Scissor Link Georgette Kaplan (best self help books to read .TXT) 📖

to stay with friends in the area, and everywhere else was booked. We’re lucky to get a five-star hotel at all.”

“Five stars!” Wendy guffawed. She got out her end of the cab and came around the car, stopping once more at Janet’s window. “This is a three-star hotel, four if they got the reviewer on a good day, but five? As what, an Airbnb?”

“Would you prefer to go around town, seeing if any of the Shriners have canceled their reservations?”

“There’s a Shriner convention in town?”

“Yes. I triple-checked.”

“I can’t believe Shriners are still a thing. I thought they went extinct or something. Where’ve they been all this time?”

“Apparently, here.”

Janet got them checked in, the porter handling the bags with ease. He had them to the elevator long before Wendy had returned from the bathroom, and Janet found herself wondering why Wendy was taking so long. And why she had taken her luggage with her?

Maybe she packed a book. No, she would’ve read it on the flight. Makeup? For what, she looked perfect? What else would someone bring on a trip? Change of clothes? But why would she need to change her clothes?

Then Wendy came back and Janet realized her coat covered her entire body. There was no way of knowing what she had on underneath. No way of knowing what she might have changed into.

As they rode the elevator up, the porter and the luggage cart and the elevator’s cramped interior conspired to push her toward Wendy. She felt like she had to pull back to stop from pressing into her. And she couldn’t stop thinking about what Wendy had on. Was her bag bulging? Just how much had Wendy taken off to put in there?

Janet imagined some black mini-dress that would show off Wendy’s body while barely covering it, like her shadow had reversed itself to cling to her. Or some glossy leather corset that would hold her from chest to groin, so black that light would bounce off its curves, desperate to touch her too. Maybe a cheerleading uniform—God, she was getting too into this. She had to stop looking at Wendy. Nonchalantly, Janet looked up at the floor indicator. Six, seven, eight… She glanced back down, unthinkingly, and saw Wendy looking over her shoulder at her.

Wendy smiled.

She was wearing a strap-on, Janet just knew it. And a concert T-shirt, something ratty and worn, the Beastie Boys maybe, just something she’d thrown on, she’d have slept in it too, why was any of this turning her on?

The elevator dinged and the rumble of the cart was impossibly loud as it left the elevator and she could’ve sworn she felt the weight shift as Wendy stepped off and Janet followed her, feeling a dizzying half-second of weightlessness as she stepped out from atop a ten-story drop and on to relatively solid ground. It didn’t feel that way, though.

The carpeting was, frankly, tacky, in the way things were when they had no thought put into them, but it was full enough to absorb her footfalls, the clicks of her high heels sheathed like a cat’s claws. That didn’t make her feel any less weightless. Ahead of her, she saw Wendy’s bare legs. The muscles along the back of them, from mid-thigh to the calves stretching her socks, as they bunched and contracted in seamless harmony. The hem of Janet’s own traitorous coat cordoned off the actual divide, the scissor stroke that terminated each step. The thing drooped, it sagged—there could be something so much more interesting underneath, swooping and swishing. A schoolgirl’s tartan skirt, maybe. Okay, it would be a little insulting on Wendy’s part to presume that would appeal to her—that and a tied-off white blouse, while she was at it—well, it would appeal, but no more than any short skirt and belly-baring top. So Janet would forgive her.

Was Wendy even Catholic? If not, was it problematic for her to dress as a Catholic schoolgirl? I’m losing my mind.

“Here you are,” the porter said, unlocking the door for them. Janet looked at it, forcing herself sane by memorizing the number and its placement in the hallway. “Sorry we had to double you up like this. But hey, at least there are two beds.”

“And one shower.” Wendy pouted at her. “Good-bye warm water.”

The door swung open. The porter pointed around inside. “The minibar, channel listings for the TV are on that nightstand, there’s a list of take-out places in the drawer—”

“Thank you,” Janet interrupted, sweeping past him. “I’m sure it’s all fine. We’ll get our bearings ourselves.”

Wendy slipped him a twenty. “Thanks for everything.”

He set their luggage down and wished them well and was gone, the door soundly shut behind him. Trapping Janet with Wendy and herself and whatever Wendy was wearing.

She looked at the evacuation plan on the wall, committing it to memory over and over again. All her life, she’d tried to give herself time to think—now she was trying not to.

Wendy picked up the do-not-disturb hanger from their side of the door, looked it over curiously, then opened the door just enough to put it on the doorknob outside. She closed the door. She locked it.

“Are you still interested in knowing how many fingers I can take?”

Janet’s brain couldn’t respond to that, so her mouth let out a flat “What?”

Wendy played with the belt on her trench. “It just occurs to me, as an engineer and a woman of science, that using just one set of fingers doesn’t objectively prove anything. We’d need a larger sample size of fingers before we conclude how many can fit in my cunt.”

Janet looked at Wendy, then with a weird tic, glanced back at the evacuation plan, then back to Wendy. “You mean my fingers?”

Wendy smiled at her. “I mean, unless you have Elizabeth in one of those bags.”

“Wendy, I haven’t even unpacked,” Janet said helplessly.

Wendy gave the belt one last tug. The two halves of it fell down her lower body. They dangled. Her coat opened. Wendy put one hand on