“It should’ve been, right?”
The words surprised her. She hadn’t spoken since she’d left the hair salon. The silence had been perfect, completing, inviolate.
She didn’t like how the words reverberated, even when they were her own.
Her laptop was still on. She stared at it as the background became a long-forgotten inside joke—a modern-day flying toasters screensaver. Flying…had to be engineer humor. She watched them go by without seeing them.
The screensaver blinked back to her desktop. She’d jiggled the touchpad. Janet blinked, pumped her eyes shut then open, trying to come to and remember what she’d been intending. Yes. She went to the address bar, typed in Wendy Cedar, and pressed Enter. Her Gmail account disappeared into a Google search. There were few results, at least for a person, but one was a Facebook account. Janet clicked on it. It hadn’t been updated since 2013, at least not publicly, but there were a number of pictures.
Wendy looked very different than she did at the office.
It wasn’t boudoir photography or anything like that. The pictures didn’t frame her or pose her; they were just casual snapshots, probably taken by a friend. She wasn’t even dressed immodestly. She wore a white half shirt, exposing only a smidgen of taut, firm belly. Printed on the front were two lines: ‘Fem in the Streets, Butch in the Sheets.’ The fabric was white, the text black, and the cups of her bra were just evident behind the obscuring letters. An undercurrent of black underlying the words that drew in the eye. Demanded it.
She wore an olive-drab army jacket over it, one elbow worn thin, a lining of plaid just visible on the sides between shirt and jacket. Her pants were hip-hugging jeans, holes in the knees yawning open so wide they could’ve been cut with a straight razor. A red belt holding them up.
But it was her hair that really caught Janet’s eyes. The way it was tousled, disheveled, falling in shaggy, perfect locks to her shoulders, down the front of her face in erratic patterns, barely missing her eyes. In half the pictures, she seemed to be lazily corralling it out of the way. In one set, she pushed it back out of her eyes, only to drag her hands back through it, down over her forehead. Her hair bustled out in a crazy mane after that, one strand slinking down to catch at the corner of her wet lips, a sweet scar just waiting to be healed…
She had hair like she’d just been fucked. Not bedhead, but bedroom hair. Unconsciously, Janet reached behind her glasses and combed her fingers through the fringe of her own hair. Would Wendy’s hair feel like that? Soft and smooth? It looked that way. Layer after layer of midnight black, soft as a summer night, and under it that face. Her eyes. The challenging smile of those lips.
But the eyes. Everything else was a bit challenging, a bit butch, don’t fuck with me, but the eyes were soft and alluring, a gentle warmth in them. There was one of her looking at another woman—a friend? A girlfriend? There was an insouciant smirk on her lips, a raised chin like a boxer inviting a jab, but the eyes sent a more complicated message. The eyes asked…the eyes almost pleaded…
The look Janet had always imagined a woman giving her before she slipped the blindfold over her eyes.
Janet shut the laptop. Jesus. Wendy was her employee now. Maybe not in 2013, but that woman—soft butch Wendy Cedar, she might not even exist as far as Janet was concerned. She had Worker Bee Wendy Cedar. Good Employee Wendy Cedar.
‘You’ve misunderstood our relationship’ Wendy Cedar.
Janet went to the wine rack. It had to be late enough in the day to drink by now.
A glass of port helped her come up with the problem in writing to Roberta. Janet was trying to tell her how she felt, but she couldn’t summon it up. The prospect of Roberta leaving her was foolish, and she responded to the foolishness, tried to tell her how foolish it was, but aside from that—when it came to Janet—how she felt was like the ocean at night. Too deep and black to be penetrated.
She turned the TV back on. The Blu-ray player had a few videos in its memory. They’d put their wedding video on there. Janet couldn’t remember ever watching it.
She watched it now like a hawk, an avid viewer of her own past melodrama. She tried to see signs of artifice in herself—it would be so easy to hide under all the pageantry, the white dress, the traditions. But she couldn’t find any. Whatever had happened, it had crept in between then and now. It had been patient.
Because she’d been happy then. She didn’t know what she was now.
Dear Roberta,
I don’t want to be alone.
She called Bobbi. She’d never intended to send a letter, not really. She’d just wanted to get her thoughts together. All it had done, though, was show her that her thoughts were as ‘together’ as they’d ever get.
Roberta picked up on the first ring. She supposed that was the courtesy a few decades of marriage got you. “Janet,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound like it had on the tape.
No point in putting pleasantries before something unpleasant. “Are you coming back?”
Roberta didn’t answer. She waited. Janet waited. She could feel Roberta trying to be diplomatic, trying to explain.
Oh Bobbi, I’ve been trying to do that all day, and you’re only starting now?
Finally, there was her voice again, small and stagnant in all the quiet she’d brought. “I’ve met someone.”
Janet tried to say something, just something automatic and thoughtless. “Oh” or “I see” or “I understand.” One of those lies that came in so brutally useful. But none presented themselves. She couldn’t even pretend anymore.
Roberta continued. It took her less time than it had to speak in the first place. “She makes me feel the way I used to feel.”
Janet resisted the urge to ask how that was. She hung up. Like it’d all been some obscene harassment. Roberta didn’t call her back.
Janet tried to think if there was anything else to say and there wasn’t. Even the prenup was ironclad. All that’d been left after the separation was deciding if they wanted to keep trying or not.
She guessed Roberta had finally gotten to make the choice for both of them.
She didn’t remember sitting back down at the couch, opening up the laptop again. She must’ve. There were the pictures of Wendy. Taunting her. Young and alive and unhurt.
She was beautiful, yes, but she’d been beautiful at the office. No, what drew Janet’s eye was her confidence. She was so collected, so composed, so brazen in her dykishness. The center of her was firmly rooted. She leaned over girls, eyed them, flirted with them, fucked them, not with the kind of poise Janet favored, but with her own slouching, cocky swagger.
Except for her eyes. Sometimes she looked a little lost. Maybe it was just late and dark and she was tired, drunk, wanted to go home. Maybe she just needed someone with a little bit more experience to take her hand and tell her it was all right and to take her away. Maybe, if Janet had been there in 2013, Wendy would’ve given herself over with the same unvoiced desperation she’d tried to show in the office.
Janet touched up her make up, using a pencil to make her eyes just a little darker, smokier, before she hid them behind her glasses. She sprayed her hair again, keeping each follicle in place. She reapplied her fragrance.
7 p.m. Primetime. Janet watched one show after another; no point in cluttering up the DVR when she was there anyway. A cop show, a doctor show, a lawyer show, then local news, then late night. Then it was twelve. She turned the TV off. She ate an apple, drank two glasses of water. She didn’t feel tired, but she didn’t feel like doing anything but sleeping, either. She brushed her teeth, she washed her face. She tried to sleep and not think of the hair growing out of control, the nails rebelling against their prescribed lengths, the food turning treacherously to fat inside her—all the pollution that would have to be cleaned off the statue of her come morning. And come the next day, and the next, and the next.
She couldn’t sleep. She could not sleep. The clock at her bedside taunted her with how she couldn’t sleep, sped up
when she wasn’t looking and then screamed how long she’d been trying to sleep, how much time she’d wasted simply lying in bed, doing nothing, contributing nothing, being nothing. Her eyes grew heavy but never seemed to close.
Masturbation was frustrating. She used a Hitachi to stimulate herself—a simple, reliable tool to do a job. Generate a series of impulses within her, create a sensation, allow her to shed her stress and relax. But the tool wasn’t doing its job. It was like trying to resuscitate dead flesh, to carve a real woman out of a block of cold marble. The impulses vibrated between her legs, against parts of her anatomy that were in perfect working order, but the feeling didn’t spread. It thudded into a wall, stayed locked in her insensate flesh, never moving to where she was locked up or clenched or needed the flow of hot blood, life, her own sexuality.
She felt broken.
With a cry of anger that was eagerly sucked into the silent walls, Janet threw the vibrator aside.
Wendy caught it.
She was dressed in a plain white tee with black letters graffitied on the front, a light flannel jacket, an oversized army jacket over that. Her jeans were ragged, but skintight from mid-thigh to a pair of boots. Firm, well-muscled legs. If they wrapped around someone, it’d be just impossible to get away.
Janet sat up, holding her bedsheet to her chest. “How’d you get in here? What are you doing here?”
Wendy brushed at her hair. It wasn’t the neat, tidy ponytail it was at the office. It was free but cut short, shoulder length, tousled and windswept—freshly fucked. Locks of hair strayed like fingers down her skin, over her face. Like they had to touch her. “I’m here because you wanted me to be here. And I’m going to do what you want me to do.”
She walked to a chair in the corner. Her boots were loud on the hardwood floor. They thumped, one after another, with each spindly step. Surprisingly aggressive for such long, slender legs.
“Must’ve hit something by accident on my Facebook page. Liked a status that you shouldn’t have. Did you enjoy looking at those pictures? To think, I was always a little worried about my employer seeing them.” She smiled. Bee-stung lips sharper than the teeth behind them. “Now I don’t mind.”
“You can’t be in here,” Janet said. Her heart was racing. She could hear it in her ears. It dwarfed her own voice. “It’s not allowed.”
“I’m allowing it. Aren’t you? After all, you’re not calling the cops.” Wendy’s eyes swiped over Janet like a touch. Her irises were the brightest thing in the dark room. “Your phone’s right on the nightstand.”
“You could hurt me,” Janet protested. “I don’t want to provoke you.”
“Is that what you’re worried about? That I’ll hurt you?” Wendy sat down. Slouched, in fact. One leg spanning an armrest, kicky boot dangling in the air. Janet could see the toe describe little circles in the air. “Nice place for a chair, the bedroom. What, did you used to sit here and read Roberta bedtime stories? Or, no, maybe someone sat here and watched. Do you like to watch, Janet? Or do you like to be watched?”
Janet’s throat was dry. It was all she could think of; how dry it was. “I’d like some water, please,” she said, absurdly.
“Other side of the bed,” Wendy replied.
Janet turned over. There, on the floor beside her bed, was a glass of water. Ice cubes floated lazily at the top. The edges weren’t even rounded yet.
It was as she reached for it that Janet felt a finger of air run down her back, a burst from the air conditioning. Down her bare back.
She turned back over, careful to keep the sheet in place. It was all that separated her from Wendy.
“You always struck me as a woman who likes to do it herself.” Wendy smirked, dropped back in the wingchair like it was a throne, she a royal born to power. “But I guess this explains why you aren’t throwing me out. Maybe you have a few interesting tattoos you don’t want me to see?”
“I’m wearing a nightie,” Janet said. She drank her water. The ice cubes pushed at her lips as she upended the glass too high, following the dousing water like night-cool fingers, like the air that had lit up Janet’s bare back. Her heart thundered in her chest. She felt the satin sheets against her nipples. As thorough as a caress.
Wendy was all sex, all fucking, but it wasn’t something projected, something put on. It was exuded. Lazy, indolent, the heat from a furnace. It crouched inside her, not safe, but like a predator ready to pounce.
“I’m going to do something when I get up from this chair,” Wendy announced. “But until then, we can talk.”
“What are you going to do when you get up?” Janet asked.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Answering a question with a question is poor form.”
Wendy held up a finger. “Not answering a question is worse. You didn’t tell me whether you like to watch or whether you like to be watched.”
Janet said nothing.
“It’s okay. I get that you haven’t decided yet.”
“Neither,” Janet said, her voice sounding loud to her own ears. It was her heart. It was settling. Not muting everything else anymore.
“Lying,” Wendy mused. “What form is that?”
“I’m not lying. I enjoy my privacy.”
“You enjoy your isolation. You’ll enjoy other things more. Shall I get up now?”
“No.”
“The great Janet Lace, always so in control.” Wendy nodded to the nightstand. “You could call the cops. This is a nice neighborhood. I’m sure they wouldn’t take long. And you could tell me to sit until they get here.”
“Will you not get up until I tell you to?”
“I won’t get up until you want me to.”
“You seem to credit yourself with a great deal of knowledge regarding my wants and desires.”
“I think you want the same thing everyone wants. When you sleep naked in a bed, you want someone to be in it with you.”
Janet buzzed inside, having to stop her hand from tightening before she shattered the glass in it. When Wendy said she was naked, it felt like she had looked. It felt like Janet was even barer than she was. “I’m not naked.”
“Shall we find out?”
“I’ll scream.”
“Me, I tend to moan.”
“Maybe you tripped an alarm as you came in.” Janet smiled at her. Politely. Speaking with the control that was the very last thing she felt. “Maybe the police are already on their way.”
“So you want to see me handcuffed? You should put on your glasses then. What are they? Barton Perreira Lucky? In black, of course.”
Janet reached out. Her glasses were in their case, on the nightstand. Beside her phone. She picked the case up. She opened it. She took out her glasses. Extended their earpieces. Slipped them on.
She couldn’t see any farther into the darkness, but she could see more of it. With her dark hair hazing her face, Wendy seemed almost a part of it.
“So I guess we know you like to watch,” Janet said. “And you make requests.”
“You can’t tell me you wear those glasses not knowing they make people want to fuck you.”
“They let me read fine print. You find that sexy?”
“If I thought squinting was sexy, I’d date Clint Eastwood.”
“Fascinating insight into what you consider a deal-breaker aside, the police could be here any minute. If you did trip an alarm.”
“Then I guess I’d better hurry.” Wendy leaned forward in her seat, but didn’t stand up. Her hair fell in front of her face as she leaned on her knees, white shirt a deep gray in the darkness under her jacket, the black text over her breasts an alluringly different shade of shadow. She held up the Hitachi. “Like your vibe, by the way. Very classy, very…unashamed. Most women go for some cute little thing like their puppy’s going to play with it or something. That or some overcompensating Bad Dragon shit, trying to punish their vajayjay for something. Which I understand, but only once every twenty-eight days.”
&n
bsp; “Are you going to use that?” Janet’s breath was rushed. She hated how her control slipped, and the more she hated it the more she slipped, and the more she slipped the more she didn’t hate it, couldn’t hate it, had to try harder and harder just to not like it.
“Why should I?” Wendy asked, setting the vibrator down. “I have you.”
She stood up then. There was a window between her and Janet. The moonlight from it hit Wendy like a spotlight as she stepped forward, pausing in the glow, enjoying how Janet stared. Janet imagined she could see herself, lit up all silver, in the lens of her glasses.
The light swathed Wendy, pushed against her, burned up one half of her. The other it cast into an even deeper shadow than before. But in the darkness, Janet could feel both of Wendy’s eyes. They never strayed from her as Wendy shrugged off her jacket, the slow unveiling arching her back, pushing her chest into prominence. Janet could see her full breasts standing up proudly from her shirt, the strain of the fabric maybe a size too small for them, how eloquently the swell fit within the otherwise smooth, even lines of her body. The black text swimming into view like it was coming up from the very bottom of the ocean.
Fem in the Streets, Butch in the Sheets.
And Wendy smiled, as she watched herself being watched.
The jacket hit the floor. Wendy started taking off her flannel next. She glided forward, a tremor in her cleavage with every step, the striptease slow and sensual, each movement drawn out.
“Are you going to do something?” Janet asked. “Or are you just going to rethink your outfit?”
“Just trying to keep you from feeling underdressed.” Wendy came to the foot of the bed, settling a hand on the bedpost. The moonlight was behind her now. It prickled in her hair, silhouetted her curves, the side of her breasts. Its light was like a slow caress that never stopped.
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