When they got home, Pat unlocked the door to her apartment and entered before she did.

“Surprised!” said a woman in the apartment, holding a candle lit cake. She had beautiful chestnut eyes, rich black hair, and a brilliant smile that was shrinking by the seconds.

“Charlie, who’s that?” the woman said in shock almost dropping the cake.

Charlotte closed the door quietly.

“Patrick, Lana. Lana, Patrick,” said Charlotte. “Lana… he’s, you know.”

“What? Really? No way,” she said. She couldn’t put down the cake fast enough before she launched herself at him.

“I can’t believe… I hope you don’t mind,” she said.

“No, of course not. Nice to meet you, Lana.”

“Oh my God, master!” Lana said again in a sort of delayed reaction. “How are you here? Why are you here? For Charlotte’s Birthday? Do you know each other? Is that why you got her before me?”

“Oh my God, don’t tell me you’re one of those boys she rejected before she was out.”

But Pat said, “Charlotte, I’m so sorry I had no idea it was your…”

“It was the best birthday present I could’ve thought of, master,” Charlotte said quietly. She hugged him. They hugged him.

“Do you want to?” asked Charlotte. She took his hand in hers and lead the way to the bedroom. Her girlfriend followed behind them wordlessly, obediently.

Charlotte’s birthday cake was left on the kitchen table. The candles burned dimly. The words were “L Lottie x Lana. Forever XO.”

***

“I’ve never been particularly religious,” said Lana vaping in the kitchen. She had gotten up for a shower after sex. Pat had gotten up later to stretch some legs and found milk in the kitchen. Charlotte slept right through as, Pat soon learned, Charlotte was wont to do.

They both moved about lazily, still basking in the afterglow of a great time in bed.

“Excuse me?” Pat said.

“Worshipping someone you probably won’t ever meet, but having faith in their perfection anyways. Sounds like religion to me.”

“By that definition a lot of concert fans are religious and half the religions in this world are not religion.”

“All right, all right, college. If you say so,” Lana said putting both hands in air.

Pat laughed. “It is true what they said. Doctors are famously bad at Humanities.”

She gave him a wry smile. “Well… I might be bad at doctoring too,” she said showing him the vape.

“But, not all of us,” she said. She tilted her chin in the direction of the bedroom.

“That one is good at everything. Child prodigy. Former athlete. Plays a mean violin solo. Skipped a few years of school, then bam HMS at nineteen,” said Lana. “Check her driver’s license, she’s much younger than she looks.”

“What? She seemed so… normal,” he said.

“That’s part of her appeal, love.”

“How long have you been together?”

“Four years, just about.”

“Are you…” he started hesitantly.

“…Go on, master. Ask.”

“Are you still together, like really?”

Lana shrugged. “You tell me.”

“That depends on you, not me,” he said.

She snorted. “I love her, Pat. I love her a lot. She’s so brilliant, and cute, and weird. Oh, trust me she is. But it’s not the same anymore, and you know why.”

“I honestly don’t, Lana. I… Let’s just say I can shoot a gun, but I’ve never been shot.”

She gave him a weak smile.

“But, and really excuse me if I’m being glib, but I also don’t think it’s ever meant to always be the same. Like, it can’t be the same thirty, forty years, unchanging forever. With or without me,” he said.

“That’s what I thought. But with her I don’t know…” she trailed off and shrugged. “Now we’ll never know.”

“Do you want some of this?” she laid out a fork and a plate next to the cake.

“I’m not sure if it’s my place to say this,” said Pat. “But I just thought you shouldn’t give up on something good just because it’s not perfect or because it… doesn’t have the same potential it once did.”

Lana just cut a portion of the cake and served him.

“Seems wrong for me to have it,” he said.

“I got it for her and she’d be very happy if you had some.”

“L Lottie?” he asked reading from the cake she was cutting.

“Little Lottie. Our first anniversary we had the same shift, so we just stayed up sharing a blanket and watched Phantom of the Opera. The name kind of stuck,” she said refilling his glass of milk. “Tell me when.”

“Cute,” he said. He never told her when and she finished the carton refilling his huge glass.

“You don’t have to be extra nice to us. Or you know pretend to care…”

“I’m not.”

“It won’t change anything,” she said quietly without a hint of malice.

“I could change things for you if I want. Put you back together. Give you false memory about the last couple of months. I won’t.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?” he asked.

“For being unapologetic about what you do.”

He smacked her ass playfully and dug into his cake.

“Someone thanked me recently for brainwashing her. Said I took away all of her problems,” he said.

Lana snorted. “Was she a hobo you picked off the street?”

“No?”

“Then she must be a billionaire,” she said smirking.

He gave a light chuckle.

“How’d you figure?”

“People do anything to get out of poverty. And rich people, the real rich people, they’d do anything to get rid of their nonsense rich people problem.”

Pat laughed.

“How about normal people like you and me?” he asked.

She gave him a withering look. “Normal people, like me, just want to be left alone. And all this over philosophizing, it’s just sophistry. Made up for people who has too much time and nothing productive to do with it.”

Pat had nothing to say to that. So, he took the vape from her and started smoking. They remained quiet awhile before Lana finally said,

“Charlotte and I haven’t talked about it, you know, since she brainwashed me.”

“Why?” he asked.

“What’s the point?”

“I think you should…”

“Pat, we know what happened. I’ll always love her and she me, but we’re not the same people anymore.”

“So, you just go through the motions of a relationship?”

“This is where you’re being an asshole.”

“Indulge me. What do you think is going to happen if you get married, have children, and spend twenty thirty years in matrimony? You’ll both be different people with different priorities by the end of it.”

“There is a difference. Either we decide we are each other’s rock and work on the marriage one day at a time or we decide we’re not and we call it quits. Either way, there is a focus and it is here. Now the purpose is elsewhere. The centre of gravity has shifted.”

There was a silence about them. It was bitter sweet, but strangely companionable.

“Now, are there any other painful obvious things, I can spell out for you, master?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, Lana. I shouldn’t have.”

“There’s no need to be, master. I… you own me, and I can be mad at the situation, but never at you. Let’s just move on to happier things, okay? It’s not every day I get to have you over.” she said settling down in his lap and feeding him cake. Through her negligee, her crotch was pretty warm.

Pat grabbed her and took her on the table. Eventually Charlotte woke up and she ate his ass as he ploughed roughly into her girlfriend.

***

“Christine, listen…” Pat said the moment step into the jet. He needed to get ahead of this conversation. He didn’t expect her to fly to LA to get him, and he thought she didn’t want him to be seen hitching a ride on her jet anymore. He hoped it was not an emergency.

The words died on his tongue when he heard the chortle and hum of a conversation. He even heard giggling. Christine was most definitely not a giggler.

“Oh, hey master, can I get you a drink?” said Alyssa shifting her rapt attention onto him. She was playing a part again, that of a teenager with a bad crush. She lounged comfortably to one side of his made-to-order Nordic coach. Christine sat in her usual place across the table with a mimosa in hand. She gave him a small wave and went back to her drink and her rapid texting. Either she was doing a deal or someone is getting fired. Could be both.

“I didn’t know you two were friends,” he said.

He went pass the lounge area into the bar for his drink, but really, he was avoiding the weird room. The champagne bottle was out and he hated opening new ones, that was always too much commitment for him. He just fixed himself two whiskey glasses worth of orange juice. At least the juice was fresh squeezed. He hated the concentrated version with a passion.

“Common interest makes for strange bedfellows, babe,” said Alyssa shouting after him. “Bed-following in this case. I used to be a bartender, if you need me to serve you,” Alyssa said, giggling.

Then Christine giggled too, and that was so weird it sent a chill up his spine.

“And what interest would that even be?” he said, yelling from the other room. He grabbed his glasses, but then at the last minute decided to put them both on a tray with the jug of juice and carried the whole thing to his seat.

“Religion,” said Christine with a shrug, putting on her reading glasses.

Alyssa giggled again. “I think it’s more of a sinister sex cult. But, yeah, what she said.”

Pat tried shrugging off the comment. He decided he wasn’t even going to try and keep up.

“You’re in my seat, scoot,” he said placing the juice tray next to his seat.

“Okay,” said Alyssa in a little girl’s sing-song voice. She made a big show of moving around, but despite the rustling she barely moved.

After a while, Pat just nonchalantly sat down to drink his juice, exasperated. She rolled right onto his lap and oh-so-accidently grinded against his crotch. He was annoyed, but he was also rock hard. She placed herself in his arms.

Alyssa was already a head taller than him standing, on his laps she ran a risk of burying him into the coach.

“Honey, can you sit still, I’m trying to drink something,” he said.

“But, daddy, I really can’t sit still when I’m on your laps,” she said.

He downed his juice and shook his head.

“Alice, you’re a grown ass woman. Settle the fuck down,” he said.

“I’m sorry I’m a bad girl, daddy? Please don’t… don’t spank me,” she said and her voice grew more ludicrous with every word.

Christine laughed, and Pat just glared at her.

“Oh no it’s just…” she said pointing at her phone. “The ask is ridiculous,” she said and she laughed again pretending it had nothing to do with the situation. He can’t remember her being this amused about something ever.

“Alright,” Christine said finally, putting away her reading glasses. “Take-off is in five, Patrick. You don’t wanna spill juice on yourself like you did last time.”

“Right, got it. “Take-off is in five, you can leave now,” he said pointedly at Alyssa.

“Here let me store that for you, sir,” said Alyssa as she got up and took the tray. She took away everything including one of his glass half-finished.

“Take it back here,” he said. “I’ll finish it before we take off.”

“That’s a lot of juice, Patrick,” said Christine.

“Yes, and that’s a lot of none-of-your-business, Christine,” he said.

“Gosh, is he always this stubborn?” asked Alyssa from the other room.

“No, he used to be so polite and manageable, obnoxiously obsequious even,” said Christine.

“Ugh, boys. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.”

“Yeah, right? Tell me about it.”

“Alright, alright,” said Pat waving away Alyssa as she came back, as he would a particularly persistent stray cat.

“Oh, she’s coming with,” Christine said.

“What do you mean? Don’t you have things to do, movies to shoot,” he said turning to her.

Alyssa just shrugged. “I just called my manager and I’m taking… let’s call it a sabbatical. She’d probably describe it as a diva tantrum, but that’s none of my business.”

“Okay, so what exactly happened to the whole be inconspicuous and keep our head down plan?” he asked Christine, visibly exasperated.

“I stand by what I said, but clearly any plans I put forward are predicated on you actually following through with them. Since I can’t seem to get a handle on you, not alone anyways, I decided to not go at it alone,” said Christine. She pointed an index finger at her temple. Think, Pat, Think she seemed to say.

“Needless to say, all that I do, I do in your service, master,” she added and smiled blithely. Say what you will about Christine, her pearly whites would put JFK to shame.

Alyssa patted Christine’s knees and held her hand in solidarity. “Well said sister,” she said nodding along solemnly. The actress came back as if to resume her position on Pat’s lap.

Pat, however, got up and left for the captain cabin. He was confident the pilot will prove easier to work than the billionaires. Maybe Jesse and Patricia will let him call shotgun, one of them might even give him a take-off blowjob. That’d give the runway and control tower people something to look at.

He checked his phone and texted a quick goodbye to Charlotte and Lana.

Charlotte, say hi to your new eskimo sister, he added and attached a selfie with Alyssa visible in the background.

Last night was something and he hoped to repeat it. Then again, he wasn’t sure how he’d feel about these two random slaves a month from now. That made him a little sad.

Just before he opened the cockpit door, Pat heard a whisper, a mean giggle, and an audible clank of champagne glasses. That pulled him back to the reality that is his life. It was high school all over again. Him falling for and getting bullied by girls with stronger personality.

Two queens in a palace have always been a recipe for disaster, but he never quite imagined they’d make a sorority out of it.