“The rotors move through the air faster,” Janet surmised. “And are the scissor links rated for that speed?”
“I don’t know!” Wendy cried. “I e-mailed R&D, asking them for their stress test findings at 11.10 inches of mercury. They would only give me the rankings down to thirteen inches of mercury. So maybe the scissor link will be just fine, or maybe it’ll fly apart.”
“Those findings are classified,” Donnie said.
“From who? We’re the same company.”
“You can’t expect to have the clearance of a DARPA-certified asset—”
“I expect to be given the resources I need to do my job.”
“It’s my job!” Donnie insisted. “R&D says it’ll be fine, it’s our job to approve the specs, that’s what we do!”
“We stop helicopters from crashing. That’s what I do.”
“Do you have a contract?” Janet asked.
“What?”
“What?” Donnie echoed.
Janet picked up her coffee again. “With your internship. Do you have a contract guaranteeing you a position at the company once you’ve finished the program? That if there’s an opening, they won’t just hire someone else off the street instead of giving it to you?”
“Well, no,” Wendy admitted. “But I’m pretty sure—”
“Ms. Cedar,” Janet interrupted, then held a moment’s silence while she sipped her coffee again. “We are under a deadline to submit a proposal for the Navy contract. If we don’t have a project drawn up and green-lit by that time, ipso facto, we won’t get the contract.”
“If the prototype crashes, we won’t get it either.”
Janet nodded. Then she folded her hands together, ringing her fingers around the warm coffee mug, and Wendy had the unmistakable impression of a snake coiling up. And the equally unmistakable desire to feel that snake around herself, squeezing tighter and tighter… “All right, I think I’ve heard enough. Mr. Parsons, please deal with the situation as you see fit.”
“Thank you,” Donnie said. “Now, if we’re through wasting time, Ms. Cedar, your services will no longer be required. Please clear out your desk and turn in your security badge. It’ll be expected within the hour.”
“But you can’t fire me,” Wendy protested, giggling a little at the nervous absurdity of it. “I’m—”
“Don’t waste your breath trying to save your job,” Janet said. “Or volunteer work, as the case might be. Regardless, I would like to hire you for a position in my division.”
“What?” Wendy asked, followed by Donnie again repeating the question at a higher pitch.
Janet looked from one of them to the other. “I have an opening. I have Wendy here, who’s done conscientious and professional work despite the pressures put on her. If she were working at another company, I wouldn’t think twice about snatching her up. And I’d usually offer her twice her pay, but since she isn’t making anything, that’s not really possible. Oh well. We’ll hammer something out.”
“You’re just going to promote her?” Donnie demanded. “Someone who’ll question your authority? Someone who won’t follow orders?”
“How do you think I got promoted?” Janet asked. “Now, please see to it that R&D sends over the stress test rankings for 11.1 inches of mercury to my department. We wouldn’t want to miss the deadline, after all.”
It was then that Wendy Cedar fell hopelessly in love.
That afternoon, Wendy skipped down to her sister’s house in the suburbs to do her laundry. Regan’s place was a neat little stucco thing, short and plump, and so lovely it looked more like a gingerbread house than anything else.
Regan graciously took the laundry basket and while the machine worked, Wendy went out into the front yard to wait on the swing.
Keith was mowing the lawn, wearing jean cutoffs and a muscle shirt that showed actual muscle, and he gave Wendy an impeccably neighborly nod and smile as she loitered.
When Mac brought her his basketball for a game with the hoop up above the driveway, Wendy agreed to shatter the domestic tranquility. “Okay, Ewok,” she said, “we’re gonna practice some free throws. You know free throws?”
Mac nodded. He had Keith’s eyes and Regan’s hair.
Wendy shot and felt like a badass as it swished in.
Mac ran, impressed, to retrieve it.
“All right, now you do it,” she said.
He shot, and managed to brush the hem of the net before the basketball hit the garage door and rebounded.
Wendy caught it before it went into the street.
“You’re taller than me,” Mac complained. “It’s not fair.”
“Oh yeah?” Wendy got down on her knees and shot again. The ball wobbled on the rim for a moment, but went in. Wendy smiled smugly in the way only someone who was a badass to a seven-year-old could.
“Your arms are bigger than mine!” was Mac’s follow-up.
“Joke’s on you, I’m a lesbian, my people are very into big arms.”
Mac rolled his eyes.
Wendy wondered when Regan was going to teach the Ewok respect for his elders already. “Fine. Bring it in. I’m gonna make this shot lying on my belly.”
Mac returned the ball to her. She did not make the shot lying on her belly. “Let’s see you do it, smart guy.”
After retrieving the basketball once again, Mac got down beside her and tried to shoot. The most he managed was to get the ball to roll all the way up the driveway to the garage door.
When it rolled back, Wendy caught it and had another try, just as Regan wandered out the front door with a tray of lemonade in hand.
“Finding a way to play sports lying down,” Regan said. “I’m impressed.”
“I thinking of calling it Wii Sports. Is that taken?”
Regan brought the tray over to Keith, who paused the mower to take a grateful swig and give her a kiss on the cheek. Wendy shared Mac’s sense of ‘oh, come on’. Then she rolled over and sat up as Regan brought the lemonade to her.
“Hey,” Regan said, “I know it’s short notice, but Keith and I won this radio contest for a vacation in Hawaii. It’s just three days over the weekend, so do you think you could watch Mac while we’re gone?”
“Yeah, no probs.” Wendy tried to Harlem Globetrotter the basketball on her finger, without much success. “My man Mac and I will play co-op, a little Gears of War—or I don’t know, something rated Teen, whatever. Is he old enough to watch R-rated movies yet? I mean, old R-rated movies, like Friday the 13th, where they’re so tame they’re basically a seventies PG?”
Regan sighed and Indian-sat, balancing the tray on her lap. “We’re not going to Hawaii.”
“You’re not?” Wendy replied.
Keith stopped the lawnmower. “We’re not?”
Regan looked over her shoulder. “No, honey, I was proving a point.”
“So we didn’t win the contest,” Keith reiterated.
“No, we didn’t.”
Keith moved to pull the ripcord again, but stopped with it in his hand. “Wait, did we lose or have they just not announced the winners yet?”
“We didn’t enter the contest.”
Keith pulled the ripcord, getting the lawnmower to fizzle but not turn over. He let go of it instead of giving it another pull. “Well, why didn’t we? I would love to go to Hawaii!”
“There is no contest!”
“What is going on with this family?”
“Just…finish mowing the lawn,” Regan said. “It’s a sister thing.”
“That’s what you said about why we couldn’t get a clown for Mac’s birthday.”
“It’s for the best,” Wendy assured him.
Regan took the basketball from her. “Hey, Mac, could you go play somewhere else for a little bit? Your Aunt Wendy and I need to talk.”
Mac took the basketball and tried to spin it on his finger as he walked away, with even less success.
Wendy swiped a glass of lemonade from Regan. “You know, if you want t
o go to Hawaii, you can probably go to Hawaii. It’s really not that expensive as long as you clear your cookies before you go to the airline website, because they will jack up the prices on you—”
“This isn’t about Hawaii. It’s that my sister is in the prime of her life, I just asked her to spend the weekend looking after a seven-year-old, and you agreed to it without thinking.”
“I know, I’m a wonderful sister.” Wendy ran her fingers through her hair with care, as if taking pains not to dislodge her halo.
“Wendy! You have no social life.”
Wendy sighed. “I have Tina. And very many Tumblr followers. Some of them even reblog my posts. And if this is about the girlfriend thing, look—”
“It’s simple,” Regan insisted. Then, God help the single, she started counting on her fingers. “Step one, you put yourself out there. Step two, you see something you want—a career, a relationship, whatever—you go after it.”
Wendy waved her hand in the air. “Okay, maybe it’s that simple in Straightland, which is admittedly most places besides San Francisco, but I don’t have it so easy. Pussy in Straightland, it’s a seller’s market.”
“Trust me, it is not.” Regan set down the tray, then checked automatically to see if Mac was in earshot of a conversation about the market value of pussy. He wasn’t. “I see plenty of twenty-something straight women in therapy and relationships aren’t easy for them, either. All the good men are either married or gay.”
“You’re married,” Wendy pointed out. “Look at him, he has…arms! He’s mowing the lawn! What else can you ask for? You have the perfect relationship.”
“It’s nice,” Regan admitted. “But I got in on the ground floor; I’ve been dating him since elementary school.”
“Exactly my point. How many gay women do you think went to our elementary school?”
“Suzie Mendler.”
“What, really?” Wendy’s face went blank as she helplessly reviewed every interaction she’d ever had with her. Not so much as a high sign.
“Yeah, she came out last year, it was all over her MySpace page.”
“Well, MySpace, of course I didn’t hear about it.”
Regan reached out to take Wendy’s hand. “Wendy, you are my sister and I love you and I promise, it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re straight or gay or bisexual or a furry.”
“I can’t believe that’s what comes fourth for you.”
“Sure. The point is: I just want you to be happy with whoever it is that…makes you happy! Whoever that very lucky person is! Or whatever kind of animal they pretend to be.”
“No, it’s fine,” Wendy told her. “And it’s not like there’s no one—”
Regan reared up, crossing her arms. “Oh, so there’s someone?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“That’s literally what you just said.”
Wendy mouthed ‘fuck’ and drained her glass of lemonade dry. When she finished, Regan was tapping her fingers on her bicep, patiently awaiting an explanation.
“You know,” Wendy said, “you really should get a shorter basketball hoop, he is a small child, he cannot throw a ball that high. In fact, you might want to give up on basketball altogether, see about raising a jockey.”
“Don’t change the subject.” Regan laughed. “I’m doing your laundry, c’mon, you owe me.”
Wendy groaned and lay back, pillowing her hands behind her head. “She’s this…co-worker in my new department and she is very…cool.”
“Oh, so she’s laid-back, kinda Zen, like a surfer, that’s good.” Regan crossed her fingers. “Like goes with like.”
“No, I mean she’s a little frosty, on the outside? Tightly wound? You’d like her.”
“Okay then, a bit of a Type-A personality, something of a realist to keep your dreamer ass grounded. Excellent.” Regan held her two index fingers apart and then brought them together. “Opposites attract.”
“Also, she’s an alien from the Omega Theta galaxy and she feeds on human brains.”
“Does she want children?” Regan asked without missing a beat.
Wendy unspooled her leg to kick at her sister.
“Watch it, watch it—” Regan scooped up the tray. “You’re gonna spill my lemonade. It’s all organic, you know.”
“It’s made from lemons, water, and sugar, what else would it be?”
“C’mon, c’mon, your office crush, she’s Type-A, what else?”
Wendy bit her lip. It almost ached to think of Janet. A good ache, but if she let herself forget that, it was almost certainly not going to happen. Well, let Regan think it was possible, at least. She deserved to live in hope for a few more years, at least.
“She’s passionate…very passionate. Powerful. It’s all interior.” Wendy tapped between her breasts. “In here, you know? But you can tell it’s there. Just looking at her, you can see that she’s all…” Wendy shook her head. “She’s just amazing.”
“You know what you should do?” Keith said. He’d finished mowing. “You should get one of those side-cuts. Those look great!”
“They do,” Regan agreed.
Groaning again, and only partially because of exercise, Wendy got to her feet. “Do you two mind planning the grand seduction without me? I think my clothes are done, so I should probably get going.”
Regan picked up her glass and handed it to her. “Take one for the road.” Then she lowered her voice. “And by the way, I was with Keith when he went through puberty. I’ve put in my time.”
CHAPTER 3
Wendy liked her new workplace in the Efficiency Optimization Department (a title so relentlessly buzzworded she was surprised that there were actual plaques with it written down in the right order). The carpet was thick and decadent, the lighting bright and full and mainly suborned by the giant windows that had most of the floor sunlit. There were no cubicles either. Her office space was the space in an office. It wasn’t in the corner or anything, but there was something psychologically soothing about being able to close a door behind you. Went back to the primitive hindbrain; being able to hide from dinosaurs or something. If dinosaurs hadn’t been able to open doors. She would have to ask a paleontologist or something.
She was just getting her desk moved into when something went thunk in her headspace and made her think, Fuck, T-rex!
It was a vase. Not even a particularly reptilian vase, just a normal vase with a few pansies in it that Janet Lace had set on the upper portion of her desk.
“Housewarming gift,” Janet explained, making minute adjustments to the flowers until they looked fit for van Gogh to paint. “How are you finding your new ‘digs,’ so to speak?”
“It’s very…windows,” Wendy replied, nodding to hers. “And everyone’s very well-dressed.”
“We have a group discount at my tailors,” Janet explained. “It’s all right if you don’t want to go,” she added insincerely.
“Those are really nice flowers,” Wendy said.
“They’re from my garden. Funny how I killed them just so you could feel welcome here.”
“What?”
Janet sidled down onto Wendy’s desk in a way that made Wendy resolve never to put pictures of her family—okay, cat—in that space. “I would just like to say something to clear the air. Efficiency Optimization is my department, you are my subordinate, and I absolutely believe in an open-door policy. You did exactly the right thing back at Safety & Risk Management, keeping the company from making a costly mistake. That being said, this is still my department; I am in charge, and I like control. So if you’re going to go over my head, you should be damn sure you’re right, or I’ll pull you like a weed. Like a fluffy little dandelion.”
“I…don’t want to go over your head,” Wendy said. Her voice sounded as if it was sweating.
“That’s good.” Janet sounded as if she was commiserating with Wendy. “I don’t want to pull you like a weed. So do your job, follow my instructions, and I promise I’ll take care of yo
u. But always remember who’s in charge. All right?”
“Yeah.”
“I think you’re going to fit in well around here. I think you’re the kind of employee I like to have.” Janet reached over and picked up a snow globe from the cardboard box Wendy had been unpacking. “I like this. What is it—Hoboken?”
“Yeah, my dad got it for me on a business trip. You might know him, actually, he’s—”
Janet set the snow globe down by her vase. “I think it would look good here, don’t you? Well, I’ll leave you to it. And remember, don’t hesitate to come see me if you need anything. I like to keep my employees happy.”
“Yes. Thanks. I’m very happy.” Wendy smiled for Janet.
“You have a nice smile,” Janet told her, and left.
Wendy waited until her new boss was gone, then moved the snow globe a half foot away from the vase. She nodded in satisfaction—it looked much better there.
At night, the office shone white. The big windows turned black, the absence of sunlight throwing a pall over the floor, even with the lights still blazing away. The furnishings, the load-bearing pillars: all shades of white. Even most of the computers were gray, save for the monitor screens themselves. Coupled with the oppressive darkness, they seemed to brighten to a spectral glow, overwhelming any variety in color, any knickknacks that might’ve introduced a different hue. Coupled with the desertion of the 9-to-5 crew—which technically should’ve included her—Wendy felt like she was on a literal ghost ship, sailing dark waters, maybe taking flight among clouds in a starless sky. Outside the window, her floor was too far off the ground to see anything but the distant, rolling hills outside the city. Not a light among them.
The mood it put Wendy in pleasantly reminded her of her teenage goth years, and she abandoned her cramped yet cozy office to sit out on the main office floor with her laptop, finishing her work under a nice massage from the AC unit that never quite reached her workspace. On the far side of the elephantine room, the lights were on in Janet’s office. They burned like a private moon.
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