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

or smelling a scent that instantly returned me to the wonder of childhood. I couldn’t shake the image of it sitting there on the snow, a talisman from an age that seemed more exciting and romantic than my own. I wanted to see it fly, to hear its engines roar.

 

Janet had to put the book down just to think of it:to take a team out there, put up some tents, and start in on the old girl. After seventy years, it would need work. Some parts fixed, others replaced, but if she could hand-pick a few guys, a few good guys, and get herself an expense account—rig some ski-wheels on the landing gear…

It was impossible, she knew it was impossible, but she’d thought it, Hoffman had thought it; she couldn’t imagine anyone who’d so much as thrown a paper airplane could not think it. Clear a runway, tinker with the engine, gas her up, and just go. Fly the last of the Super fortresses.

Some unpoetic part of Janet’s soul pointed out how frustrating it would no doubt be, since she was used to the more precise, computerized airplane, some of which she had worked on. What kind of idiot would want to give that up for an oversized crop duster?

But there was something about that generation of planes: the P-38 Lightning, the P-51 Mustang, the F4U Corsair—all the hanging models of her childhood that she’d only seen fly in a stiff breeze. They had an elegance, an indomitable spirit, an endurance where the modern jet fighter so often seemed fragile and temperamental, fussy as hell when they weren’t ingratiatingly smooth and responsive and soulless.

But a bird like the B-29…that had hot blood in its veins. It was the difference between riding a horse and a motorcycle. The bike might not fight you, might not buck you, but it was a slave. A horse, you had to fight a bit, give a bit of slack to—you had to respect her and get her to respect you. And when you did? When you put yourself into the horse and let the horse into you?

Janet remembered visiting her uncle’s stable growing up, the first time he’d let her cut loose and bring Humphrey Bogart the Pony to a gallop. It’d felt like they were flying.

How could you only want to fly once?

Wendy finished late, stepping out of her partitioned office and into a half-lit world of janitors gossiping. She almost felt like apologizing to them as she stepped on the neat lines of the vacuumed carpet, into the elevator, and descended to the lobby, where the night watchman was waiting to monitor her journey down the walkway to the parking garage next door.

That actually required another elevator ride, as Wendy’s parking space was on the fifth floor, and she was just too damn tired to take the stairs like Michelle Obama would want her to. She could hear her bed calling to her, an exciting evening for the career woman on the go. First up, we actually get home, waking us up all over again since you can’t find a commute to go with your new posting. Then we wash up again so tomorrow morning you don’t look like something trying to kill Jamie Lee Curtis. Then we lie in bed and try to watch something boring enough to put us to sleep, but not so boring that we’ll turn it off and be alone with our thoughts. Thank God for network television.

Then Wendy froze, all of a sudden woken right the hell up, no shower or motorcycle ride required. Janet Lace was around the corner.

She looked absolutely stunning. A very dark blouse, slightly maroon, accentuated her figure, with the gray jacket of the day off to allow the lines of her body to become apparent in the loose fabric. Good. Hell with it. Wendy hated that jacket in retrospect for reducing Peak Janet Lace to Edited-for-TV Janet Lace.

But the skirt that went with it was nice—a crisply gray, woolen thing that straddled her knees, somehow thrilling in how it left the smooth motion of her thighs unobstructed but invisible as she walked virtually in place, pacing the length of her car doors. Her cell phone was in her hands. She looked at it once, like a bad hand of cards, then stopped and planted her fists on her hips and almost blurred with the energy inside her. Wendy had never seen someone that frustrated concealing it that hard.

She turned abruptly.

Wendy was a deer in the headlights. She was sure Janet had never seen someone thisfrustrated not concealing it at all.

“Ms. Cedar,” Janet greeted, forcing cordiality to a point where it was almost polite.

It was hot, even at night, the parking garage cut out the cooling breezes, letting the air stifle. You wouldn’t know it from looking at Janet, though. Her skin didn’t sweat, it glimmered, a dewy layer of perspiration that struggled to pull one hair out of place. If she strained her eyes, Wendy could see a droplet of sweat caressing the line of her jaw…

“Ms. Lace.” Wendy shoved her hands in her pockets. “What’s up?”

Great pick-up line, her inner Professor Snape said. And how will we seal the deal? Going for a high-five?

With her hands in her pockets, her backpack started sliding from her shoulders. Wendy moved hurriedly to steady it. Then—and even her inner Professor Snape sighed in disbelief—she gave an anxious smile.

Janet mirrored Wendy, shoving her phone into her pocket. Holy shit, her skirt even has pockets. “A flat tire. I must’ve punctured it on the way over and now it’s completely flat.”

Wendy automatically moved forward to look at it. “You call a tow truck?”

“I tried,” Janet said, putting an aggravated emphasis on the word. She clenched her fists so tightly for a beat that her black leather gloves squelched together.

Wendy looked at her, but her ire seemed entirely self-directed, not coming her way at all.

“I had researched a very highly reviewed towing service, one which operates