Scissor Link by Georgette Kaplan (good books to read for adults .TXT) 📕

“Wait!”

“What? You already said it was diet.”

Wendy felt around in the lunchbox. “I got you some extra DayQuil too, in case you ran out. So you should probably take that before the Sprite, so you have something to wash it down—” Wendy then looked inside the lunchbox. “And I left it in my car. This is a very small lunchbox, there wasn’t a lot of room, and I was pretty worried about smashing the cookie.”

“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’tdo 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