CHAPTER 6

Elizabeth took off her bra, then her high heels. It was quite a show, even in the dark. Even with her clothes still on.

“Please don’t tell me I’m still paying you,” Janet said as Elizabeth came into her office, heels in one hand, bra in the other.

“Clocked out five minutes ago.”

“Good. Brandy’s in the usual place.”

Elizabeth went to the liquor cabinet—a retired airline drink trolley from back when flying commercial was a luxury, not a curse. She brought out two sniffers and a bottle. “So do you need a reason to work late or is this just force of habit?”

“Someone, somewhere, who makes more than me thinks we have a security leak. Obviously, they don’t want to involve the authorities, so we’re going through e-mails.”

“You can do that?”

“It’s in their contracts.”

“Eh. Mind if I pay homage to our dark master?”

“Go right ahead.”

Elizabeth opened a file folder on one of Janet’s cabinets, revealing a pair of speakers and an iPod dock. She dropped her iPod in and the empty office was filled with Dio.

“You know men listen to this, right?” Janet asked.

“What?”

“Obviously, we’re not reviewing our own employees—that’s just asking for trouble—so I’m looking at Donnie’s department. Someone must’ve made a mistake. Since Wendy used to be on his team, I’ve gotten her e-mails. Blame HR for taking epochs to update anyone’s file.”

“The deuce you say!” Elizabeth rushed around Janet’s desk. “What’s she say about me?”

“I’m not looking for something like that.”

Elizabeth gasped. “C’mon. Does she think I’m pretty? You could be keeping me from my future wife.”

“Please go enjoy your drink,” Janet insisted stridently. “If you’re not working, at least try not to interfere with my duties.”

Elizabeth left Janet’s filled sniffer on the desk and retreated to a sofa along the wall, making herself comfortable, picking up her bra and putting it in her pocket. “No need to be a grump about it—wait a minute.”

Janet resoundingly minimized the window. “What am I thinking, obviously it can’t be Wendy, she was an intern, what does she know?”

“You’re a little too defensive,” Elizabeth opined, sipping away. “You like her!”

Janet looked away from her screen sharply. “Get serious. I don’t like anyone.”

“You have a crush! You’re all flustered, it’s adorable!”

“You’re right,” Janet agreed, after a moment. Then she resoundingly resumed typing. “I’ll just have to transfer her.”

“Whoa, what? That’s kind of gross. Kicking someone to the curb because you think they’re hot and totally want to snuggle with them?”

Janet scowled at her. “It’s not as if I’m firing her. I’ll transfer her somewhere nice. It’ll be something of a promotion.”

“Oh, yes, promoting someone because you want to bang them, that’s much better.”

“And your suggestion?”

“Bang her. Not like you’d be the first executive to do it. Although you may be her first…” Elizabeth finger-gunned Janet, to which Janet enthusiastically did not consent.

“I’m sure a young woman as engaging and alluring as Wendy Cedar has far better prospects than—it doesn’t matter. I’ll find some way to deal with the situation. A realistic way.”

“Maybe you’ll be lucky and she’ll end up being the spy.”

“Ha!” Janet stopped laughing quickly. Then she reopened Wendy’s window. “Then again, that would resolve everything…”

“And now you’re dealing with your feelings by accusing others of espionage. Have you learned nothing from me?”

“‘Beer before liquor, never been sicker,’” Janet quoted, somewhat frantically paging through Wendy’s messages. The woman was infuriatingly business-like when it came to her correspondence on company time. She actually used her work e-mail for work, the freak.

“Let’s think about this rationally, though,” Elizabeth said, hopping up on one of Janet’s shorter filing cabinets and crossing her legs under her. “You’re you, Janet Lace, who has needed to get laid since before you legally could get laid.”

“That’s a very creepy thing to say,” Janet replied.

“And you were married for a bit, which at least presented the possibility of sex—mostly since single women are irresistibly attracted to marrieds.”

“I’ve never been attracted to a married person in my life.”

“Okay, it’s just me, I’m sick. But now—now you are divorced. So what are your options for replacing the stick in your ass with—”

“Are you endeavoring to outdo the pedophilia comment?”

Elizabeth groaned as the iPod went over to the next song, a slow ballad. She jumped down, stomped over to it, and skipped to a bop. “Show a little gratitude, I’m trying to get you laid here. So what are your options? There’re hookers…”

Janet shook her head in quite involuntary amusement. “Oh, that’s my first option?”

“Hey, they’re sex workers, let them go first for once. The problem being, most of them are straight. Have you ever been eaten out by a straight woman?”

“By definition, no.”

“It’s like your pussy is the cockroaches on an episode of Fear Factor. Very bad for your self-esteem.”

Janet took off her glasses and kneaded her sinuses. “Well, you have thoroughly shot down my plan to debase myself with lesbian prostitutes. How should I repay your words of wisdom?”

“Wear tighter skirts,” Elizabeth replied without missing a beat. “Then there’s dating—”

“Sure you don’t want to go arranged marriage first? Mail-order bride?”

“Not in this economy. Now, I assume you’ve absorbed enough of me talking about my dating life to know you wouldn’t stand a chance. You’d be like a seal on Shark Week. At best, you manage to jump through the air in HD slow-motion before a Great White jumps after you and bites you out of the air. Because, I love you, but you are not as good a date as me.”

“So I don’t put out?”

“Exactly.” Elizabeth wound her hands together. “Which leaves this young, impressionable, eager-to-please girl with a huge crush on you that just wants to have a clandestine office affair before Donald Trump starts World War 3.”

“Office romances never work out.”

Elizabeth flailed her hands by her ears. “I’m not saying you have to introduce her to your father—I don’t hate her or anything—I’m saying she so clearly wants to eat you. Just let her. Lie back and think of spreadsheets or whatever. Let your skin clear up and your pores open and your hair get that bounce in it again.”

“So she’s taking me to a spa at some point?”

“Excess sarcasm is a symptom of chastity.” Elizabeth waved a finger at her. “You’d be doing her a favor! She’ll be able to tell her grandkids about how when she was their age, she had a great fuck with a hot older woman, they’ll discover the love letters the two of you wrote, back and forth, they’ll turn it into a book, and then into a movie, older women will become sexy, by then I’ll be old, but then there’ll be all these new hot twentysomethings who want to have their own May/December romance.”

“I hardly think I’m a December.”

“August?” Elizabeth bargained.

“I’ll take it.”

“Where was I?”

“You were shutting up and letting me work.”

“I’m just saying, you remember what a big deal it was when Bound came out? She grew up on Bound! That’s her starting point.”

“I’m actually going through her e-mails and, believe it or not, there’s nothing in here about her being in treatment for nymphomania, so I think this obsession you’ve assigned her about me is sexualizing something entirely innocent—OH GOD!”

“What?” Elizabeth demanded, the smell of gossip propelling her next to Janet almost in a single bound. Janet was too stunned to close the window before Elizabeth could see.

Elizabeth saw. And laughed. “Ho, shit!”

Wendy’s phone rang. She stopped, staring at her computer screen, wondering whether to finish her thought or silence the most incessantly Pavlovian sound in the world, but then she realized she’d completely lost her train of thought and the e-mail was ruined anyway. And the phone was on its third ring. She picked it up. “Wendy Cedar.”

“Wendy. Smile.”

Wendy thought don’t tell me what to do before realizing it was Elizabeth introducing herself. “Yeah?”

“Janet wants to see you.”

“She really pays you just to make phone calls for her?”

“If you had the money, wouldn’t you?” Then Elizabeth hung up.

Wendy stared at her screen, trying to summon up however she’d been hoping to end the e-mail, but it was hopeless. She saved the draft and resolved to think on it over lunch. Or maybe the come-to-Jesus with Janet would jog something loose.

After a brisk walk from her end of the hall to Janet’s, she came to Elizabeth’s little cubby, was waved in, and finally arrived in Janet’s presence.

“Ms. Lace, hi,” Wendy opened. “Finally getting that Tupperware back to me, huh? I was totally okay with you keeping it, but yeah, super-considerate to be giving it back.”

Janet steamrolled over her attempts at sociability. “Do you recall subsection B, paragraph twelve, of your employment contract?”

“Hold on, I know this one, was just thinking of it five minutes ago—” Wendy didn’t know why she made lame jokes around Janet. She never laughed…well, sometimes she smiled.

“The contract that you signed, in the wake of the Patriot Act, designates this company as a defense contractor and you as a government employee with a corresponding security clearance. That being the case, in the event of a credible breach of corporate secrecy, we retain the right to go through private communications.”

“Excuse me?”

“We can read your e-mails,” Janet said, barely mustering a sigh over Wendy once more driving outside the fast lane.

“Read my—I have never, not once—I wouldn’t leak information, Janet, you know me. Who would I even leak it to?”

“Foreign powers. Corporate rivals. Stephen Colbert. How am I supposed to know?”

“Are you calling me a traitor? Are you sending me to Guantanamo Bay?” This seemed like the worst possible way to combine Janet and bondage. She was tempted to throw off a ‘do you know who my father is?’ as if that wouldn’t make her the bad guy in every eighties movie.

Janet picked up a file from her inbox, looking it over while Wendy’s outburst wrapped up. “No. Of course not. Honestly, Ms. Cedar, show some decorum.”

“You’re the one talking about…the Patriot Act and stuff!”

“Now, the leak has been found and it’s not you or anyone you know. But, in the course of investigating this security breach, I have seen your private files from the time of the incident. Do you recall sending an e-mail on the fifteenth of last month?”

Wendy rolled her eyes, a bit peeved at Janet for getting so heavy-handed with her just for entering a Fandango contest or whatever on company time. “Let me think—were there a lot of naked pictures of Jennifer Lawrence in it?”

Janet smirked—Wendy remembered how she had once thought of herself as a cinnamon roll, only now Janet was snitching some frosting off her.

Resetting her glasses on the bridge of her nose, she examined the document from the inbox once more. “From: WCedar@gmail.com. To: tinatee@gmail.com. Subject: Heatwave.” Janet cleared her throat. “‘Hey Tina, I took nutmeg before bed and it did nothing. I had insomnia all night, barely got four hours’ sleep, napped on the subway train like a tourist—horrible place to have the Dream. I’m not even sure I should tell you about it, you huge perv, after you promised me your dumb fad diet would have me dreaming about puppies and kittens and shit.’”

“Ummmmm,” said Wendy, who was now sure no, this was the worst possible combination of Janet and bondage, give her Gitmo any day. “That’s private and I don’t see what it has to do with the aerospace industry and you already said I wasn’t the mole, Jesus.”

Janet paused a moment, staring at Wendy as if trying to squeeze more words out of her suddenly parched throat, then continued. “‘Okay, so I’m dreaming that I’m working late in the office. Everything’s dark, it’s just me and Janet. I can see the lights of her office are on, but that’s the only light except for my computer. Suddenly, I get an e-mail from her.’”

“I remember it, okay!” Wendy cried, surprising herself at how strident she suddenly was. “And I’m absolutely sure I wrote that on my lunch break, so that’s not even a little bit company business!”

“Really?” Janet asked, setting the paper mercifully down. “Is this the kind of fixation you think one employee should have on another employee?”

“It wasn’t a—it was just a weird dream!”

“One of several.”

“They made a lot of Transformers movies too, so what!?”

“I’m going to have to make a record of this.”

That was like biting into an ice cube. Wendy’s co-workers didn’t even know she was gay. “Janet, please. C’mon. It was just a stupid dream I had that I told a friend about. It’s nothing, nothing—”

“I would like you to conclusively identify the contents of this electronic communication, and then go on record assuring this company that the events relayed were absolutely false and had no bearing on reality.”

And just like that, Wendy snapped back into peevishness. It figured. “This is all because you don’t want people to think you’re having an office romance? Fuck, why’d you hire Elizabeth then?”

She shouldn’t have said that. She should not have said that. But people tended to notice when someone as L Word as Janet hired a thirty-something Instagram model to be her secretary.

“Are you willing to refute these—” Janet held up the paper with a huff of disapproval “—allegations, or not?”

“I’ll do it.” Wendy laughed harshly, out of nowhere. “You want me to write ‘Janet Lace is straight’ fifty times on the blackboard, too?”

Janet stood up from her desk. “I’ll thank you not to presume my sexual orientation.”

“Oh, you mean you have one?” Despite her looks, or maybe a little bit because of them, Janet was just about the most dead-below-the-waist woman Wendy had ever met. For a woman so achingly lovely, she was as withholding and tightly wound as a submarine hatch.

Janet’s reply was to open another, bigger drawer in her desk. She took out a video camera, the kind that fit neatly on one hand. She opened up the little viewfinder window and aimed it at Wendy before setting it down on her desktop. “Identify yourself for the record.”

Wendy heaved a sigh. “Wendy Augustine Cedar.”

“Augustine,” Janet repeated ponderously.

“It means ‘beloved of God’.”

“No, it doesn’t. Read now.”

Wendy shied away from the sight of her reflection in the camera lens, picking up the document and making an effort not to crush it in her grip. “‘From: WCedar@gmail.com—’”

“Skip to where I left off,” Janet instructed. “You’d received an e-mail…”

And then she did a funny thing.

She unbuttoned the first button on her blouse.

For Janet, that was a lot of button.

It was a lot of button for Wendy, too.

“Read,” Janet said, and Wendy scanned the document to find her place, wondering how in the hell she was going to survive reading this out loud, with Janet watching her, with her button unbuttoned.

Wendy cleared her throat. She could feel Janet’s eyes on her—all over her, in fact—searching for the slightest hint of weakness, probably. Well, she wouldn’t be disappointed. Wendy could feel sweat like acupuncture needles, on her brow, the nape of her neck, under her arms, behind her knees. How could she suddenly be doing this at the end of the work-day, right when she should be wrapping up to go home? She should’ve been given advance notice, like for a meeting. A chance to freshen up. What she wouldn’t give for a hobo shower right about now.

“‘The e-mail tells me to go to Janet’s office,’” Wendy read, forcing her voice to be as strong and strident as it could be. She wouldn’t be intimidated. She’d read the goddamn e-mail like it was King Lear. “So I get up and I go. It feels like a mile, going through the dark office with all the darkened computer screens, the only light coming from Janet’s waiting office. Finally, I get there and I’m feeling this burning in my legs, like I’ve had a really good jog…yes, Tina, such a thing exists—’”

“Speak up, please,” Janet said.

Janet’s comment jerked Wendy back to reality. Not letting her lose herself in her recital, the bitch, her voice was perfectly audible. Wendy raised her voice. “‘I open the door. Or I try to, because just as I’m reaching it, it flies open, and who should be coming out but Elizabeth, bare-ass naked. Thank you, subconscious.’” Wendy deliberately met Janet’s eyes to dryly enunciate “‘Smiley face.’”

Janet offered her a thin smile as she paused the recording. Then pressed her intercom button. “Elizabeth, would you join us for a moment?”

“Yeah, boss,” Elizabeth replied, and Wendy’s heart skipped a beat.

Goddamn, but Janet knew every trick in the book. That confidence was part of what made her so appealing, but it was a bitch to have it turned on you. As hot—Wendy meant to think ‘empowering,’ she immediately corrected herself—as it was to see Janet demolish some jackass who doubted her credentials or criticized her because of her personal life rather than her work—and as fun as it was to imagine what else Janet might be a master of—at the moment, Wendy wished Janet was at least a little bit human, feeling at least a little bit of the vulnerability she felt.

Elizabeth came in, still looking like she and Janet were role-playing some sort of Mad Men sex scene.

Janet greeted her with a warm smile, in marked contrast to the decidedly more pinched one she had given Wendy. At the moment, Wendy would’ve given anything to be on Janet’s grin list.

“Wendy here,” Janet said, “is under the impression that we’re lovers.”

“I didn’t say that,” Wendy said quickly.

“You implied it.”

“I did not!”

Janet rewound the camcorder. Played the last few seconds. The audio quality was excellent. Wendy had bought a digital camera and somehow it only managed pictures in sepia tones. Of course Janet would practically have her own Q Branch in comparison.

“I think that’s a very clear implication,” Janet said, while Wendy looked around for a fire extinguisher that could handle her burning cheeks. “Now, Elizabeth,” Janet continued, “are we dating?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Are you single?”

“No. There’s this chick in security, she’s great, tightest ass you’ve ever seen—”

“Katie?” Wendy guessed, and Elizabeth nodded enthusiastically.

“Thank you, Elizabeth,” Janet said with a note of finality. “And am I single?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thanks. That will be all.”

Dismissed, Elizabeth turned on her heel and left the room. She closed the door behind her.

“You may resume,” Janet said, pressing the record button again.

Wendy gave her a fixed look, barely glancing at the paper. She remembered the dream all too clearly. “‘I go into the office and there Janet is. Behind her desk.’”

Wendy paused, noting Janet’s current position with dark irony. As if in response—and there was definitely a wan acknowledgment in how Janet’s eyebrows jostled curiously—Janet got up from her perch, came around her desk, and now leaned against it, facing Wendy. She looked even more unbelievable in full, her pencil skirt gracing her legs like dark leaves after a brisk spring rain, her white silk blouse tight to her body. It’d fallen lower with her motion, the unbuttoned portion gaping wide over the beginnings of the black lace camisole underneath.

Wendy felt absurdly tempted by that glimpse, like Janet had set out bait for her and was ready to spring a trap when she went for it. There was the slightest of upticks at the corner of Janet’s mouth; a smirking smile waiting to be born when Wendy accepted the challenge. Wendy didn’t know if she should ignore it or… There was no way Janet wanted her to make a move, was there?

Of course not. Absolutely not. She was just trying to fluster Wendy and Wendy had to be unflusterable. Or, you know, an actual word.

Damn, Janet’s necklace… Wendy would give a lot to spend five minutes as that necklace. Be close to that cleavage and be wrapped around Janet’s throat? Wasn’t that the American Dream?

“‘She starts riding me—’” Here Wendy paused, giving Janet her own impish look. She might not’ve been able to keep a relationship going for so much as three dates, but she could sure as hell get one started, and looks like the one she gave Janet were a big reason why. In terms of eye-fucking, her dick was bomb.

“‘As usual,’” Wendy continued, gratified to see Janet blink a few times. “‘I don’t know what it is—no one likes getting read the riot act. But when Janet does it, it’s like I’m a teenager again. My palms are sweaty and my throat is dry and my knees are weak. All that…’”

Wendy paused again, unconsciously this time. Christ, this really was embarrassing. Was Janet really doing it for some sort of ego trip or was she trying to cover her ass against some sort of lawsuit?

“‘All that intelligence and intensity focused on me, even castigating me, it’s intoxicating. I almost want her to make me cry. Slap me. Hug me and tell me she knows I’m doing my best. I don’t even know. All I know is, in the dream I don’t have to know. I don’t have to worry about doing the right thing, because Janet takes control. She tells me I’ve been slacking off, being inefficient, the usual—and that if I’m not getting paid to work, maybe I should be doing something else…’”

Wendy’s voice trailed off. Her eyes had been locked on the page, going over the crisp black letters. There was not a single dot of blotted ink. Janet’s printer had put it all down perfectly, making it look realer than real. On her computer, the words had been minutely distorted by her old monitor with its lightly-smeared screen, but on paper, they might as well have been carved in stone.

She couldn’t bear to look up, to see Janet waiting expectantly. Her hands gripping the edge of her desk. Those long fingers curling into the darkness underneath…

“Is this what you want?” Wendy asked in a low voice, wondering if Janet would call the whole thing off, say it was all a prank, that she just wanted to know how far Wendy would go before sniffing bullshit.

But Janet stared back at her. Her blouse seemed to have lost another button. Wendy could see more of the curves of her breasts, the darkness inside her half-closed blouse, where the lace camisole tattooed her bare body. Just one brushing touch to make that unbuttoned blouse fall open, to see Janet’s plunging cleavage in more detail than ever before—to know if that look in her eyes was desire or disdain.

“Keep going,” Janet said, her voice husky. Almost hoarse.

Wendy didn’t look at the paper again. “‘Her legs are crossed, but when she uncrosses them, I can see into her skirt. She’s not wearing any panties. Her cunt is beautiful.’” The word, crude and overwhelming, sounded bizarrely loud in the office. Like someone could overhear.

Janet shifted her legs. Her skirt moved a scant half-inch up her thigh.

Wendy could see smooth skin, firm muscle; tense muscle. She looked back up into Janet’s eyes. It was getting hard to look away from them for too long.

“‘I start to go to her. She says no: I’m her employee. She’s the boss. I should show my…’” Wendy had to swallow “‘…my respect. I get down on my knees. Then I put my hands on the floor. I swear, I could feel every fiber of the carpet. Like I was really touching it. And, on all fours, I cross the office, convinced I wasn’t dreaming, feeling the carpet under my knees and my hands and feeling Janet look at me like she’s looking through me into that hot pit in my stomach, just like when I’m at work and I catch her staring at me from across the room. I crawl underneath her desk.”

Wendy was acutely aware of her breathing. Every breath granting her a reprieve from having to read this, and frustratingly putting more distance between seeing what Janet’s reaction would be.

“‘I kiss her knee and she spreads her legs and I can smell her, really smell her, you know how long it’s been since I’ve smelled a woman there? And I could’ve sworn that was how Janet’s cunt would smell, I woke up almost wanting to sniff her panties so I could know for…for…’”

“For sure?” Janet ventured. Her hands weren’t on the desk anymore. They were delicately poised on the hem of her skirt, thumb and forefinger alone, skimming its length up her knees, up her thighs…

“For sure,” Wendy confirmed numbly. This wasn’t some game. Janet was way too dignified to be so brazen for a joke. This was actually—she was actually propositioning her. Her gaze fled from Janet, like she’d been staring into the sun—finding no solace in the stark, sexual words of the document. “‘I bow my head, feeling my ears rub against her inner thighs as I move closer and closer to her cunt. I knew from the beginning it was wet, but the closer I get, the more I learn just how wet she is. How much she wants me. I decide to try something different, something I think will please her. Closing my eyes, I—’”

That was the end of the page. Wendy moved to shift through the sheaf of papers to the one below it, but her fingers were clumsy, and she sort of crumpled the page on top and dropped a few and, worst of all, said “Oopsie!”

Janet cocked her head. “I think that’s enough.”

She stopped the recording. She’d been sitting parallel to the camera—it’d caught none of what she’d been doing.

“I can keep going if you want,” Wendy said through the lump in her throat. Then—either because she wanted to show Janet up or just wanted to spend more time in Janet’s presence on the off-chance Janet’s hands could do more things with her skirt—she went a step further. “You can leave the camera off.”

There. That was about as open an invitation as Wendy could make without combusting on the spot. Her anxiety was screaming at her to jump through the nearest window (fastest way to leave the building), her pussy was demanding she take off some underwear (her nipples concurred), and her stomach was standing by to reintroduce last night’s peach cobbler if Janet did the sensible thing and told her to fuck off.

“I like having the camera on.” Janet smiled jauntily. “Do you know why?”

Wendy felt faint. Was this what being hypnotized felt like? Stop looking at Janet’s skirt, she is definitely still wearing it! “Why?”

“Because when it’s late at night, and I’m bored, I can watch this recording. I have a very nice TV, Wendy. Great sound system, too.”

“I bet,” Wendy said, sounding vaguely like she was having a stroke.

“And while I watch it, in the privacy of my own home, I can touch myself. My womanhood. My breasts. My clit.”

Hearing Janet Lace say the word ‘clit’; Wendy thought she came a little.

Janet’s smile widened, like she had some radar for Lace-induced orgasms. “Whatever I want, really. I’m sure you’ve thought about touching me, so you can understand how much I would enjoy it.”

Wendy just nodded. Had she died? Was this Purgatory? Please, Demon Janet, show me some more of your gams before poking me with a pitchfork.

Janet nodded to herself, like she was more mentally setting plans aloud than communicating with Wendy. “And watching you, listening to you—I think I’ll most definitely come. While I imagine you under my desk. Eating me out.” She clapped her hands together in the self-congratulatory manner of all office bosses.

Wendy jumped.

“I just have that same fantasy, you know. What’re the odds? Having you service me while I take a phone call or compose an e-mail. It’s the kind of thing I’d really enjoy.”

Sheer need drove Wendy’s thighs together, squeezed them so tightly she’d need a crowbar to get them apart. “Uh-huh,” she said, unable to fully close her mouth after that utterance.

Janet scooped up the camera. “Well. Thank you for helping me get this out of the way so quickly and painlessly. I was hoping to have this wrapped up by the end of the business day. I think you should be able to beat rush hour and I might be able to catch the subway, which is a great relief. Don’t you find it hard to unwind when you leave unfinished business at the office?”

This time, Wendy didn’t answer. The capacity for speech had deserted her. All she could think of was the sensation of afterglow in her groin—the wet, leaden warmth of the voluptuous pleasure she’d felt. Janet had done that. Without even touching her. Without taking off a single item of clothing.

Janet looked Wendy over, looking faintly embarrassed by the state she’d reduced her to. Then she shrugged and moved for the door. “I think I’ll give you a raise,” she said in passing.

Wendy grabbed her arm.

Janet looked at her as usual. Warningly. Chidingly. Challengingly. “Miss Cedar—”

“Wendy,” she corrected, and kissed Janet as hard as she could.

Well, that was her tongue down Janet’s throat.

Wendy had forgotten for a moment. Because it was a good kiss. A really, really good kiss. Janet’s mouth just fit to hers, lips moving in sudden harmony, moving against hers, under hers, her tongue pushing against Wendy’s in a way seemingly designed to elicit the outright pornographic moan that Wendy felt rise up in her throat. So for a good twenty seconds, Wendy’s mind was blank and all she could think was:

A. she was kissing the fuck out of someone, and

B. they were kissing the fuck out of her right back.

Then she stopped and oh God, oh God, she was kissing Janet. Her boss Janet. Another woman Janet. Boss-lady Janet. Janet Lace.

Her

Fucking

Boss.

Wendy pulled away, seeing the exact same storm of indecision on Janet’s face that must’ve been on her own. Almost confusion over what had happened, the sudden passion that had seized them. The fact of how pleasurable it had been, how heated it had been, and the fact of who it had been with, and how, and why.

She’d kissed her fucking boss and her fucking boss had liked it.

Just in Wendy’s opinion.

Because just like that, Janet snapped shut again, her face blank except for the slightest pursing of her lips, reddened as they were by a trace of Wendy’s lipstick. Wendy’s eyes were drawn to it; Janet seemed to be on the verge of sucking on her lower lip, maybe? But she restrained herself.

Janet’s teeth showed a sharp, ivory white as she spoke. “I think you should go.”

Wendy said, in a voice about as small as it could get without consciously being a whisper, “Oh.”

She felt numb, and a strong sense of curiosity at her own numbness. She really hadn’t known her own heart could just flatline like that. She wasn’t in high school anymore. She didn’t crush on people that hard. Only apparently she had been crushing on Janet exactly that hard, and apparently she’d actually hoped there could be something there on second ten of the twenty-second kiss, thinking this could be a heavily censored story for the grandkids one day. And then…nope. Flat-out denial, everything burnt to cinders in a second. She felt like gagging on sobs, vomiting as she cried, but, dead-faced, she turned around and went for the door.

Jesus. Her fucking boss.

Wendy didn’t bother going back to her desk. She went straight to the elevator. She was probably fired, and if she was operating on more than a fifth-grade reading level, she might’ve thought to collect some things from her desk. No, no, not under Janet’s watchful eye; tail between her legs, gathering up her things like she was looting a corpse. She didn’t care if it took ten hours, she’d wait for Janet to leave, then get her things. The security guards all liked her, they’d let her in for a few minutes, believe her when she said she wouldn’t drop a deuce on anything. Right now, she just had to go. Just go. See if there was anywhere she could scream her lungs out without getting the police called.

She was walking through the lobby with vague plans of ducking into an alley, crying her eyes out, and maybe getting stabbed by a mugger for good measure, when suddenly Elizabeth was in front of her. She held a box.

“Janet wanted me to give you this,” she said. “You really thought we were dating?”

“I don’t know what I thought,” Wendy replied, stiffly taking the box as Elizabeth passed it to her. Her severance papers, probably. Hell, maybe all of her personal stuff. Janet wouldn’t even let her sulk back to box it up herself. Maybe she’d had it cleaned out while they were talking. Maybe she was some kind of psycho who got off on humiliating her employees before she fired them. Maybe you shouldn’t have kissed your fucking boss, Wendy.

“Hey,” Elizabeth said, suddenly sounding as concerned as a well-paid psychologist. “Everything okay?”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. Go, go, get out of here. Mistress Janet probably wants a latte.”

“All right,” Elizabeth agreed, looking like she’d much rather soothe and comfort Wendy by any means necessary. On any other day, Wendy would’ve loved that. “Call me if you need anything?”

“Yeah.” Wendy would not sniffle. She would not. “Of course.”

With a nod and a final sympathetic look, Elizabeth headed back.

It occurred to Wendy that she’d just seen Elizabeth for the last time. She’d just seen everyone for the last time.

She couldn’t think about that. The box in her hands was solid, one of those Amazon jobs, a block of cardboard taped shut at the top. Wendy got out her keys and dragged them along the taped opening, and was jostling her keys back into her pocket when her phone rang.

Like another ball had just been added to her juggling act, Wendy mixed up tucking the box under her arm and switching the keys for her phone, finally stopping to put her keys firmly in her pocket (the phone maddeningly, insistently ringing) and then drawing the phone out. She answered it in a huff. “What?”

“Don’t open the box here,” Janet said.

Wendy looked around. On the second floor, overlooking the first floor lobby, Janet was leaning on the baluster, staring down at her. It was too far for them to really hear each other without phones, mollifying the ridiculousness of the situation somewhat, but Wendy still felt like shouting across the thirty or forty feet between them. Preferably something rude.

“What do you care?” Wendy asked. “What is it, anyway? Seven Habits of Highly Efficient People Who Don’t Get Fired For Sexual Harassment?”

Even from a distance, Wendy could see Janet’s brows knit together. “Who fired you?”

“You did!”

“You’re not fired.”

“Yes, I am!”

“Wendy, who would know better, you or me?”

Wendy realized, familiarly enough, that she was being ridiculous. She took a deep, calming breath and tried to force her brain out of sleep mode. “So what’s in the box?”

“Go home. Then open it.”

“Oh, so the bomb only takes me out?”

Forty feet between them and Janet managed to fill it all with confused indignation. “It’s not a bomb!”

“Office supplies, then? You gonna frame me for stealing office supplies?” Wendy shook the box. “Maybe a tablet…”

“If it is a bomb, I’m sure shaking it’s a good idea.”

“You said it wasn’t a bomb.”

“You said it was!”

“Well, I say things, okay, I think out loud!”

“Good to know you do your thinking some way.”

Wendy harrumphed. Maybe the kiss had just been so good because Janet hadn’t been talking. “What is it?”

“Go home and find out. I gave you the rest of the day off for a reason.”

“Tell me or I’ll open it.”

“I said not to open it!”

Wendy peeled the tape back. “Janet?”

“Don’t open it in public, dummy, it’s a vibrator!”

Oh. Well then.

Janet took her own calming breath—more affected by their whatever than Wendy had figured—and then lowered her voice from the shrill hiss that had just gone into Wendy’s ear. Resuming the seductive timbre it’d had in her office, Janet said, “I would really like it if you were inspired by me. The same way I am by you. Especially if you could send me…proof, shall we say?”

All the air had left Wendy’s lungs, never to return. “Proof. Okay,” she wheezed.

“You have my phone number,” Janet finished, and hung up her phone. Without a second look, she turned around and walked.

Well, that ass was inspiring.

Her legs decidedly unsteady, Wendy put one foot in front of the other, the lobby stretching before her for an eternity, each of them determined to outlast the other.

She wasn’t fired.

She was going to masturbate while thinking about Janet Lace.

While filming herself doing it.

For Janet Lace.

She wondered how this would affect the bonus situation…

Well, it was a vibrator, Wendy could say that with some confidence. What it was supposed to vibrate, she had no idea. Oil derricks? Small naval ships? Kinky elephants? Jesus, it looked like a suppository for Optimus Prime. It looked like a baby redesigned by H.R. Giger. It looked like the little dangling thing at the back of your throat if you were a monster truck.

Wendy definitely didn’t have enough lubricant for this. Maybe she was supposed to ride it? Had it come with a saddle? She checked the box. No saddle.

“Maybe she forgot the saddle.” Wendy took a drag from the bottle. She’d been saving the tequila for a special occasion, it being a gift and her not really liking tequila, but if there was one way to describe having your boss sexually proposition you, getting a vibrator from her, and then not being able to figure out the mechanics of clitoral stimulation like she was a guy or something, she supposed ‘special’ was on the list.

Maybe it was literally a massager. Like, for your back. If she laid down on it, it would work the kinks out of her back, and that was Janet’s fetish.

Only it looked like it would roll around, like a medicine ball. A medicine ball that had also tried to kill Sarah Connor.

She swigged some more tequila. It was getting better the more she had of it. Maybe that was the design principle behind the vibrator. Sure, the first foot or so would hurt, but then, like, by the metric system…

E-mail. Wendy happily abandoned the vibrator-slash-possible-Roswell-artifact to get on her laptop. She would send Janet a nice e-mail saying that, while she was very excited about the prospect of kinky sex with her—preferably kinky in the sense of Miley Cyrus trying to be shocking, not the backroom of a sex shop—she would prefer something that had less mental association with a C-section for her. Maybe, it being their first date and all, Janet could just pee on her?

Wendy quickly hit backspace. Don’t suggest peeing, obviously. Handcuffs? Probably give her a cramp. Whips? Riding crops? Painful. She didn’t get the appeal. If she wanted sex to hurt, she would date a woman with long nails.

“I was born in the wrong decade,” Wendy lamented to her computer. “I managed to be prepubescent through the years when just being a lesbian was kinky enough, and now that I’m in my twenties, I have to pretend I like strap-ons.”

Maybe a dog collar. That wasn’t so bad. A little demeaning, but hell, she rode the subway. Of course, a collar also meant she’d have to let Janet put a leash on her, right? Again, not so bad, but it definitely seemed like there should be a hard NO in there somewhere.

Wendy counted off on her fingers. “Barking like a dog. Walking around on all fours… I should probably only be called a bitch once or twice. I’m not that hip, that’s not a friendly thing for me.”

She jotted that down. This was coming together nicely. What else, what else was kinky—blindfolds. She would totally let Janet blindfold her. And ice cubes. She didn’t really get the appeal of rubbing ice cubes all over someone, but if Janet was into that, she could meet her halfway. And leather clothes—she could do that, as long as it wasn’t summer. Leather didn’t breathe, after all.

Wendy took another swig. She could absolutely be kinky. It wasn’t a problem at all. Not like she’d never had a weird sexual fantasy in her life.

Going into work the next morning, Wendy felt a sense of relief that was almost giddy; Janet liked her. She felt a sense of nervousness that would’ve given Larry King three heart attacks. She’d actually admitted some of the things she wanted to do with Janet. They could actually happen. Or Janet could think she was a sick freak, or a wussy sick freak who wasn’t even sure about being peed on, or just…not enough. Not pretty enough, not experienced enough, not old enough. Whatever she wanted to give Janet, it didn’t tip the scales; too bad, so sad, go to the back of the line.

It was no small wonder that Wendy tried assiduously to feel nothing at all. Just get it over with, Janet, and tell me you want to fuzzy handcuff someone else. Or Janet could bend her over that desk, giving Wendy a once-in-a-lifetime enjoyment of a sex act involving hardwood. That was a good possibility. Wendy could get high on that possibility. It was a possibility so good, she almost wanted to wait on it happening so she could keep anticipating it. If only she could rule out the possibility of Janet doing the other thing, the thing with no sex!

Wendy entered Janet’s office clutching her purse like she was doing a drug deal. “Is it true bread helps with hangovers?”

“Does bread help with…” Janet paused. “Are you on lunch break?”

“I think I’ve been on lunch break since I drank the worm.” Wendy limped over to Janet’s desk, helped herself to a chair, and slumped down in it. “Why?”

“I just don’t like to be conducting personal business on company time.”

Wendy smiled. This definitely didn’t seem to be going in a ‘let’s not have sex’ direction. “So we’re having lunch together?”

“I suppose, technically—”

“You order pizza? I think I could stomach some pizza.”

Brow furrowed, Janet reached down to open a drawer. “I have some power bars. And a bottle of water.”

“That’ll do,” Wendy said. “I suppose I should pack a lunch. Then I can just bring it in here and we can do lunch that way.”

“Or we could eat out,” Janet said.

There was a slight pause.

“Should I wink?” Wendy asked.

“I think you should’ve winked.”

“Sorry, I might still be a little drunk.”

Janet handed her a water bottle and two power bars.

Wendy took the bottle, uncapped it, gulped down water, then paused to say, “So, get any good e-mails lately?” Then drank more.

“I did,” Janet announced evenly. She turned to her laptop. “‘Dear Boss MILF, have you ever seen the movie Ella Enchanted? In it, Ella, played by Anne Hathaway, is under a spell where she has to do whatever anyone tells her to do, no matter how embarrassed it makes her. I think it’d be kinda hot if I dressed up as Ella and you told me to do stuff and maybe I cried a little and then we did sex.’” Janet paused a moment. “And this next line is either a typo or a saying in Swahili.”

Wendy pursed her lips. “Probably a typo.”

“Yes. Moving on. ‘P.S. no butt stuff.’” Janet resolutely tapped on her keyboard to close the e-mail, then just stared at Wendy, as unimpressed as a Downton Abbey character would be with the poor.

“I was drunk,” Wendy said. “We can negotiate on the butt stuff. Wait, who would be doing the butt stuff and who would be receiving?”

“Is this you making fun of me?”

Wendy held her hands up. “No, Ella Enchanted is actually a pretty good movie. I mean, it’s no Princess Bride, what is? But it’s a pretty good-faith effort. It has Hugh Dancy from Hannibal, which gives the whole thing an added layer of hilarity if you’re a Hannibal fan, which you should be, and they also got Eric Idle, and Anne Hathaway is great in it, I really don’t understand the backlash, she’s talented, she’s charming—”

“Wendy!”

“—willing to do nude scenes.” Wendy stopped and held her head. “I promise, I’m not making fun of you.”

“What does MILF mean?”

“Mother I’d Like to…Friend.”

Janet nodded, as if that made sense. “I thought we were going to have an…an intimacy. I told you what I wanted you to do and you seemed fine with it.”

“I was! I am! But Janet, look at this thing.” Wendy plonked her purse down on Janet’s desk and wrestled the supposed vibrator out of it. “I mean, come on! If I ran an auto shop, I wouldn’t have enough lube for that! Who do you think I’ve been dating, the Expendables?”

“It has a very high user rating on Amazon!” Janet objected, trying hard to look Wendy in the eye as Wendy waved the thing in front of her face.

“Well, then the company had to have paid for good reviews, because there is no way that many women have a fantasy of being fucked by Ultron.”

Elizabeth chose then to poke her head in the door. “Jan, Mr. Marlowe needs an answer on the conference, ASAP.” She didn’t actually raise an eyebrow at the sight of a vibrator being waved in her boss’s face, but managed to convey one entirely through voice. “Didn’t Indiana Jones find that in his last movie?”

Wendy stuffed it back in her purse. Naturally, it didn’t quite fit.

Janet leaned to one side of her. “Tell Marlowe I’m reviewing the options right now.”

Elizabeth closed the door behind her.

Wendy successfully got her purse to do a sword-swallowing act. “I mean, I get that that part is to stimulate my clit, but what are all these for? How many clits do you think I have?” She looked up to see Janet jotting out a quick e-mail. “Seriously?”

Janet stopped, slapping her hands down on the keyboard with a crunch of keys. Then she took her hands away and backspaced through all the gibberish she’d just made. “This was a mistake.”

“It’s okay, you can just press Ctrl-Z.”

“No, this.” Janet slammed the laptop shut. “I gave you a simple instruction to gauge your willingness to enter into an arrangement, and the next day, all you’re interested in is immature jokes and excuses.”

“Willingness?” Wendy asked, not giving an inch. “I think I proved how willing I was when I came into your office and let you fuck me.”

“I didn’t lay a finger—”

“I didn’t say you touched me, I said you fucked me.” Wendy’s lips curled around the word, relishing the slight emphasis she put into it, the quiver she saw go through Janet. Not much—the radio mast on a skyscraper in a high wind—but she saw it. “You asked me into your office and you. Fucked. Me.”

Janet stood up slowly, like a rattlesnake uncoiling its head, and Wendy thought maybe this hadn’t been exactly the best tack to take. “You should leave this office right now.”

“Or what?” Wendy asked, marshaling her willpower. It didn’t hurt that Janet with her arms steepled on her desk, glaring at Wendy with all kinds of power, inspiring the kind of awe most people only got from religion, was actually kinda hot. “You’ll spank me?”

“I ought to,” Janet snapped. “I should bend you over this desk and paddle your ass until you’re begging me to stop.” The very tip of the left side of Janet’s lip hooked upward. “Or to keep going. As long as you beg.”

God, she could be a smug bitch. “Is that supposed to scare me? Do it. You have my permission or safe word or whatever. Get on with it. Punish me already.”

And as Janet stared at her, her lips looking as dry as Wendy’s felt, her gaze raking over Wendy’s body like fingernails down her back, like warm water over her skin, Wendy realized something.

Janet was into her. She was attracted to her. Janet Lace had a big fucking girl-crush—scratch that, regular crush, sexy crush—on her. Wendy Cedar. After all, Janet had seen her go-sign and she’d taken it. What was that? Target of opportunity? No, Janet Lace could have any woman she wanted. It was just that she wanted Wendy. Nothing else to it. After all, it wasn’t like this was Jane Austen and she was trying to marry into a well-to-do family… Well, Wendy was from a well-to-do family, but it still wasn’t Jane Austen!

And then, just like that, Janet snapped shut. Wendy saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes, some inner decision-making tilting to one side, and then the mask was back up. Janet regarded Wendy like something on the side of the road. She rose to her full height, her fingers tapering off the desk.

“I believe I asked you to leave,” Janet said. “Please return to your office and resume your work.”

Wendy bit the inside of her cheek, weighting her options, whether to press Janet, whether it was unthinkably insane to try to press Janet, then realizing that her best bet was to sweat Janet a little and she’d already done that enough, insouciantly lingering in her presence. “All right,” she said. “And I won’t even make you promise not to watch my ass as I go.”

And as she went—feeling like she had more sway than her iPod—Wendy wondered if she’d actually been cool for a moment there.

Janet thought of starting up the Kee Bird like playing a symphony, note by note, every key struck lingering in the air as pregnant as a thunderhead. There’d be the quadruplets of the control panel, one for each of the Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone engines: Polly, Ida, Norma, and Pat.

She’d start with Norma; her first cat had been named Norman. The battery switch would set voltage meters flickering, the needles moving like the twitching finger in a zombie movie. Then the rest would follow in satisfying sequence, each a little crescendo: the auxiliary power unit and the mixture levels and the throttle and the booster pumps; the circuit breakers and booster coil; the start and prime switches.

That would do it: there’d be a metal scream from the starter, the propeller jerking like a body hit by a bullet, the slow spin that followed, and then the magneto, like a flick of a horse’s reins sending it into motion once it’d been saddled. The deeply held breath of the exhaust would finally exhale, hacking up flame wrapped in smoke, and the prop would twirl faster, faster, oil pressure rising, oil temperature rising, reaching for the green…

Janet imagined that the smoke didn’t stop with the engine clearing its throat, but continued: a never-ending purge of oily black that surrounded the cockpit in a sheath of night. The rattle of the engines growing jarring, hard, unfriendly; shaking the ship that held them like a hound with its prey. The smoke seeping into the cabin, the gauges malfunctioning. The fire now: heat pushing into the cockpit, flame following, pushed by the smoke or pulling it along, some terrible symbiosis devouring the plane between the two of them. The metal groaning as it was rent. As it blistered, bubbling, the entire plane the surface of a skillet, the air filled with the hazy distortion of the heat, stinging the eyes even before the smoke hit, the fire struck. If you were lucky, maybe there was enough fuel left to explode and rip you out of the plane the only way that you could get loose…

“Mrs. Lace?” Mary Borchardt called.

Janet snapped to attention to see that the room’s gaze had turned to her. She was in the middle of a meeting—a meeting scheduled for two hours, which meant it was now at three and a half hours. And she had spaced out. She never spaced out.

She stood, adjusting her jacket for a beat as she reoriented herself, noticing a sheen of schadenfreude as those present enjoyed her being caught in an unprofessionalism. Very well. Let them have their fun. They wouldn’t get another laugh at her expense.

She moved to the head of the table to begin her presentation.

The sun set, the lights switched off, and Janet’s workday ended about an hour after Elizabeth had left. She decided she needed a better time management system. There was no reason she should be working these late hours. In the morning, she would ask Elizabeth to find her some decent applicants. With any luck, a few of them would work out, and she’d be able to delegate better.

Maybe Roberta was right. She couldn’t do everything herself. She had to let others do some of it before she became a holy terror of micro-managing. Napoleon on Elba.

As she left her office, pulling on her gloves, Janet looked across the floor to the front partition of Wendy’s office and was relieved to find no light pushing through the opaquely pebbled windows or under the door. Then she was amused, if darkly, at her own relief. What did she have to fear from Wendy Cedar?

Why did she still have a flutter in her stomach after she’d decided it was inadvisable?

She walked through the darkened offices, exchanging greetings with the cleaning crew as they filtered in, and then she entered the elevator.

Wendy Cedar was inside.

She wore the same respectable suit she’d had on when she’d entered Janet’s office—a dark knee-length skirt, a white blouse with subtle polka dots, the sleeves rolled nearly to her shoulders. Her jacket was in her hands, folded over her purse, and Janet could see the power of her musculature, trickling down her arms in tension and tautness.

Janet faced her evenly as she stepped beside her, then looked straight ahead. “What floor?”

“Whatever’s good.”

“Were you waiting for me?”

“I thought you might have something to say to me.”

Janet pressed the button for the lobby. She pulled her hand back, seeing her and Wendy’s reflections in the glossy metal that surrounded the white buttons. Even blurred and stretched by the impromptu mirror, Wendy drew her gaze.

Wendy’s finger went back. It pressed the Stop button. With a shrill jangle of an alarm, the elevator stopped. Without the hum of its movement, the silence begged for something to be said.

Janet turned her head slightly toward Wendy, barely enough to see her out of the corner of her eye. “If I had fucked you, you’d know it.”

“That’s what I said,” Wendy insisted. “The way you talked to me, the way you looked at me—”

Janet turned her attention fully to Wendy. Looked her in the eye. Nothing more than a vexing issue. An itch. A tingle that had to be addressed.

She could deal with that. “You’d know it,” she reiterated. “And right now, you don’t.”

“Okay,” Wendy said. “I don’t. But you got to at least third base with me.”

“This is a lesbian relationship, Ms. Cedar. Third base is as many bases as there are, to my knowledge.”

“Okay, second base. There are a lot of things that count as second base, and that was one of them.”

Now Janet turned slightly. Canting her hip as she placed one heel closer to Wendy. “Is that what you’ve waited all this time to tell me?”

“I wasn’t waiting to tell you anything,” Wendy said. She dropped her purse and jacket between them. And, her cheeks flushing, her eyes demurely glancing away, she reached to the hem of her skirt and pulled it up her thighs.

Janet watched. She watched idly wondering if she should, could, look away, even when she could think of no reason to. It itched that she couldn’t look away—that she didn’t want to.

Wendy’s thighs were firm and flat, not rippling with muscle, but potently taut with it. They gleamed with a little gold sheen, and if Janet could’ve thought, she would’ve registered envy. But Wendy’s side was facing her, and she was turning slightly as she raised her skirt, so that her ass was facing Janet. Her panties. There was no crass logo on the back, no forced slogan, just the simple fact of white fabric stretched to translucence by her pert buttocks, the simple heft and lift of them revelatory, taking everything of Janet’s away but lust.

It didn’t make her lust for Wendy. It just stripped away everything in Janet until she was aware of the sheer want that was in her.

Then, with her skirt raised high above her ass, Wendy let go of it with one hand and brought that hand down on her cheek with a sudden, resonant smack. Air shot into Wendy’s mouth as she inhaled sharply, sounding discordantly loud; the flesh jumped with a jiggle beneath Wendy’s panties as red flooded in under the gauzy fabric. She’d struck with real force, even mewled a little with pain, and long after the bounce had settled, Janet found herself staring at the skin. The little bit of suffering it was imbued with, that fading, replaced with the creamy hue of Wendy’s girlish health.

Her eyes flicked up to Wendy’s expression and her heart skipped a beat. Something about Wendy’s look was even better than her little display. There was something of pain—that grisly pride some took in being injured that always struck Janet as tomboyish. But there was also an eagerness to please, a keen curiosity as to whether she had pleased, even an affection, all of which Janet found utterly irresistible.

Wendy exhaled, a breath that was dragged out of her, flowing softly out from between parted lips.

Janet inclined her head to Wendy, putting her hand around the fingers of Wendy’s left hand and pulling it back from her skirt to let the thing fall back down. With her other hand, she smoothed it out, plying it back down Wendy’s legs to fix her appearance.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, feeling unnecessarily solicitous, but wanting to know.

“Not anymore. It was just one slap.” Wendy smiled at her, looking pleased with herself.

As pleased as Janet was.

“You think I’ve never had my ass slapped before?” Wendy asked.

Janet saw her and raised her. “If it doesn’t still hurt? Not really.”

Wendy bit her lip, giving Janet a look that was mostly curious, and all Janet could think was that most of the time when you were trying to fix a plane, even if it broke down again, you could always fix it up some more.

The elevator’s phone rang. Wendy jumped nearly out of her skin while Janet instinctively reached for it, tightening a vise-grip around everything she’d just felt.

It was building security. They wanted to know if everything was all right.

Wendy didn’t push after that. She seemed satisfied, even if Janet wasn’t. And if she wasn’t, then she at least understood there was only so fast Janet could go. A pace she set that she wouldn’t be rushed through.

Still, Janet lingered in the elevator after Wendy had gone. On her phone, looking up where Wendy lived.