Wendy had not known a cell phone could be slammed. But she guessed if you pressed the disconnect button hard enough… She slipped off her shoes and stood up, groaning, wondering if she could talk Janet into taking a bath together. Flying for half a day, hours in taxis and Humvees, sleeping on an unfamiliar bed…they deserved a hot tub, something.
“Janet?” Wendy called, stepping out onto the balcony with her. Stupid of her—she should’ve thought to pack massage oil, have something on hand to rub Janet down with when the tension got to her. Good move for a girlfriend to have. “Is everything all right?”
Janet wheeled on her and was kissing her so abruptly it was like Wendy had just breathed her in. Wendy stumbled back into the hotel room, practically carried by Janet, and suddenly felt Janet’s hand sliding down her pants, stroking at the neatly trimmed hair between her legs, and Wendy didn’t know how girls could stand to be bare down there when it was so much better to have something for your lover to run their fingers through, something to tug on.
But Janet wasn’t just touching her, Janet was scraping at her, making Wendy tense, making her close her thighs instinctively, trap Janet’s hands, because while there was a hint of moisture inside her, there was not much, not enough, and if Janet tried to enter her it would hurt.
Wendy expected Janet to realize this, having Wendy’s thighs squeezing her hand still, but Janet forced her hand farther, kissed Wendy even harder. It wasn’t overwhelming, it was noxious—the warmth of Janet was too hot, the scent of her stung Wendy’s nostrils, everything was too fast and too much and not enough Janet.
“Open your legs,” Janet hissed. Her voice rose with frustration. “Open your fucking legs, I’m not going to tell you again, this is what you wanted, this is what you like!”
“Watchword,” Wendy said, shocked at how weak her voice sounded, how her eyes stung, and she felt itchy and sweaty all over, not how it’d been before but like she was being touched by someone else, a stranger. “Watchword, Janet, watchword—”
Janet took her hand away. She stopped kissing Wendy. And after a moment, she took a step back, letting the air rush back into Wendy’s personal space, and Wendy realized just how hard it’d been to breathe. It’d only been half a minute, but she still gasped in air.
“What’s wrong?” Janet asked. She was forcing calm, regulating herself, and it gratified Wendy to read not a trace of her aggravation, not anymore. It was replaced by concern, and if that still chafed at Janet’s fraught temperament, it was at least not directed at Wendy.
“I don’t mind a little kink,” Wendy said, “but at least one of us should enjoy it.”
“I thought you would like that,” Janet insisted. “That you liked it like that.”
“Well, I don’t.” Wendy sighed and went to the bed, slumping onto the mattress before her feet could get in on the act as well. “It’s not your fault. Last night—last night was great. That was just too much, you know? And it felt like you weren’t even thinking of me. You were just…”
“Roberta,” Janet said. She sounded gratifyingly guilty. “I’m in control and I’m me and then she calls me and…seems like the first time either of us has cared in years.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, I think 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 situation. It’s just an untenable—”
“All right then, I quit.”
Janet let out a short, shrill laugh. “You can’t quit.”
Wendy tightened her crossed arms. “What, you want my two weeks’ notice?”
“It’s just a relationship, Wendy, it’s not some kind of—”
“It is to me. And don’t tell me it isn’t to you, because I’ve seen the way you look at me and I know, I know, how scared you are. That’s why you’re doing this, not because you suddenly have a bug up your ass about workplace romance.”
“Wendy, you have a bright future at Savin, a promising career, you cannot give it up for anyone.”
“You are not just anyone.”
Janet took a deep breath. “I don’t accept your resignation. And I don’t want to continue this relationship. When you’ve had some time to process this…I’m leaving now.” Her lips trembled a moment; the urge to say something more. “If you have any…questions, you can still send me an e-mail.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you’d think a divorcee would know something about how people get dumped!”
Janet stiffened again, took the hit, and moved for the door.
Wendy took a moment to just grind the heel of her hand into her forehead, then she turned around to follow her. “Janet, I didn’t mean—”
Janet shut the door behind her. She was still in control enough not to slam it.
CHAPTER 11
A quick wash of her hair with Aveda to start the day, then saltwater hairspray and some oil to keep it from drying overmuch. Janet massaged her hair, fingers along her scalp, hair between her digits; the lushness of her hair making it seem longer and fuller than it really was. She imagined doing this as a young woman: her hands trailing down her back, finding curling, luscious softness belying that firm flesh underneath.
Then she picked up her hairbrush and began to pull it through her hair. She wasn’t a young woman.
Janet made dried pear arugula salad. Simple, but good practice for something more complex. Mostly it was just hunting down the ingredients, feeding them all to the food processor or the salad bowl, whisking it around, then watering it with apple cider vinaigrette.
The taste was decent, the meal filling.
Janet kept few plants. A cacti or other succulent in each room. She enjoyed their self-sufficiency—that without her, they could get along quite well. Not forever, of course. They would die without her. But there was no need to coddle them.
She’d already watered them: the sand collar cactus, the bishop’s cap, the saguaro, all the rest. But she knew that in the active period, they were watered more frequently, they were given fertilizer. She checked again when the active period was.
It was later in the year. Much later.
She treated herself to a Greek yogurt. She had a whole carton of them in her refrigerator. It tasted of almosts: almost ice cream, almost fruit, almost milk. When she finished, there was still yogurt skimming the sides of the cup.
She called Elizabeth as she opened the bottle of wine they hadn’t finished. The thing was, if she drank it straight from the bottle, that was one less glass she’d have to wash. Smart. She was so fucking smart.
The speaker phone picked up. “Jan? Hey. Didn’t expect you to be back from your trip so soon?”
“Why not? We sold the damn things, didn’t we?”
“Yeah. Good job. You and Wendy celebrating?”
“I’m celebrating.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t sealed the deal yet. Look, if fucking her is that big a deal, I can always sit in, give you a little constructive criticism…”
“No, no, I fucked her. Just like you said. It was nice. And now we’re moving on. Onward and upward.”
“Okay then.” Elizabeth sounded less than enthused, but Janet couldn’t judge her. She herself didn’t sound especially…anything.
“Elizabeth?”
“Yeah, Jan?”
“I don’t think I was happy with Roberta. I wasn’t sad, but… I wasn’t happy, either.”
“I know, Jan.”
“I know what happy is like. It just isn’t for me.”
“You want me to come over?”
“No. I should be alone now. I’ve had enough practice at it.”
Wendy hated herself and wanted to die.
Naturally, Regan was having a great week.
“Look at how much my husband loves me in floral form!” she cried, hoisting a bouquet like she was Miss America.
“It’s like porn for bees,” Wendy agreed, very happy when it was out of her face.
Regan lugged it over to the dinner table, where she had a glass of water waiting, and she took some posies out of the bouquet and put them there. “I mean, I’m sure he had a coupon or something, this is a lot of flowers to buy when I’d just settle for a dozen roses—”
“You would?” Wendy asked sarcastically. “Geez, get some standards—”
Regan ignored her, smiling over the posies now sitting in a vase on her table. “Go get me some more glasses.”
“Half-full or half-empty?” Wendy quipped, headed to the kitchen.
Regan gathered up a fistful of begonias. “These would look great on the windowsill… Wendy, c’mon!”
Wendy came out of the kitchen with three glasses in either hand, another two caught between her arms and body. “Just for the record, what do you intend to drink out of?”
“I’ll pick up some Dixie cups,” Regan said, taking one glass, filling it with flowers, and setting it picturesquely on the sill. “I could get addicted to this. I think I’m a little high. Let’s put one on the stairs!”
“Let’s!” Wendy agreed with false cheer.
“Okay, fine, you’re in a snit,” Regan conceded as they moved to the staircase. “Do you want to get it off your chest or do you want to be a little shit all day because I’m getting laid tonight? Well, Keith’s getting laid, but I’m doing the honors.”
“Trust me, I’m a professional, I can be a little shit regardless of your sex life. The bluebells would look good there.”
“They would!” Regan agreed, setting a glass between the banisters on the landing of the staircase. “C’mon, I’m really not going to be able to enjoy railing Keith with my favorite sister in mourning.”
“And I’m not going to be able to enjoy food ever again with that mental image.”
Regan stopped to smell the roses—Wendy suddenly got that expression. “No more banter. Come on now.”
Wendy set all the glasses on the landing and sat, drinking from one of them. “What would you do if Keith left you?”
Regan laid the bouquet between them and sat down next to her. “Oh God, what i
s this?”
“Just tell me.”
“I wouldn’t let him.”
“You wouldn’t let him? How would you stop him?”
Regan guffawed. “Jesus, Well, he wouldn’t want to leave me in the first place, but if he did, I could only assume there’d be something wrong, something he was struggling with—I’d find it and kick its ass and get my husband back.”
“What if it’s not something that you can ass-kick? What if he really wants to go?”
Regan leaned back against the railing, sighing. “You need to schedule this introspective stuff before I get flowers. You’re really harshing my buzz.”
“Hey, you asked.”
“Yeah. The burden of a big sister is a heavy one. Okay, you remember when I was pregnant? You were off at UCLA or wherever, building model airplanes?”
Wendy resisted the urge to correct her. “Yeah, I ordered you pickles and ice cream online. That’s what pregnant women like, right? I’m gay, it’s really not my scene.”
“We’ll discuss that if Mac ever gets a little brother.”
“Little sister,” Wendy corrected.
“Anyway. You weren’t here, but when I first got pregnant, Keith really got cold feet.”
“What? I’ll kill him,” Wendy said jokingly.
“No, he had, like, stripper-level daddy issues. He didn’t know if he could be a good father, he thought maybe he wasn’t even a good husband because suddenly we were in this situation where the shit was hitting the fan. He thought maybe it might be best to have a procedure done and then if the relationship didn’t work out, at least we wouldn’t…well, you can imagine we argued a bit.”
“Yeah, you’d think!” Wendy cried. “Where is this coming from? Does he also kill people for a living?”
“It was a long time ago,” Regan assured her. “The point is, I fought for him. I told him that of all the men in the world—and also Angelina Jolie, if she were interested—I was with him, I only wanted him, and the baby would feel the same way. Mac wouldn’t want someone else. I wouldn’t want someone else. We wanted every part of our family.” Regan reached over and nudged Wendy. “Including Vodka Aunt here.”
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