i.

June was fidgety before the session. Seated, she couldn’t manage to settle. She posed her legs this way and that and several times un- and re-buttoned the top two buttons on her blouse. When reception buzzed she got up with her fresh-bought notebook and unlatched the office door and stationed herself beside it. She undid the buttons again, then one more for good measure. She skimmed the notebook over onto her desk, certain she looked less like a clinician holding it than a schoolgirl. Anyway it was just a feckless prop; she knew she wouldn’t be taking notes.

This was no way to be about any client, June scolded herself, even this one. It looked too eager standing by the door; unwilling to let it out of her sight though she had to back up and feel her way to the desk. A casual half-sit on the edge, she thought: breezy but professional. But just as she was about to park it the door swung to, and between the surprise and her awkwardness in heels June came very near missing her target and dumping herself onto the floor on her keister.

The client acknowledged none of it: sweeping into the room she took her place dead center of the couch, shapely bare legs crossed at the knee, arms extended along the seatback. Aristocrat, June had said to herself at first sight. Some celebrity heiress slumming incognito. That haughty, amused indolence; that sense she breathed a different air than you. June stood away from the desk and allowed herself to be inspected. “Heels,” the client said, with an ironic inflection. June blushed and looked down at the floor.

“Skirt, stockings, … all that new? I pegged you the die-hard pants-and-flats type.” June fought off an image of herself naked and sweaty over a pair of vertiginous stilettos, arms pinioned behind her, her frizzy hair glowing gold under a single bare lightbulb. “I had the idea—” she said, too timidly; the girl cocked an ear. June tried clearing her throat. “It’s, it’s our first session since you uh, you manifested to me, I—”

“MAAANifested,” the girl exclaimed, “that was the word. Thank you. Been tryna come up with that.”

“I thought I might …” but she trailed off again. Stop being such a PUSSY, June screamed in her head. She swallowed hard and straightened herself up and stood at attention. “I thought of nothing but pleasing You, Goddess,” she said.

At Goddess the girl frowned. June fumbled open another button, exposing her bra. “You seem nervous,” the girl said. She gave June a long look that set her plucking reflexively at the bottom of her blouse, as if she wanted to untuck it.

“Go on then.” The girl smirked and made a small inclination of her head. Immediately June was tearing the blouse out and off, heedless of buttons; and almost before she’d tossed it aside she was at her hip struggling with the unfamiliar zipper; not to mention the skirt was too tight and she had to flop stupidly onto her side to peel it down, all the while keeping up a stream of apologies for how long she was taking.

By the time June was down to her underwear and on her knees she was breathless and flushed and more turned on than she liked to admit. But she meditated in seiza all the time, and the sheer rightness of the pose gave her room to think again. She only wished she hadn’t spread her knees so wide apart, it felt immodest. Under the pressure of the client looking down on her she inched them out wider.

“That it?” the girl asked. “We settled?”

June gave herself space to take a deep breath. “Yes, Goddess,” she said. Stop worrying about your knees. She fought the urge to check her panties to see if they were betraying her arousal. “I feel much more composed in, um,—” don’t say worship you idiot— “it feels natural kneeling to you.”

“Super.” The girl settled her legs up under her on the couch. “Except you know what, why don’t we just go with Bunny, okay? Officially? Maybe just think the other.”

“Yes Bunny,” June said solemnly. “That’s an excellent note, Bunny, you’re absolutely right.” It felt so good agreeing she broke into a grin. “This is a professional setting, we’re here for a consultation, not some, uh, …”

Bunny started chuckling. “You’re a go-getter, aintcha,” she said. “I caught that last time. That little top in there,” she wagged her index finger over her head, “always hummin. Gladys man, she’s a fuckin sponge, but she can’t put two thoughts together to save her life.”

“Gladys.” June shifted her eyes around, trying to recall. “I’m sorry, uh, Bunny, I don’t— Is that the woman—”

“Yeah, you know her. Sarah-Kate’s stepmom.” Bunny squinted as if searching her memory. “I guess I left that part out.”

“Is Glennyn?” June’s face felt hot, and there was a cinch tightening over her chest. “You mean Glennyn’s the woman you—”

Bunny rolled her eyes and cycled her hands in a move-it-along gesture. “Banana stand, bimbo, kaboom; yeah.” She shrugged, looking pleased with herself. “Call it a pet name.”

June made the mistake of looking down; over her labia the cotton was shamefully translucent. Her hands reached behind her to find the clasp of her bra. They undid it of their own volition and she pulled it from her shoulders and let it drop.

“I’m Sarah-Kate’s psychiatrist,” she said tonelessly.

Bunny gave her an and so? look. “Why else would I be here?” She frowned, and mimed squaring her shoulders at June. “Arch your back, honey, you’re letting em droop.” June thrust her chest forward. “You know what,” Bunny said, “next time maybe just don’t wear underwear.”

“Yes Bunny,” June said. She had a vision of Sarah-Kate walking to her naked, draped in one of her pageant sashes. She knelt beside June and together they stared up awestruck into the light, masturbating in tempo. Dewdrops glittered on the girl’s dark fur. “Next time no underwear.”

“Actually.” Bunny squirmed her legs around under her and perched herself forward. “I have a psychology question for you. Did you know Gladys does oil paintings? Fruity little still lifes, that kinda thing. Got herself a whole studio up there.”

“I—” June shook herself out of a daydream. “She had a booth at the midsummer arts fair.”

“Yeah that wasn’t the question,” Bunny said. “Thing is, I got this idea I should get her to paint me. Not like a portrait you sit for, more, what’s she see when she closes her eyes, kinda deal. I dunno I thought maybe it’d tell me something; y’know about the whole kaboom of it all.”

“And— did she make you the painting?” June felt a superstitious dread of hearing the answer.

“Blotches,” Bunny shrugged. She pulled her legs down from the couch and sat with her elbows on her knees. “Different-colored blotches. And of course she’s hopeless if you ask her what it’s about. Heavy paint too, like not dainty at all, like a whole different hand.” Bunny gazed ahead of her at nothing in particular and picked a nail. “And that’s all she’s making. Almost every day now, another thing of blotches.” She glanced at June fleetingly and looked away again. “You don’t think I coulda broke something, do you?”

“Variations on a theme?” Art wasn’t June’s strong suit. “Artists do series, … Monet, Rothko, … Maybe if I saw them.” She closed her eyes and reminded herself where they were, and who she was. “Bunny—” she started.

“Well, think about it some,” Bunny said. “I’ll get you pictures.”

“Bunny—” June tried, more urgently. When the girl looked at her odd she felt her brief courage fail. “Goddess—” she wailed, the word breaking from her like a sob. She pitched onto the floor towards Bunny’s feet, overwhelmed with an urge to crawl to her and beg.

“The fuck!” Bunny exclaimed. She popped up off the couch and put the coffee table between them.

June sagged and dropped her forehead to the floor. “Goddess,” she intoned hollowly into the carpet, “there’s a serious ethical con—”

“A what? What concern, what are you— Jesus you’re not Gladys’s shrink, why—” Bunny cut herself off and laughed bitterly. She walked over to June’s desk and paused there, facing the wall. “Five thousand miles away,” she said half to herself, “somehow that bitch is up my ass.”

She pivoted around and propped herself against the desk. “You know she’s coming home for the holidays, don’t you? ‘Sentimental’ about it apparently. I mean, somebody foots my bill to go gallivant around Europe for a year, I’d have the decency and fuckin stay gapped.” She sighed theatrically. “I’m just trying to keep it simple, you know? In the family? Just till I figure some shit out. I swear to god, I’m not gonna try and worm any of Sarah-Kate’s girlish confidences outta you. I just thought, a fucking sounding board maybe, is that so wrong?”

June, head resting miserably on her temple, watched Bunny walk to a point between her and the office door. The girl made a long awkward stretch to snag her wrap and her purse from the end of the couch. “Hey,” she said, straightening, “I gotta—” then stopped and clucked her tongue. “I hate leaving you like this.” She jerked her thumb towards the door. “I’m feeling guilty, I left Gladys out in the car, it’s chilly, she won’t think to turn on the heat cause I didn’t tell her to.” She bent her head to the side to make eye contact. “Look, next time, okay? This is weird for you, I— I can see that. I shoulda seen that.” She pulled the wrap around her. “Next time, we’ll go over your whole thing about this, whatever it is, we’ll get your mind right. You’ll see! Just, let us both off the hook for now. Okay?”

When the door shut June sobbed for real: one solitary sob, after it another, then she was done. She rolled onto her back, feeling like a shelled husk. She stared up at the ceiling and pictured Bunny striding back in, wordless, peremptory, imagined Bunny’s shoe pressing down over her face while she begged with what breath she had to be allowed to clean it. She closed her eyes and put her tongue in the air, searching, beckoning. She only thought to look over at the wall clock once she’d already stripped off her hose and her sodden panties. Time enough, June decided. Next thing she heard herself mewling, begging Goddess aloud to let her cum, and the thought occurred She’s not even here you weak-minded slut, and that stung June so hard it sent her right over the edge.

ii.

The show just finished, a noisy stream of traffic—a fair proportion of it nude or semi-nude, mostly in pairs, almost all of it femme—was passing up and down on the old iron staircase that led from backstage to the upper reaches of the converted warehouse. Trelle, occupying a cinderblock room with a printed “SECURITY” sign taped to the door, largely tuned it out. The night so far was as chill as they’d been led to expect. The door stood propped just so people’d know there was somebody in minding the store.

Trelle was winding up a text chain when they realized they had a visitor. They looked up from the thrift formica dining table they’d commandeered as a desk and sighed and slumped their shoulders. “Well if you aint a sight,” they muttered.

The empty-eyed dollie parked inside the door, hands clasped before it, was collared but off leash, despite the rules about them not being left unattended in the common areas. It was a busty, wavy-haired platinum blonde job, a costumed white cheerleader, powdered, rouged and apple-cheeked; its deeply scoop-cut blue satin tunic, spangly white stars pinned in front, was matched with a pleated red-and-white striped skirt over red fishnets, and in its white platform half-boots dollie must have stood over six feet. The collar was a pink that matched the pink of the dainty purse dangling off its wrist.

“Statue o’fuckin Liberty,” Trelle muttered. “Bag better have your Person’s chip in it.” They pushed the chair away from the desk, pausing there for a second with their arms braced letting their head dangle, and when they raised it again Bunny was in the doorway, the dollie having been shunted off to one side.

“Bun-Bun!” Trelle screamed. “Hey T,” Bunny said, raising a hand. She shuffled her feet awkwardly for a moment, then dashed over to wrap Trelle in an embrace. She pressed her glowing, heated cheek against her friend’s, and involuntarily Trelle shrank a little into themself.

Bunny took a quick step back. “Sorry T,” she said hangdog, “didn’t mean …” “Nah, no sweat,” Trelle said. “… not lookin to, you know, smother …” But she remained in contact, absently passing her hand up and down along Trelle’s sleeve.

Bunny pressed her lips together in a shy half smile. “So,—d’ja like my little surprise? Subtle, huh?”

Trelle said “What lit—” and glanced over at the dollie and did a double-take. “Gladys?”

Animation returned to the dollie in a series of small hesitations, like a machine bringing itself online. “I’m Gladys!” it exclaimed, in a voice flutier and more girly than Trelle remembered. Its wooden smile turned fervent. “I’m a big-tit All-American Cheerslut! Watch me bounce!” Gladys enthusiastically shook her torso and set off a series of small tremors that bounced dollie’s nipples partly into view.

“Hot damn,” Trelle said. “Where’d you get so good at—”

“I dunno, you know, I’m starting to think maybe people’s minds are just easier than I thought they were,” Bunny said. “These Jesusy rich folk at least, I mean the women? Halfway there already. More. Like they focus their entire personalities on believing whatever the Man tells em.” She snapped her fingers. Gladys collected herself, in a series of small mechanical hesitations, and came forward at a mincing trot, hands still clasped. “I used to think a Special doing hypno shit was like, admission of weakness, but she’s so malleable. Who knows, maybe I’m gifted.” Bunny shrugged. “Maybe she is.” She fished a length of leash out of her purse.

“Authoritarian followers,” Trelle said knowingly. “So— no more, uh, sonic booms or the like?”

“Nope. Nada. Just kickin the tires on ole Gladys here.” Standing in her kitten heels barely as high as dollie’s shoulder, Bunny got up on her toes to clip the leash on. She slid her thumb and forefinger along the leather then spent a moment mashing it attentively into Gladys’s cleavage. “Dollie KNEEL,” Bunny commanded, and Gladys dropped in place like a sack of flour, thighs spread, leash clanking to the floor.

“I kinda dig the image of her towing behind me like a big dumb cruise ship, but it’s annoying having to talk up the whole time,” Bunny said.

“Swear to god she looks younger to me,” Trelle said.

“Well, rounder anyway.” Bunny played her fingers through dollie’s bleached-out do. “Way calmer now. Turns out it does wonders if you just stop housing fucking ozempic and haunting the gym all hours.”

Gladys sparked to life and clasped her hands in speaking position. “Them Gym Bitches is a cult,” she said, looking up at Trelle in bright, wide-eyed earnest. “They preach an Unnatural Lifestyle. Dollie could never reach her Sexual Potential till she Cut them bitches out of her life.” The speech delivered, with an emphatic, satisfied chest heave on cut, Gladys wound back down to blank.

“Wow she is tranced tranced, huh,” Trelle laughed.

“We worked out a little repertoire. Not really supposed to pop off like that though,” Bunny said for Gladys’s benefit. She gripped dollie’s hair and began moving her head around in lolling, unresisting circles. “Speak when you’re spoken to, remember? Probably the molly,” she told Trelle. “Which mine hit like fifteen minutes ago, so I bet Big Girl’s gettin a real burst of flavor right about now.”

Trelle popped themself up onto the edge of the table to sit, and gestured Bunny to the desk chair. A short burst of talk passed outside the part-open door. “I dunno,” Bunny sighed, seeming to deflate as she took the seat, “I mean I’m not gonna like, hand her out to people or nothin. Nothin crass. Just thought we’d parade a little, see the sights …” She chuckled. “That flyer you sent? Like a DollieCon means anything to this one, right; but man she got one look at that thing and like immediately she’s begging me to take her. That’s good graphic design.”

“Gettin a little cabin fever up there?” Trelle asked gently.

Bunny crossed her legs and let a shoe dangle off her toes, and when it fell Gladys bent unprompted to kiss and nuzzle her foot. “Good dollie,” Bunny said, mashing her toes playfully in Gladys’s face.

“Tell you that bitch was gonna come back for Christmas?” Bunny made a sour expression. “That was the plan all along, I guess. Coulda found that out earlier.” She uncrossed her legs and ducked down to put her shoe back on. “Gap her fuckin year,” she snarled.

“Leeetle Miss Gap Year,” Gladys lilted. Her eyes were bright but unfocused, her head still wobbling on its axis, and she seemed to have forgotten what to do with her hands. “That ho is dead to me,” she said with a kind of cheery malice.

“Dollie!” Bunny scolded. At Trelle’s quizzical look she said, “I made a joke; she’s a fuckin parrot.” Annoyed, Bunny flicked the leash out from between Gladys’s tits, and dollie flinched.

“You know you can always come set up here with us if you want. Plenty of space. I been sayin, there’s zero heat on you.”

“See what I shoulda done, I saw somebody had one of these, uh, whattayacall—” Bunny plucked the air behind her neck a couple of times. “—pullstring collars,” Trelle added. “Pullstring, yeah. Give em like a zotz with it. Train her on one of those,” Bunny said.

“Yeah I seen a couple, those are custom rigs.” A small litter of cards and flyers and zines lay strewn on the table, on the other side of the laptop just out of Trelle’s reach. “There’s some guys we got here, lemme …” they said, stretching across to sift the pile, and in the process bumped the laptop and woke it. Bunny got a look at the browser window and broke into a grin.

“Butchie,” she said teasingly, “what, were you trying to conjure me up or something?”

Trelle flicked their eyes over. “Shut up. I just couldn’t remember what the movie was.” Blushing, they sat back straight. “Can’t find shit in this mess.”

Bunny full-screened the image. “God she looks ecstatic though. She looks like how every woman in the Forties imagined they’d feel that close to Cary Grant.”

“Like a poster for the Ministry of Heterosexuality.” Trelle hopped from the desk and stood on the balls of their feet, in a kind of ready posture.

“Aren’t they all. See now if you wanna talk Old Hollywood babes, it’s like, Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy, few like that I think vibe more with the sisterhood.” Bunny took a small ziplock baggie of cereal out of her purse. Trelle walked to the partly open door and paused there, head down, not looking out.

“UP, dollie,” Bunny said. Dollie rose onto its knees and tilted its chin up. “Something in the wind?” Bunny asked Trelle. She placed a nugget of Cap’n Crunch daintily on the end of dollie’s nose.

Trelle jerked their chin up, as if they’d forgotten they weren’t alone in the room. “Nah,” they said briskly. They took a step away from the door. “False alarm.”

“Watch this.” Bunny snapped her fingers. Gladys made an obviously practiced toss of her head, but off-kilter, and launched the nugget past Bunny’s shoulder while dollie’s mouth snapped closed on air. Chortling, Bunny had to use the leash to keep her upright. “Okay well there’s a trick she can’t do stoned,” she said, laughing. Looking plenty high herself, Bunny dropped a loose pinch of Cap’n Crunch into her palm and held it under dollie’s chin. “Eats right out of my hand,” she said dreamily, while Gladys made careful work of taking the cereal up just a piece or two at a time.

“She do any actual cheers?” Trelle scoffed.

“You’da thought, wouldn’t ya? Hasn’t got the first notion.” Bunny cocked her head at Trelle. “Course you know who does do cheer. Did.” She pursed her lips. “Swear by rights I oughta do her too, just dollie the both of em up. Start me a fuckin fleet.”

Trelle snorted. They came back to the front of the table and frowned down at the mess of paraphernalia. “Course then you gotta ask yourself, how far do you want to get into a thing?”

“Yeah,” Bunny sighed, ”it just sounds like work.” She wiped her cereal-sticky hand in Gladys’s hair. “It’s just,— it’s frustrating. Feel like I oughta come out ahead on this some kinda way.” Reflexively she drummed her fingers on the chair arm. “I mean, time served at least, right? So what, you walk away with a few grand and that’s it? Cash-drawer money. Tell you what they oughta do, they oughta to buy me a fuckin condo in LA.” Still with the leash in her hand, Bunny stood and took a few distracted steps into the middle of the room, forcing a dazed Gladys to frogwalk after till she was able to regain her feet. “With what they got? I could set myself up out there. I could be somebody.”

A chipper “Hey chief!” piped in from the office door. A slight young woman with vivid blue hair poked her head in, and seeing the dollie she stepped through. “All good?”

“Kai,” Trelle said. “Yeah no worries. Friend of mine.” They nodded in Bunny’s direction. “You gonna take a turn upstairs?”

Kai shrugged. “Less you want to do the honors.”

“I’m Bunny, by the way,” Bunny said, side-eying Trelle. “Hey Bunny!” Kai answered, her gaze averted, throwing her hand up with a kind of forced jauntiness. She looked like someone trying hard not to fangirl.

“Kai,” Trelle said, “fore you go up, you know those leatherworks guys? where they’re set up? Mind taking Bunny that way first?”

Bunny, seeing Kai turn to look at her, put her hands in front of her face. Kai took an uncertain step back; Trelle’s eyes bugged out. Then Bunny swiveled her head in Trelle’s direction, opened her hands grinning and piped “Kaboom!”

Trelle stared a second longer then broke into a laugh. “Hey, make sure you tell em she’s a player,” they said to Kai, giving Bunny a wink. “Tell em for me they gotta hook her up.”

Bunny hooked her arm into Kai’s. “Don’t leave without finding me again,” Trelle said, pointing at her. Bunny did a little heel click and said “Jawohl, mein Führer,” and walked out escorted into the hall, Gladys jiggling serenely after at the end of her leash.

Trelle came to the door after a moment and leaned against the sill, looking up at the stairs. Traffic was thin now, the scenesters scattered to their scenes. Trelle propped the door back and came back to the desk and woke the laptop, restoring Ingrid and Cary to their everlasting near-kiss. They had faces then, Trelle thought: that was another one of Bunny’s. They sighed and closed the tab, and after a blank few seconds opened a search on Myrna Loy, pleasantly surprised to find they’d got the spelling right first go.

iii.

By the map it was ten minutes’ walk. It ran in June’s head she should be spending the time reflecting, but it was cold and the way steeper and slower than she’d imagined; dusk thickening, the evening wind rising, her footing on the old bad sidewalk more uncertain by the minute. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth and kept her thighs together and sort of swiveled her way ahead, mindful at every step of not turning an ankle. She pictured herself in a door cam coming down on a snapped heel and cracking her skull on the pavement. Maybe someone comes out to help; June knew exactly what they’d see: short faux-fur jacket, four-inch pink stilettos and frilly lace socks, cockeyed and splayed on her back with her new pink crushed-velvet miniskirt riding up off her hips; they’d see dessert. A cotton-candy whore too dumb or too stoned to dress for the weather. A girl anyone could do anything to.

She knew the outfit was playing it up, but Bunny inviting her to the house for dinner—Bunny summoning her there—had turned June right back into the desperate, lovesick freshman she’d been when they first met. Dressing for Her was a daylong agony of indecision. Half an hour she must’ve paced around her apartment at the last, trying to talk herself into a winter coat, and as soon as she got one on her whole being revolted; she had to march herself out to the dumpster our of sheer revulsion and shove the thing in as far as it’d go. The puffy white faux-fur was the one piece she had that looked the part at all, and it was only faux-warm. When she reached the stoop and remembered she was zipped up against the cold and no cleavage showing, June had a small panic attack. The pull was balky and her hands were blocks of ice and she was still tugging when the door opened unrung.

Night had come on without her noticing. The sudden light spilling from the door bewildered June’s eyes, and the chipper surprised voice greeting her with “Dr. June!” seemed to be issuing from a pair of pumpkins floating, tops forward, in midair directly in front of her.

The pumpkins resolved, no less mysteriously, into the staring orange eyes of a Hooters owl. “I don’t know why I didn’t hear your car,” the voice went on; “I just now happened to glance out.” Glennyn, if it was her, stepped back to make room. June looked down at her frozen lace-covered feet and willed them over the threshold.

“I parked, uh—” Her back teeth wanted to chatter and it was tough getting the words out. She made a that way gesture with her head. “She said something about, uh, g-gate check …”

“Oh! Downhill.” Glennyn nodded in wide-eyed earnest. “Oh yes we’re very surveillance-conscious in this house. The pigs are everywhere.” She pouted dramatically and cuffed June by the shoulders and rubbed her biceps up and down a few times. “Well my goodness, you must be freezing then, poor thing! Come on let’s get you into the sitting room, there’s a fire.”

She was dressed top to toe as a Hooters girl, down to the socks and a pair of branded tennies. And she was soft. Her t-shirt was cropped tight over a generous serving of underboob, her shorts, a size or three too small, looked ready to split at the seam; she was a plush doll busting out all over. Say hello to Gladys, she thought. The change in her was so complete it hardly registered as change. The taut, planar woman June knew from a handful of stilted parent meetings: that woman didn’t live here anymore. She wondered if anyone missed her.

She led June down a mirrored, chandeliered corridor with gilt accents, though all June could focus on was the garish wedge of cloth flossing itself between her host’s ass cheeks. “By the way you know that’s an old highschool makeout spot down there don’t you,” she said, “that overlook?” June had a guilty feeling she did know, from Sarah-Kate, and bit her tongue against the impulse to say it. Gladys smirked at June over her shoulder. “Now don’t let that go and give you any ideas now.”

The close heat in the sitting room, whose big stone fireplace belonged somewhere grander, hit June like a slug of bourbon. She fell onto a rococo loveseat a little distance from the hearth while Gladys stayed on her feet nearer it, striking an unselfconscious series of glamour poses in the firelight. “I figured, we’re having you over for dinner, why not be a serving wench!” She came over to the loveseat and put a knee up. “I’m super into costumes lately. Whaddaya say? Approved?”

She was every porn bimbo June had ever drooled over. The bosomy, airheaded, bleached-blonde epitome. “You’re so tall,” she said to the Hooters owl.

Gladys tittered and sat, her knee grazing June’s thigh. The touch made June’s pussy clench. “I think when I get my new sewing machine I’m gonna make this into a skirt though,” she said, waving towards her crotch, “even if it’s not regulation. I feels weird being this, y’know, inaccessible when I’m at home,” she said in a confidential undertone.

“Are you um …” June crossed her legs and put her hands together over her knee and stared at the fire, trying to think of anything past her host’s near and urgent fleshiness. “How’s your painting coming along?” she asked, and immediately wished she could take the question back.

Gladys looked perplexed for a moment, then brightened. “Oh, painting!” she tittered. “I thought you musta meant the house. Oh foof, that was just a dumb ole hobby. This is who I am.” She shimmied her boobs at June. “There are so many sexy costume ideas for a girl built like I? I’m the type Mommy says if we were on the Coast I could be an Influencer.”

She smiled, suddenly bashful, reached out a pinky and crooked it around a couple of June’s fingers. “It’s nice, don’t you think,” she said quietly, “how we both just get it about her? Saves so much time.” June let herself be shifted so they were facing one other. She collapsed shoulder-first against the back of the loveseat and let Gladys tower erotically over her. “I do not remember Dr. June being this stacked,” Gladys mused. June glowed at the compliment. “You know who you remind me of? You won’t know her, there’s this adorable little camgirl I’ve been stanning though? and she has just your kind of—”

“Ohmigosh I was having the same exact thought about you!” June burbled.

“Well duh.” Gladys slid a finger up and down June’s thigh. “She’s been programming us for each other.”

June remembered a session the other week, they’d been talking about tastes in lesbian porn for some reason; Bunny asked how much of it June watched herself, and she’d said “none to speak of” and forgot about it. None to speak of! Half her free time lately she spent hunting around for video of fat-titty milfs with nieces and babysitters and stepdaughters who needed to learn to fuck. Conservatively half. I don’t even like porn, June marveled. All those surreptitious hours watching girls scissoring and 69-ing, edging herself, lost in masturbation haze. But that wasn’t her. That was another life: the life she kept in a box and the box way up out of reach in the back of a closet. Dr. June wasn’t responsible for what somebody put in there.

“So do you think it’s working,” June whispered. She imagined a girl storytelling with her dolls, her two best barbies: doing sleepovers, sending them on movie dates, scheming them together because just smushing them naked on top of each other wasn’t exciting enough; you had to draw the story out, satisfy yourself that they wanted it. We’re just human barbies to her, June thought, and felt a vertigo. She closed her eyes and tilted her face up and parted her lips, on the edge of swoon, and waited to be taken.

When the kiss broke Gladys flicked her eyes down at her shorts. “Ooh!” she squealed. She made June an I’m-such-a-minx face. “Okay, you have to promise you won’t think I’m too naughty, but—” she put her thumbs inside the waistbands at the front and pulled it down till it was just above her bare mons— “I’ve been dying to show somebody, you’re literally the only other person who would even get it!”

The tattoo, a small line-art Playboy bunny logo, looked fresh. June gasped, and before she could think what she was doing reached out to touch it. Gladys made a whoop! noise and released her thumbs and caught June by the forefinger. “Fast girl,” she chided, then kissed June’s fingertip and placed it on her nipple. “I’m getting matching titty jewelry too,” she murmured, tracing the captive finger around in a circle. “When I have em pierced you can come with, we’ll make it a spa day.”

“She’s marking you,” June said expressionlessly. Gladys sank her plush tit into June’s palm. “I’m Bunny’s bunny,” she sighed, then the barbies smushed again.

“Jeez you two, save some for later.”

At the sound of Bunny’s voice Gladys screeched “Mommy!” and jumped off the loveseat for a hug. June, sluggish with arousal, found the zipper on her jacket and pulled it all the way open. Bunny gave her a wry smile.

“Nice to see you gettin on,” she said. She detached herself from the embrace. “Listen, Gigi, I gotta steal your playmate here for a sec. Got some bidness. Whyn’t you go on in set the table, Ed oughta be back with the food any time.”

A manic gleam came into Gladys’s eye. “That old dick-punisher,” she said. She pressed her lips together a moment then burst out, emphatic as an actor recovering a blocked line, “I wouldn’t touch that nasty old thing with a ten-foot cheese grater!”

She didn’t seem to know what she said till it was done, and then she looked stricken. Bunny folded her arms and looked at Gladys from under her brows. The taller woman, sniffling and avoiding her gaze, seemed to be wishing herself out of sight. “What did you just do,” Bunny asked her.

“Said a Dollie thing and I wasn’t in my collar,” Gladys recited woefully at the floor.

“And you could feel it coming, couldn’t you. Gonna tell me you couldn’t stop yourself?” “No ma’am,” Gladys pouted.

“You have a new friend over, you’re excited, I get that. But it’s no excuse to go showing off now, is it?”

Gladys raised her head a little and put her hands behind her back. “No Mommy it’s not,” she said, her voice cracking with sincerity. “Alright,” Bunny said. She stood stern a moment longer, then cracked a smile and slapped her wayward dollie on its ass. “Gave you a job, didn’t I? Go on, hop.”

Gladys yipped and scampered to the door, but framed in the jamb she took a beat to strike a last cheesecake pose, in busty profile, one orange sneaker kicked up behind. “See ya soon Junebug!” she said, and blew her a kiss and skittered away.

Bunny chortled. “Puts the hoot in hooters, doesn’t she.”

June followed Bunny out down a second corridor that debouched onto an echoey, drafty, curvilinear great room. Out of the fire, in all that empty space, she felt the chill enter her again. A minimalist metal staircase looped up on their left to a second-floor gallery landing.

“That dollie thing, so you know,” Bunny said, “that’s all her. Ninety percent her. It’s like this, I dunno this sorta post-goth, hypnokink performance culture she fell into? Believe me, she’ll tell you all about it. I really do think she’s found herself though.” A shorter, barely decorated hall abutted on a solo bedroom. “Know what we should do tonight, we should do a training session; mix it up a little, have some fun with her.”

In the sketchy light filtering from the hall the dark bulk of the room seemed like a creature lying in wait. Bunny motioned June to an unmade clothes-strewn bed, where she slumped to sit, suddenly boneless with exhaustion, at the corner nearest the door. “Shitpile in here, sorry,” Bunny said, shoving a few things aside. Gladys was a distant bubble of warmth in a receding galaxy. June zipped her jacket back up. She made no move, only shivered a little at the contact when Bunny took her arm and slipped the purse from her shoulder.

She brought it to a side table at the other end of the bed. She snapped on a reading lamp and it made June look up, and then it came back to her. Right, she told herself caustically, you were gonna use the walk to think. Her absence of surprise was its own, more awful surprise. That’s why you paraded around like a streetwalker, to help yourself think. Like it would have mattered anyway. She was already here. Before she stepped out of the car downhill she was here, in this room, on Sarah-Kate’s bed, waiting to give her up; the rest was just interval. Since she met Bunny she’d been here.

Uplit in the reading lamp, Bunny’s face loomed like a scare mask of itself. “Why’s there more than one of em?” She scowled down into the open purse. “I want her out, not,— out.”

“Those are empties,” June said in a monotone. Sarah-Kate was everywhere in the room, on every surface: her photos, her programs, the sashes and medals and varsity letters she’d worn. Closets open full of her clothes. Absent, she had more of a presence there than Bunny did. “Case you wanted to practice. Bottle of saline.”

In the obscure corner behind Bunny’s head June made out paintings: small canvases, unframed, half a dozen or so, haphazardly arranged. It took another moment for the blotches to make themselves out.

“What, no orange?” Bunny scoffed. “I know how to stick a fuckin needle.” She snapped the bag shut. “Besides, you’re doin it.”

June felt herself drawn upright on the bed, as if by a hand. Something had split her into shards: she was a tower of glass, a delicate transparent superposition of Junes, and she knew she had to keep very upright and very still so as not to shatter apart. In the center of her vision a jewel hung, glowing of itself, its color all the colors of all the paintings, distinct, unblended; clear beyond clarity, fathomless as the heavens. She fell aloft into it.

“Hear what I said?” Bunny glared suspiciously at June, and followed her gaze back to the corner. “Oh. Those.” She made an exasperated sigh. “Yeah I guess I never got you those pictures, did I. Anyway she’s offa that. I kept a few I liked the colors.” She took the purse in hand and then stopped. “Why, what’s up, what do you see?”

“They’re the same painting,” June said. She swayed a little with the turning facets.

“What? No they’re—”

“It’s the Dawn. The same Dawn, every one.”

Bunny frowned and squinted. “You can’t see that.”

“I’d have known it anywhere.” For the first time that evening June looked at Bunny full on. “Even if I didn’t know who painted them, whoever it was I’d know they’d seen your face.” Her voice was firm and even, her expression serene.

Bunny, mouth working like she wanted to spit, yanked her gaze away from June and stubbed the lamp out. “Always workin me,” she muttered. “Jesus Christ gimme a simple bitch like Gladys any day of the week.” She walked over to June and stood in the light filtering from the hall looking down at her, silent, breathing hard, as if with an effort of self-control.

“Goddess,” June whispered, reaching her hand out,— “you only have to show yourself.”

Bunny startled away like she was avoiding a snake. Reflexively she threw the purse in June’s lap. “You HEAR me?” she screamed. “There’s no PRACTICE! You’re doin it!” She stormed to the doorway, paused a moment to look out towards the gallery, glanced back. June was bent in two, and seemed about to slide off the bed entirely. “Flight’s in first thing,” Bunny said. “You and Geej have yourselves a sleepover. Car’s fine where it is.”

June watched her hand, still outstretched, melt into the dark. Bunny, calmer, came towards her again. “I don’t need another fucking disciple,” she said over June’s head. She cleared her throat. “I’m gonna eat. Don’t let me see you down there till you got your mind right.”

The slate floor of the great room was cold, and hard on her knees, and June was all over gooseflesh. She didn’t remember stripping. She didn’t remember navigating the stairs on all fours, although she had a dizzying afterimage of gazing down from the top. After a moment’s confusion she heard what sounded like bags rustling, and a man’s voice saying something about Chik-fil-A, and she crawled reflexively in the direction it seemed to issue from.

“Everyone likes Chik-fil-A,” Gladys declared.

June felt like she was making way underwater. She homed in on voices echoing from a grotto beneath the waves. Bunny mentioned something about a “dick cage,” and Ed said “stringent” with some gusto. Gladys called him a disgusting old perv. It felt to June like their voices had been chasing each other around in her head for hours.

Gladys had a seat facing the entrance to a small dining room. When June crawled into view she ooohed and stood up from the table. Bunny, opposite her, glanced back over her shoulder. “Well,” she said. “Glad someone’s ready to show some contrition for once.” She turned back and dumped a thing of waffle fries onto her plate.

Gladys was stroking her clavicle significantly under a thick pink collar. “Junebug look, Mommy said we could have a Dollie Night!” She made smoldering eyes and flirted her tits at June. “Be good maybe I’ll let you pull my string.”

“Gigi,” Bunny said sharply. “Go on, be a gentleman. Pull out your girl’s seat and fill up her wine glass.”

June’s forward motion had stalled on discovering the room, but Gladys coming around behind the empty chair unfroze her. The waters were choppier here, and she was getting queasy. She focused on the table leg nearest Bunny and tried to hold it steady against the whelm and sway of the current.

Gladys, hands on the chair back, looked at her curiously and bent forward. “Whatcha got in your mouth there, Junebug?” she crooned. Bunny looked sharply down again. “What’s this,” she scoffed, “some kind of fucked-up peace offering?” She took a bite of waffle fry. “It’s not till morning, first off. And you better not think—”

June was just a couple of feet behind Bunny now, and as soon as she recalled the syringe between her teeth it was in her hand, and she was lunging with it across the remaining gap. Bunny, starting up too late, caught the hypo full in the meat of the thigh. She hung suspended a long moment, staring at it, June on her knees with her hands raised as if in prayer. “You BIT—” she started to roar, and time and gravity resumed, Bunny slammed back down onto the chair at an angle that made it sway dangerously a time or two before pitching over onto its side, taking her with it.

Gladys screamed. Ed said “uh-oh” and unwrapped his sandwich. Bunny, lying on the floor in a heap, was still trying to work the last consonant off her tongue when she felt the hard onrush of the drug splat against her, like a fly on a windshield.

iv.

One harsh overhead light. Two windows sealed up with blackout paper. “Where are we?” Bunny said.

She was being jostled. Then she got set down. That was good; she didn’t like being jostled. Maybe now she’d get a chance for some shuteye.

Things sort of … tilted, in her vision, and the woman holding her on her right came into focus. Bunny took a deep breath. “BITCH,” she yelled.

Fucking Junebug. Why couldn’t that chick ever just relax? “You fuckin SHOT me in my LEG,” Bunny protested. She tried to feel for the place on her thigh, by way of illustration, but her hand wouldn’t reach. “And what’d I even do,” she wailed pathetically. June dropped to her knees.

“Oh ohhhkay,” Bunny said. Theoretically she should stay mad but she couldn’t find the gear. Junebug was so cute all naked and cowering. “I’ma still make you pay though,” she added, which she meant flirty but came out sounding more sullen drunk.

A figure detached itself from the background, and Bunny tracked on the movement. Raven hair. A high brow, straight nose, dark deepset liquid eyes over a finely turned but slightly too small mouth: the mismatch made her seem somehow overdelicate, porcelain. “Hey I know that face,” Bunny said darkly.

The girl, in black heels and a black silk cocktail dress, walked over to June, slid the skirt up her thigh on one side, raised her leg and fit her shoe up against June’s chest, just below the collarbone. June craned her head up, eyes empty, mascara streaking her face. The girl curled her lip and gave a light thrust with her toes, and June let herself topple back theatrically, barely moving to break her own fall. A single sharp “HUUNGH” escaped her lungs when she hit.

She stared up at nothing. The girl brought her right sole down and hovered it just over June’s mouth. Without a flicker of expression June put her tongue out and began to lick; short, rhythmic strokes, a small rough grunt marking every pass.

“Yowza,” Bunny said. She found herself admiring the bottom of the girl’s thigh, flexing with every lick. “God you have perfect skin,” she sighed. “I’m gonna make you tat up every inch of it.”

A fingersnap sounded. Bunny was confused where it came from. The girl took her foot back, June only noticing after a few tentative, futile last swabs at the air, and slunk over to the other side of the room. Bunny’s gaze trailed along after her. Someone was waiting for her there; Someone older it seemed, a Presence; the girl dropped to her knees and bowed her head to Her.

It was hard for Bunny to make the Someone out. Her eyes were very hot and she realized she was very very tired, and the space the Someone stood in was weirdly folded or out of kilter or something. Like the pieces of Her face kept disarranging. It was a Dame though. Bunny didn’t need to see straight to see that. A Real One, a Broad. The type people said they don’t make em like that anymore.

“HEY, BOSS LADY,” Bunny called out. She admired Her immensely.

June moaned from the floor, as if she was trying to join the conversation. She lay flat on her back with her knees in the air, legs splayed, her reddish-brown scruff pale and dew-flecked beneath the overhead. “Good call you kept that bush, Junebug,” Bunny said. “Give your mom a little texture,” she told the girl, wagging her tongue. “Hey speaking of,” Bunny said, looking around what little she could, “where is Gladys?”

“SEDATED!” the Dame bellowed suddenly. “And with god knows what kind of a mess you left me with there I gotta fix up!” She paused, calmed herself, lifted the girl’s chin and looked into her eyes. “Forgive me, mi amor.” The girl began nuzzling Her hand. “I am Yours in everything, my Queen,” she murmured.

“Whoah. Well that’s new information.” Bunny glanced back at June, who’d begun fingering herself. “Okay so hear me out,” she said slyly, “so how bout we get Junie and Miss America there, we have em throw us a lil party? They look nice and broke in.”

The Dame detached from the girl and stalked over to Bunny. “That is my wife,” She sneered in Bunny’s face. “Which by the way we are literally just back from our FUCKING HONEYMOON.”

Again, and with evident difficulty, She restrained Herself. A gesture brought Sarah-Kate to Her. The Dame rotated her so she faced Bunny, and from behind released the dress from her shoulders, the fabric slithering and clinging down the girl’s nakedness as if it regretted the leavetaking. The hair on her mons matched the dark, glossy waves on her head. Wrapping an arm around her bride’s torso the Lady reached down with the other and cupped the girl’s pussy in her hand, and Sarah-Kate groaned and lolled back into her, writhing her hips while she stared at Bunny open-mouthed.

“This girl is a prize.” The Dame brought her hand up and fed Sarah-Kate’s juices back to her. On the extreme edge of her vision Bunny saw June push herself up from the floor. “And you’re gonna what, waltz in, say the magic word, she’s yours? Get a grip.” She moved off, and Bunny half-heard, half-felt the soft heel-strike of her bare feet coming up behind. “Fucking trailer trash. Think you invented rich people? Think nobody Real ever looked at a map? This is a place, we have a thing, there are rules. And rule number FUCKING one is, you don’t poach on a Lady’s property.”

The Dame was hot when she was mad. Bunny licked her lips. “POACH,” she said, all sultry. It wasn’t quite what she meant to say but she liked how sexy her mouth probably looked saying it. She tried it again slower, “pah-hoach,” in her best Marilyn, making sure to really puff her lips out.

“Right.” The Dame scoffed and shook her head. “I’m not a vindictive person,” she said. “Whatever it’s worth. All I’ll say is, be glad June came through, because this here? This was your least worst outcome.” She kissed Sarah-Kate on top of the head and murmured “Go give the doctor some encouragement, baby.” The girl dropped onto all fours and crawled off. A prickly, alarming infiltration of cold began to flood into the back of Bunny’s neck. Her jaw seized up hard, and for an instant she seemed to go blind; then it passed. “But for everyone’s peace of mind I’m making sure you don’t go and pull any of this ‘goddess’ shit ever again.”

The lights shut off, and the stars leapt out. Sheets of stars; wheeling, burning, uncountable. Each its own dawn.

She felt the Dame near, though she couldn’t make her eyes work to find her. “Hey no foolin Boss,” she said, her voice thin, “I might be a little fucked up here.” A light cool touch passed across her forehead. “That’ll happen,” said the Dame, and went away again.

She was getting her pussy eaten, just like she liked. “Gigi?” she whined. She couldn’t tell if it was morning already. Then she remembered SEDATED and thought, poor Geej. But christ was the tongue uncanny, same skills, same little habits, she could hardly stand it. Like somebody went out and found Gigi a mouth double.

When it clicked whose tongue it was she told herself it must run in the family. She tried to laugh but it came out breathless, fluttery, an admission of weakness; the next minute she was begging and whimpering and once that started in there was no stopping. Not that she’d have wanted to stop. That beautiful Hedy Lamarr-eyed stuck-up cunt, that she’d made watch from every corner of the bedroom while her mom ate her out on piles of her fucking cheerleader skirts: she was Hers, she’d always been Hers, even when she was lording it over Her she was Hers; and she was desperate now to prove it. She kept dreaming up nastier and more degrading ways to give herself up. She offered Her Trelle, offered to mindfuck Trelle for Her, thought time we learnt that fake-ass enby bitch what’s what. At some point she ran out of ideas, then it was just YES MISS THANK YOU MISS at the top of her lungs forever and ever.

But the Bitch and Her magic both withdrew. The new Boss was some buzzing gizmo that kept her at a constant dull remove from orgasm. She’d have writhed and screamed for it anyway like a good girl but she didn’t have the juice. The overhead light came on and she moaned and ground her eyelids to dust trying to push it out. Her throat and her pussy both felt raw, parched. She noticed the buzz had died and she had a sense of floating off into space. From somewhere close by a scratchy raw voice said “Bitches don’t shut this light someone’s gonna HEAR about it,” and in her head she said to the girl doll, you got spunk.