It kept bugging Pete about that business card she’d gotten from the guy. If it hadn’t been blank she’d have probably just tossed it, because who gave a shit; but as it was it seemed like he’d deliberately presented her a mystery. Why hand a girl a blank card? What kind of jackass did that? Was it some weird negging thing? Maybe there was a message there in lemon juice. She felt like she was missing something about the thing and she couldn’t really formulate what.

And now it was lost. She stood at the bathroom mirror fighting the urge to berate herself out loud. She hadn’t once taken the card out of her bag since she put it in there, she knew it for a fact, and all the same it was gone. Helplessly Pete pawed yet again through the pile of non-card-containing crap she’d dumped out next to the sink. She felt an unaccountable panic welling up and had to remind herself to breathe.

If Cart could be just a fraction less of a drama bitch. Pete knew she’d been procrastinating the last couple days but absolutely she meant to say something about the dude before work this morning. Hell she’d gotten herself up ahead of time for it. And there was CeeCee lolling about on the couch in obscure crisis, somehow even nakeder than usual, as soon as Pete came in the room she started whining how nobody loved her, nobody ever paid attention to her… Cart with an empty day on her schedule was always a heartbeat away from meltdown. “I haven’t seen DeeDee in like forever, now you’re leaving, maybe I should just go out in the street and start turning tricks” kind of thing. Hungry hungry pussy, Dash called her once. Pete ate her out just to shut her up, and then there wasn’t time to think about party dudes or blank business cards or anything but a wipedown and scrambling for the bus.

Pete hadn’t seen Dash either. Like, “didn’t come home the last couple nights” hadn’t seen. Not the first time. She sighed, and with her forearm tried to sweep the pile of stuff on the counter back into her bag. Half made it, generously. As she bent down to pick up the bits that didn’t she felt the whole miserable weight of things crash on top of her all at once. The bag thudded to the floor and Pete hung her head and started to cry.

They were losing DeeDee. She hadn’t admitted it to herself before but she’d known. It was obvious. And she didn’t know how to talk about it. That’s all the card was, it was a token, something she could put in front of Cart just so they’d have a topic. There was so much weirdness and silence between them all about their relationship,— especially over the dude and how they’d met and what it all meant for them. It had all got tangled up in her head, the card, what she’d been sensing about Dash, how precarious the delibery girls situation had started to seem. The dude wasn’t relevant. His fucking mystery card wasn’t relevant. And yet misplacing it felt to Pete like she’d fucked up for good, like without even knowing it she’d blown their little sisterhood’s last chance.

And she still had half the fucking shift left to go. Crouched beside her open bag, she tried to calm her breathing and get a proper customer face back on. She thought she’d picked up all the stuff but then after a moment noticed a pale something on the floor next to the trash can. She reached for it. It was a neatly torn rectangle of heavy paper stock, like from a business card. Unmarked. She wondered at it a moment, flipping it back and forth a few times, but there was nothing there, so she threw it away.

She stood and looked at herself in the mirror. She hated just the sight of that dumb corporate nameplate, and felt a savage little triumph ripping her apron off and tossing it and the nameplate into the corner by the toilet. The blouse she had on was nothing special, but at least you could see now she had tits. She smoothed the fabric over them and imagined chucking her bra too, but break time was about up. She smiled. “Ready to serve,” she promised her reflection sarcastically.

Not any of these coffee shop humps though. Fuck em all. Her bag was in front of the door, so before she turned the lock Pete kicked it out of the way under the sink. She hung a right, towards the front of the store. No one said a word. The sunlight made her blink, and it took a second for Pete to process that she’d gone outside. She took it in for a moment, then squared her shoulders and strode off down the street.

She was standing just inside the foyer of the penthouse. The party dude came in carrying a couple glasses, and without being asked handed Pete one. She hadn’t undressed yet. He scanned her up and down, looking somewhat put out. “Gotta say, you’re kind of unexpected. On your way to work or coming from?”

Pete paused to consider. “From? I think?” she said. She drained the bourbon at one go. “I don’t know how I got here,” she shrugged. She handed back the glass and started to strip.

“You really shouldn’t wear a bra,” he said, setting the tumbler on a side table. “Right?” she answered, shimmying her tits at him. The thing had been chafing her something fierce, and she gave a little kick at it where it landed. Bending forward to pull her slacks down she caught a glimpse of flaccid penis through the folds of his big black robe. “And you should get a more flattering gown.”

He snorted and gave her a disbelieving head shake. “Things you do remember though,” he muttered, laughing. He downed his own drink. “Alright, well, you’re here anyway,” he sighed. “Come on up.”

She walked behind him up the front stairs and into a large, chilly-looking bedroom dominated by an enormous round bed in the center, draped all in black, set on a low platform. A round mirror about the same diameter was mounted on the ceiling above it, and a circumference of pale LEDs marked the platform’s rim. To play the sexy light shows that would go with your playlist of sexy beats, Pete naturally assumed. It was such a cock thrust of a bed she had to stifle a laugh.

Between the dimness of the barely-lit room and the LED shimmer below the bed Pete had some trouble adjusting her eyes. She paused not far from the door while the dude went on ahead. There were girls on the bed, kneeling there in a group, and she had just made out the cute pair of Asian chicks from before when he turned in his steps and asked her, “Hey, what happened to that bag of yours?”

There were three girls. They were facing each other, knee to knee to knee, looking up at a point about midway between the bed and the ceiling, as if they were watching something hung in the dimness there. Pete tried and failed to conjure a shape out of it.

“I guess I didn’t bring it,” she said. Slowly the girls stuck their tongues out, all the way, their mouths wide and their faces blank, in perfect sync. They closed their mouths and then they did it again. It was mesmerizing.

Pete flashed on an image of her bag slumped sideways next to a trash can. “I think I threw it away,” she told the dude. She wasn’t sure why that would interest him. He made a dissatisfied sort of grunt in reply, then turned aside and pulled out his phone.

All three of them were wearing headphones with little cat ears on top. Pink, Pete saw as the room brightened. She came towards the bed. The girls blinked and stopped gazing up at the invisible point and reached in unison to pull their ears off. Pete watched the tall one shake her hair out in front of her and then flip it back, and with an intake of breath she realized she was looking at Dash.

“Oh,” the dude said, glancing up. “Right.” Absorbed in whatever he was doing with the phone, he’d wandered some way to the other side of the bed, and now he came back over. He punched at something on the screen and scowled “fucking lights” in the direction of the LEDs, then slid the phone into a pocket of his robe.

“I’m afraid your friend was a little naughty,” he said to Pete. The girls were facing them now, eyes hooded, hips squirming, intent on their own arousal. You could see how wet they all were. “Remember, naughty girl?” It seemed to take effort for Dash to realize he was speaking to her. “Tell her what you did.”

Dash smiled at Pete, a voracious smile that spread to the sisters, who were kneeling on either side of her. “Hey pal,” she said, her voice throaty, and the Asian girls echoed her, hey pal, a beat late, in the same fuck-me register. Pete felt suddenly queasy. “We were going through your purse,” the girl on the left said. “We do that sometimes,” added the one on the right.

“We told you you don’t keep good track of your tips,” Dash said. “You’re always letting them pile up in there.” Still smiling, the sisters nodded their agreement. Only DeeDee could have managed to scold her and confess to being a purse sneak in the same breath, except it didn’t feel to Pete like it was DeeDee. Or that she even knew who it was standing in front of her. There was no more recognition in those hooded eyes than if she’d been a marionette.

“It’s really just a party trick,” he said confidingly in Pete’s ear. “I mean I’ve done a lot with the twins these last couple months, you know, how much can you fuck with their individuality sort of thing, but even they’re not gonna actually think each other’s thoughts.” He folded his arms, took a pace back, frowned. “I really liked the visual of the little blonde in there. That’s what got me started. but hey, the artist works with what the universe provides. And this is kind of growing on me.” From her spot off the platform it seemed to Pete that Dash towered over the other two. The dude scratched his bald spot. “It’s funny in a different way.”

The circle of LEDs flashed three times and went dark. “See if the reset took,” he murmured, fishing in his pocket for the phone. He stepped onto the platform and snapped his fingers. Dash and her new companions collapsed back onto the bed, a puddle of hands and thighs and mouth noises. “We’re gonna do a little something later,” he told Pete. “Got some friends’ll be stopping by.” He made a wry face. “Friends. Associates, let’s say. Anyhow,” he held out a hand. “We should talk about it.” Pete gave him hers, and let him pull her up.

Pete lay flat, just the back of her head propped against the upholstered black arc that made the bed’s headboard. She felt the kind of stoned that you just couldn’t move. The hot identical Asian triplets knelt in a tight, self-involved little group at the farther end, having a kissing party. Watching them in the overhead mirror Pete felt suspended, like she was floating away from her own body. The girls kissed by pairs, daintily and in rotation, endlessly passing the kiss between and between them till it seemed to Pete it was the kiss itself that was real, and the triplets just its mindless, compelled vehicle. All around the bed the air shimmered with rainbows. It was the hottest most magic thing Pete had ever seen.

The taller and whiter identical triplet was outfitted with a strapon. That was black too. Pete could make it out sometimes, when one of smaller girls reached down to fondle it, bobbing lazily and intermittently in the center of the kiss like it too had a mind of its own. She didn’t see its size though, or the hard gleam of its surface in the light, till the kiss broke and the triplets started crawling forward, strapon slut in the lead. The fake cock swayed towards Pete like a snake hypnotizing a rabbit. It made her drool. She spread her legs as wide as she could to let it in, but then the slut bitch only knelt and went still, eyes all dark and unseeing, just a few agonizing millimeters of the thing at rest atop Pete’s mons. She stared down the length of her torso, whimpering and paralyzed and trying to somehow will the beast into her.

A sudden gravity at her side took Pete by surprise. It was the party dude, who she’d put entirely out of her mind. He propped himself on his elbow at the level of her head and stretched out alongside. “See, this is the truly annoying thing about entertaining,” he said, “there’s always this, like, pressure to outdo yourself, you know? It won’t all be a new crowd. And so you start to get fiddly.” He waved his hand at the triplets. “I mean if you think about it, really what was wrong with just the twins?”

Pete turned her head to look at him. Any brains she had at the moment were stowed in her pussy, but she could see he was stressed about something. “Hey listen,” he told her earnestly. “You should know I am strictly—” he chopped the air with his hand for emphasis—“strictly catch and release. Like with the last time, right? The twins,— it’s a different deal, they’re payment for a debt. Point is, I try to basically leave things the way I found them. It’s my ethic.”

He flopped onto his back. “But I got this idea now, yeah? This triplets thing. I know, it’s probably dumb,— how far can you even push it. But I don’t know. Three’s a magic number.” He caught Pete’s nipple idly between two knuckles and a thumb and tweaked it several times. “Thing about me, I have an inspiration it’s not gonna let me go till I’ve seen it out.” He gave out a heavy sigh and contemplated the ceiling.

In spite of herself Pete felt sorry for him. She watched her pussy squirming uncontrollably under the weight of the not nearly weighty enough fake cock like it was someone else’s pussy, like she had a seeing-eye clit, and hoped she wasn’t coming off too self-centered. Really, he was just a basic nice guy. She felt almost big-sistery about it. Always looking out for everybody else’s fun, but who looked out for him? She wished she could think of something cheery to say, something smart. Then a seam or a rough patch on the dildo caught her, and she yelped, and her pussy thrust helplessly up after it.

The dude lifted back onto his elbow. “You really want that thing, don’t you,” he laughed. Pete bit her lip and pouted and nodded, all the while her seeing-eye clit rode around looking for another bump. “See,” he pointed his finger at her, “right there. That’s cute. You’re a whore, but you can’t help being coy about it. That’s what we want here.” He chewed the end of his thumb, contemplating. “Yeah you’re the self-conscious one,” he said, “that’s how come I can talk to you. You’re made for this.”

She could have taken offense about whore, but Pete’s cunt was telling her to let him cook. He winked at her, and it made her quiver, and for the first time she felt like she might actually consider fucking him. “What the hell then,” he said, reaching back somewhere behind him, “let’s get the whole band back together! The final roundup.”

He had a phone. It looked like Dash’s. Pete’s phone was—she saw it in a bathroom. Somewhere. Somewhere centuries ago. He typed something in and held it up for her to inspect. “So what’s it gonna take?” he asked.

It was a city address, one she didn’t recognize. A draft text to CeeCee. “To get her here, I mean. Obviously. If you had to …”

Pete held her hand out for the phone. She couldn’t have said what she was up to. The cock slut had her knees up under Pete’s ass and was teasing that dick up and down along her slit till she could barely remember her own name. But she went right for the emoji keyboard. She knew just where the character was. She added it, just the one, and gave him the phone back.

“What is that, a raspberry?” He stared at it for a second. “Ohh, because of— Heh. Well what does that signify, like it’s some kind of distress call? Not sure I get it.”

She hadn’t registered what character she picked till he said it. “It just means with my girls.” Her lips moved reluctantly, like they were even more stoned than the rest of her. Pete almost wished she hadn't said it, it felt wrong somehow, but that dick sliding just out of reach was torture. She couldn't be held responsible for what they got out of her.

“And that’s it,” he huffed. “Just the one little emoji, that does the trick.”

Pete remembered the stickers Cart made them of it. They had a joke about needing a berry-shaped bat signal for calling threesomes. All that was gone now. “She’s needy,” Pete said. She looked up at him, desperate to be finished with this game, whatever it was, to get on with getting fucked. “She’s afraid. She thinks DeeDee’s gonna go back to men.” She arched her back, moaned, let her pussy do the begging. “She’ll come.” Frustration made it sound almost a sob.

“Okay,” he said. He looked at the screen a long moment, then back at Pete. There was an odd, almost wistful expression on his face. “Second thought, I let you take the honors,” and he pressed the phone into her palm. Pete stared at it, lost as to what he meant her to do.

He got himself upright and off the bed. The strapon triplet repositioned her knees and dropped herself down onto her hands, the cock somehow angry-looking now, and one of her sisters got underneath her to lap at her taint. The other crawled around them to where she could suck Pete’s tit into her mouth. The dude stood there gazing down at her long enough Pete was worried there was something wrong, but all he did was lean over a bit and brush the back of his hand across her cheek. The touch left a fugitive cool in its wake, as if he’d wiped away tears.

“I don’t want you to worry,” he said in a soft voice. “It’s all gonna come out smooth. We’ll have some fun with some people, like at the house, put on a couple shows, we get Dash and Cart sorted… You’ll see, day or two they won’t remember there ever was a Pete. You neither.” He smiled, his face open and amused, kind even. “And you’ll still be in a threesome! Like nothing’s changed.”

Pete groaned open-mouthed when she felt the tip of the girl’s cock at her hole. She gazed up gratefully at her about-to-be new best friend and had a flash of where do I know this chick from. The chick seemed to have the same thought herself, and broke into a wicked, heartbreaking grin. “What’s a peet,” Pete said to her, giggling, and the slut joined her, and then her sisters, it was infectious; and right before the first thrust split her in two she remembered the phone in her hand, and hefting it up one more time hit send and let the thing go.