“Would you like to go and get it?” Janet asked solicitously.
“Yes I would,” Wendy agreed, as unfailingly conciliatory as before. “I will be right back—friend.”
Wendy came out of the subbasement parking lot humming to herself, DayQuil firmly gripped in hand. She got onto the elevator with two middle management types, sliding neatly out of their minds once they’d gotten her floor for her. Their conversation passed in front of her like the ball at a tennis match.
“So I checked the obituaries—no mention of a Lace.”
“Maybe he was living abroad. Maybe she didn’t take his name.”
“Face it, man, her husband didn’t die, he left her, that’s why she’s not wearing the ring anymore.”
“Who would leave that?”
“Like the man said, show me a beautiful woman and I’ll show you a man who’s tired of fucking her.”
“Yeah, no shit, but I mean leaving Janet Lace sounds like leaving the Mafia. Ya just don’t do it. Her husband died. That’s why she’s wearing black.”
“She always wears black.”
“Black and gray.”
“Yeah, very dark gray. Like Batman.”
“Batman sometimes does yellow, though.”
“Yeah, and blue.”
The elevator stopped. Wendy got off, feeling like her head was about to explode. She pitched the DayQuil into the nearest trash can.
“You know what?” Wendy said, taking advantage of Elizabeth’s lunch break to slide right into Janet’s office. Janet was already eating the soup. Shit. “It just occurs to me that you have a very strong constitution, you’re probably over your cold already, it was really overstepping my bounds to think you needed chicken soup or chicken noodle soup or any soup, really—”
She started lifting the Tupperware bowl away from Janet, Janet precariously lifting her spoon with the bowl.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll just take this,” Wendy said. “Yeah, I’ll just get it out of your way, you probably already have lunch arrangements—”
“Set that back down. I was eating that.”
“Yeah, okay, yeah—”
Janet looked at the bowl as Wendy placed it back on her desk. “Is this poisoned?”
Wendy was now completely taken aback. “I don’t know, is it? I mean, why would it be poisoned?”
“A bit of laxative or something else slipped into it as some sort of prank,” Janet said, folding her hands together and staring at the soup as if she could intimidate it into giving up its secrets. “Well, that may seem like a harmless gag to you, but you should know it’s still a very serious crime.”
“No! No no no, no laxatives, no…” Wendy stooped to the bowl and began ladling soup into her mouth, swallowing as many mouthfuls as she could. “See? Harmless! Nothing in the soup—”
“Stop eating my soup.”
Wendy stood bolt upright. “Yeah, okay.”
“I was really enjoying that soup,” Janet said. She opened a drawer and got out a plastic spoon in a cellophane wrapper. “And now you’ve gotten your germs on the spoon.”
“Sorry.”
“Please take the spoon. I was going to have to give it back to you anyway.”
“Yeah.” Wendy snatched it up, putting it into her breast pocket, and was then quite aware of the moisture in it seeping into her shirt. “So this is maybe a little not my business, but I noticed you’re not wearing your wedding ring.”
“You did, did you?” Janet asked, stirring her new spoon into the soup.
Wendy put her hands on her hips. “Yeah, I’m perceptive like that.”
“I haven’t worn it for a week.”
Wendy paused. “I thought you might’ve lost it.”
“No, that would be my wife…in Cancun.”
Wendy tried very hard to, for once in her life, be straight. This was not the time to beg for Janet’s services as life coach, to ask for tales of nineties lesbian intrigue, to reminisce about Missy Peregrym’s abs in Stick It. Even if she could hear her mental-Regan telling her to throw some dumb nugget of her own gaydom out there—‘I’d have a wife too, if I were married, which I can do since the law changed, from not allowing lesbians to marry to allowing lesbians to marry, which you would know, since you are a previously married lesbian and could be a married lesbian again with my help’—as if Janet couldn’t tell. Hadn’t told, with that ‘I think you’ve misunderstood our relationship’ open-heart surgery.
Janet took a mouthful of soup. “This is very good, by the way. Thank you for making it.”
“Any time!” Wendy put her hands together. Took a deep breath. Say something supportive, say something supportive, you’re a supportive person, you just have to say something and it’ll be nice and she’ll feel better. “Ms. Lace…Janet…”
“Mm,” Janet replied. “You can go, if you want. I’ll get the accoutrements back to you.”
“Accoutre—oh, the Tupperware, no, you can keep it.” Wendy forced herself into motion, speech, reaching out and gripping Janet’s shoulder. She felt tensed muscle beneath the lining of her jacket, like bedrock under the smooth sand of the desert. Christ, have they invented Super-Pilates? “I just wanted to say that you’re a really good boss. You’re patient, understanding—maybe a little prickly, but you never seem to ask more of us than you do of yourself. And maybe we don’t say so, but we all appreciate working for someone who trusts us and respects us, like a family, you might say.”
“Are we having a moment?” Janet asked suddenly.
“N-no?” Wendy took her hand away.
“Are you trying to have a moment?”
“Nope!” Wendy sounded certain.
Janet stood up. She wasn’t taller than Wendy, but her high heels made Wendy’s heels their bitch. Wendy swallowed nothing, and a lot of it.
Standing across from Wendy, Janet reached out and placed her hand on Wendy’s cheek. Wendy could feel every downy little hair on her face touch the hand as it came in, feel the air give way, feel every softened molecule of Janet’s palm as it touched itself to Wendy’s face. Janet’s thumb swiped out, rolling with careful slowness over Wendy’s lip, and the tip of Janet’s forefinger tickled at the fringe of Wendy’s hair. Her face was burning. Janet’s hand was cool, and soft as velvet. Wendy wondered how long she should stand there, letting Janet touch her face like a very sensual blind person, and then locked her legs in place, determined to stand there as long as she could.
“Wendy,” Janet said quietly. “Does this strike you as an appropriate gesture for an office environment?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Fine by me.”
“It’s not,” Janet corrected ruthlessly. “While pleasant, perhaps even pleasurable—” (Wendy resisted the urge to squeak) “—within the workplace, it also distorts the boundaries of a supervisor-slash-subordinate relationship.”
Wendy tried to nod while not dislodging Janet’s hand. “I understand.”
A bead of sweat rolled down Wendy’s forehead, between Janet’s fingers. Janet moved one digit, spearing it on the end of a short fingernail, and watching curiously as the dollop of saltwater spread out to bridge Wendy’s skin to her enamel. Brusquely satisfied, Janet took her hand away. “I think you had best get back to work.”
“Yeah. Absolutely. Yes.” Wendy ran a hand through her hair. Walked backwards. “But, you know, if you ever want more chicken soup, I make a lot, so…I have lots of leftovers…or fresh soup, I could make you fresh soup, I have a lot of ingredients…wouldn’t want them to expire. Not that they’re going to expire anytime soon…” Wendy collided with the door to Janet’s office.
Through the window, Elizabeth looked at her.
Wendy gave her a quick, panicked look, then was back to Janet. Janet had sat back down.
“I buy very long-lasting ingredients,” Wendy said, and rushed out of the room.
“How do you accidentally hit on your boss?” Tina asked.
“Very badly,” Wendy replied, looking arou
nd the small outdoor café where she’d met her friend after work. The place was still largely undiscovered, if not uncharted, but the soup of the day was chicken noodle and that gave her flashbacks to wanting to spend the last week with her head in her hands. “I was just trying to do something nice for her while she was sick, but then she wasn’t sick, and it just got taken the wrong way.”
“Well, that’s what you get for being a kiss-ass.” Tina studied her menu. “You know, anyone allergic to kale would not have a good time here.”
“I was not being a kiss-ass,” Wendy insisted. “It’s not that she’s my boss, it’s that she’s kinda cool and withholding, but then also a little nice and gentle from time to time? And her hair is really nice and she wears glasses.”
“Ah yes, nothing sexier than not being able to watch movies in 3D.”
“I’ve had dreams about her nibbling on the earpiece. Every time she takes them off to clean them I have a little moment when I think she’s going to do the thing and—” Wendy paused. “It’s a good moment.”
“I’ve always wondered what lesbians fantasize about. I thought it was adopting cats.”
“Ha ha,” Wendy said sardonically. “I already have a cat.” She picked up her menu. Then set it back down. “So Janet has a puppy and it keeps running around Godzilla, trying to get him to play, and Godzilla is just like so annoyed, but in that cat way that cats do where it’s sorta cute, and eventually they start falling asleep on each other, and also they can talk…”
“I’m starting to see why the seduction didn’t go as planned.”
“I didn’t plan it!” Wendy protested. “I was just trying to do something nice for a friend. Acquaintance.”
“You’ve never brought me artisanal chicken soup when I was sick. Do I need to get a dog?”
Wendy fell back in her seat. “I’m going to die alone. I can’t crush on someone who lives across the hall, I can’t even crush on a celebrity, I have to crush on the most unobtainable person on the planet.”
“Oh, c’mon, I’m pretty sure Jennifer Lawrence is more unobtainable.”
“No, no, I haven’t met J-Law. If I met her, she might be into me. I’ve met Janet and she isn’t into me. Or a goodly portion of the emotional spectrum. So why am I having dreams about her?”
“What dreams?” Tina asked. “I still need to know what lesbian wet dreams are like.”
“I’m not telling you that.”
“I’ve gotta know.”
“I’ll send you an e-mail.”
“Subject: my big gay sex dream about my lesbian crush on my boss.”
“Any crush I have is a lesbian crush, so now you’re just being redundant.”
“I mean, haven’t you ever wondered what straight women fantasize about?”
“I saw Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. I know way too much about what straight women fantasize about.”
“Also sometimes Kylo Ren.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah, I know. Hey, look at it this way, even if you’re not getting laid, you’re still working at your dream job with a hot boss. I can’t even work in the aerospace industry, because I’m from fucking Vietnam and I can’t get a security clearance. Engineering degree, graduated with honors, and now I build model planes. You know who else builds model planes? Children. Children with pieces of paper.”
“It’s bullshit, yeah. But think of it this way. Can you put a G.I. Joe in the cockpit of one of the planes you design?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t do it. Might have a spy camera in it. So there you go.”
Elizabeth came over right on time, buzzing to be let in just as Janet was taking out the steak she’d cooked. As soon as her oven mitts were off, she rushed to buzz Elizabeth up before Elizabeth could try her cell phone.
“I come bearing gifts,” Elizabeth said, referring to the 2005 Bricco dell’Uccellone with a ribbon tied about it. She held it out to Janet, then snatched it back. “Wait, is this good for a cold?”
Janet gave her a dead-eyed look. “You’re very funny.”
“Should I even be here? I’d hate to catch what you’ve got.”
Janet snatched the wine from her. “You know, if some man came in and tried to coddle me the way she did—”
Elizabeth affected abject shock at Janet’s effrontery as she let herself in. “It’s cute! And she didn’t mean anything by it. And honestly, you’re not going to have twentysomething hotties fawning over you forever. Not unless you’re secretly Sean Connery.” She glanced at Janet suspiciously. “Say something with an ‘s’ in it—but not an ‘h’ after the ‘s’.”
“The food’s getting cold,” Janet advised her, politely ignoring that Elizabeth had slipped out of her heels.
The meal was filling. The taste decent.
“You’re holding up well,” Elizabeth said, stepping in just before the silence could get unbearable.
“I am?” Janet replied absently.
“Yeah. No empty beer cans strewn around or anything.”
Janet got into the spirit of things. “I swept them under the rug,” she said, smiling in dim thanks to Elizabeth for trying to cheer her up.
Elizabeth laughed suddenly. “I just pictured you dying of consumption and Wendy Cedar nursing you back to health.”
“Consumption is fatal half the time,” Janet said.
Her salad was dry, she realized. She reached for the dressing and noticed it was out of reach just before Elizabeth passed it to her.
They drank Elizabeth’s wine and listened to Janet’s records. Karen O, Janet thought. At least Elizabeth couldn’t complain about her musical tastes being out of date. Although perhaps listening to Ms. O sing torch songs to her loneliness wasn’t the best way to reassure Elizabeth about her state of mind.
“Elizabeth?”
“Yeah, Jan?”
“What was I like with Roberta?”
Janet hadn’t seen such a quizzical expression on Elizabeth’s face in a long time. “What do you mean?”
“How did I seem? Compared to how I am now?”
“What, you mean did she rip your heart out, are you a shadow of the woman you once were, was she your better half—no, bullshit, you’re fine. You’re great.”
Janet nodded. “Because if I was happy then, I should be sad now. That stands to reason.”
“Oh, we’re reasoning now,” Elizabeth said, holding out her glass to have it filled. Janet did so and she slumped back in her seat. “It’s okay, Jan. I get it, you’re hurting. It’s not some big mystery that has to be solved.”
“But I don’t feel any different.” Janet couldn’t take the sympathetic concern that Elizabeth sent her way, so she stared at her pristine wineglass. The blood-red Barbera overlaid her reflection. “I feel exactly the way I did when she was here.”
“So you feel numb. Big deal. There’s no right way to get divorced. As long as you’re not hiring a hitman, who cares if you’re not throwing glasses of whiskey into a blazing fireplace?” Elizabeth sipped her wine. “We can try that, though, if you want. I’m not a whiskey girl.”
Janet almost could’ve smiled. Almost. “Do you think someone can be sad without realizing it?”
“I think there are a lot of things people cannot realize. I also think the way you’re feeling now can color everything. If I took you back a year and showed you us laughing together, would you say you were crying on the inside?”
Janet drained her glass instead of answering. When she looked at it again, her reflection was waning. Barely there at all.
“Would you like me to spend the night?” Elizabeth asked. “It’ll be fun, we can braid each other’s hair and talk about boys.”
“I think I’ll pass. I’d hate for you to show up at work tomorrow in yesterday’s clothes.”
“Well, if you think I don’t know how to look good in yesterday’s clothes, you are delusional.” Elizabeth got up, wineglass hooked on her finger, and took the bottle to give Janet a refill. “I’ll go put the co
rk back in.”
Janet waved her wineglass slow-motion in the air, picturing herself flinging it into a roaring fireplace with a dramatic burst of answering flames, cathartic and cleansing. She preferred to drink it, though.
“It would be interesting, wouldn’t it?” she called.
Elizabeth was putting her shoes back on. “What?”
“Someone nursing you back to health. That never happens after you’re a child, with your parents all over you. You go to hospitals, but it isn’t the same.” She shrugged. “I suppose it’d probably get irritating, being hovered over like that.”
“You never got sick?” Elizabeth asked. “Roberta never made you Jello or anything?”
“I got sick. I just didn’t want to bother her.”
Janet stayed at work late the next night, waiting for a memo from Testing. It would need her notes as soon as possible. As she waited—the office closing down around her, windows going dark one by one—she started on her new book.
She wasn’t four pages in when she read it; if it was a snake, it would’ve bitten her. She was struck by the same image the author, Carl Hoffman, had been: the Kee Bird lying on the frozen lake where it had crashed, silver as a dollar coin lying on the sidewalk, a grand old dame who hadn’t aged a day save for her bent props and missing rudder. Its dodo bird-like mascot straddling the nose beside her title in crooked yellow letters. The panes of glass still intact. The tail a bright red, like a bloody hand reaching up for help.
We banked hard to the left, and swung around for another look in stunned silence. “You know,” said the pilot finally over the intercom, as he swept eighty-five feet above the Kee Bird, “I heard that some guys came to the plane last summer and actually got an engine started.”
“No way,” I said, mesmerized by the ghost of an airplane I had worshiped for years and which, as far as I could remember, I had never seen in real life.
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