Ms. Lace. It just has to be that you’re venting, not exploding.”

“I’m not sure either one is okay.” Janet waved her hand in the air. “Help yourself to the minibar. My treat.”

As she undressed, Wendy knew she would be expected to sleep in the other bed. That bothered her more than anything else.

They flew back home on a 747, but Wendy didn’t suggest doing anything in the bathroom. She’d seen Janet calm, serious, solemn, but never thought that might be some sort of depression. Now she’d gotten so good at reading Janet that she could see when there was no sparkle in her eye, no glimmer of rich amusement to bely all her self-seriousness.

Janet barely got her carry-on put away before she was looking over the RadarVoid research again.

“You’ve been going over that since last night,” Wendy told her. “Why don’t you give it a rest? Read your book?”

“I finished it,” Janet said, not looking up from the papers. “The Kee Bird never makes it off the ground. The fuel tank on the APU failed. They hung the tank so it would gravity-feed and forgot to disconnect it. The take-off was bumpy. Fuel spilled out of the tank, hit the APU, it was hot, started a fire… The whole plane went up. It broke in half. It exploded.”

“Well, that’s a wonderful story to tell before a cross-country flight.”

Janet flipped from one page to the next so fast it was almost a slap. “What would you prefer?”

“I don’t know—tell me about your childhood.”

“Father drank.”

“Well, at least your mom—”

“She might’ve. I wouldn’t know. Not around.”

“Ah. You want me to leave you alone?”

“Just for a few…states.”

Wendy nodded. “All right.” She fetched her earbuds from her pocket. “I’m right here if you want to talk or anything. I answer to Wendy, Cedar, Ms. Cedar, Dub-dub, hey you…”

Janet made a ‘mmm’ sound and minutely adjusted her glasses, turning the page back.

Wendy put her earbuds in and set out to find how many podcasts she could listen to before New York.

A limo picked them up at the airport—weird to be looking for someone else’s name on one of those chauffeur signs, but there it was. They went to drop Wendy off at her apartment first, and Janet helped her take her bags up. Inside, the first thing Janet noticed was the wall art. Wendy smirked a little; she’d expected no less.

“Aluminum two-blade prop from Hamilton Standard,” Janet reeled off, eying it, coming closer to run a hand over the blade. “Controllable pitch…damage to one of the pitch stops just below the guide ring…someone flew with this.”

“Uh-huh.” Wendy wrapped her arms around Janet from behind, felt Janet stiffen in her embrace, but also breathe a little easier. “I know your chauffeur is keeping the meter running, but have I ever introduced you to the fine American custom of the quickie?”

“Wendy…” Janet started to brush her arms away, and Wendy held on a moment longer before letting her. “It’s been a long flight. We can talk about this tomorrow.”

“Talk?” Wendy shoved her hands in her backpockets, felt like scuffing her shoes. “Hey, I don’t want to rush you into saying any three particular words, but…you still want me to kiss you, right?”

“Yes.”

Wendy hovered closer, brushing her upper arm against Janet’s. “And you still like me touching you?”

“Yes.”

Gently, Wendy leaned in and butted her forehead against Janet’s shoulder. “And you like it when I say that I love you…”

Janet took off her glasses to knead her sinuses. “Wendy, how I feel isn’t the issue. The issue is whether what I feel is a good idea or not.”

“You don’t feel something because it’s a good idea. You feel it because it’s what’s inside you.”

Janet sighed. “I’m sure it must seem that way at your age.”

Wendy felt ice water going all through her. “Look, I know I fucked up—whatever, don’t take me on the next business trip, or leave me in the hotel room. If all you want to do is date, that’s fine, we don’t need to be business partners.”

“I’m not sure it was a good idea for us to get together.” Janet pressed on while Wendy was still stunned. She fiddled with the earpieces of her glasses in uncharacteristic reticence. “We have to work together and all this does is confuse you about our boundaries and that’s my fault, not yours, but it has to stop. We need to be co-workers again.”

She set her glasses down on a drawer, forcing herself to stop playing with them.

“So that’s how you’re going to play it then?” Wendy crossed her arms. “You just find someone you like around the office and you seduce them and you fuck them and you make them think…and then you just drop me off at the curb?”

“It’s not like that…”

“Maybe you don’t remember how that feels since you’re two hundred years old, but it’s pretty shitty at this end.”

Janet nodded. “All right. All right, I deserve that. I never would’ve started this if I’d known—”

“Known what? That it would be hard?”

Janet put her fingers to her brow. “I don’t want you to be mad. I just want you to understand that this isn’t you, it’s the