It had been, to that point, an agreeably low-key Sunday. Her favorite neighborhood diner Maxie’s was practically as still as a church. Denise, the girl on the counter, who played something or other, took the lull as permission to put on WFMT. The day was raw, windy, uninviting to foot traffic. Mona sat at a befogged window in a booth towards the rear, steeping a second cup of tea and working her way haphazardly through the Times crossword.

She didn't think she was that absorbed, but she didn’t clock the girls coming in at all. Just all of a sudden she was accompanied: one of them opposite, one to her left, blocking the exit. A couple college-age blondes; Mona half-thought they might be in her discussion section, except she didn’t recognize either of them.

Her instant next thought was, sorority gag. There was that Kappa-something house a few blocks over. That, or they were about to try selling her subscriptions. Mona abandoned the paper and sighed. “Look I’m sorry, ladies, is there something—”

“TSSSTT!” The one opposite, the shorter and just slightly darker-haired one, put her finger up and hissed at Mona, who almost jumped in her seat. It was weird how viscerally unpleasant the noise was. The girl’s pouty glare had something in it of the four year-old annoyed you weren’t playing her game right.

“Ground rules,” she announced. “You are the Respondent. The Respondent does not ask questions. The Respondent answers them.” She nodded at her comrade. “She is the Questioner. She is the one who asks.”

Mona couldn’t help herself. “So what does that make—”

The second “TSSSTT!” was just as unexpected and somehow more grating than the first. It seemed like a sound a human shouldn’t be able to produce. “I am the Recorder,” the girl continued. She produced a palm-sized top-bound notebook from her bag and a click pen. “This is my notebook,” she said, with a hint of pride, “and this is our Cube.”

A featureless matte black cube, maybe two inches a side, joined the notebook on the table. Mona opened her mouth but the girl glowered her into silence. “The Cube monitors our interactions for correctness.”

Well that’s a load off, Mona thought, you wouldn’t want any of this to be incorrect. She wondered if it was something to do with rush, did the sororities do that in the fall? She never paid attention. Some kind of hazing deal with the recruits. Mona didn’t want to be a drag, the girls were harmless after all, but with the notebook and cube thing she could feel a dull and growing ache starting up behind her eyes. “Guys, look, if there’s something you want me to sign or something, or it’s a scavenger thing, whatever you need out of this, could we just maybe, cut—”

The Cube flashed three admonishing white flashes—she might have said blindingly white, except she wasn’t blind, or in pain from it, and no one else in the place seemed to have noticed. But it cut her thought right off. Mona blinked three times back, startled into reflexive imitation. She was amazed the thing wasn’t just a prop. But at least she wasn’t being scolded by Trixie One again, she’d had all she needed of that.

“Question One.”

Mona had almost forgotten her pal on the left. She was wearing, Mona remarked to herself, a pink cat-ear headband. They both were. In all the fun so far she’d failed to notice. Oh my god this is gonna get so much stupider, she told herself. She was almost impatient to find out how.

Trixie Two’s face was solemn and expressionless. “How long have you been a lesbian?”

Mona pressed her fingers to the point where the ache was. “Really?” she said. I made up questionnaires in middle school that were cleverer than that, she didn’t say. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Cube flash again, another triplet, slightly sterner this time and just as disturbing as before.

“Non-responsive,” Trixie One proclaimed.

“For god’s sake it’s not a quest—” Mona realized she was raising her voice a little and broke off. It was just some dumb college-girl prank, don’t go lecturing them about rhetoric. She gave an involuntary glance back at the Cube but it seemed to have decided to ignore her almost-outburst. “Never,” she said abruptly. She switched her gaze back and forth between the girls, unsure which one she was answering. “Alright? Never been one. Put that down.”

“Non-responsive,” said Trixie One. The Cube flashed again,— the same as before, but somehow disappointed this time. “Never is not a duration.”

OK now you’re just dunking on me, Mona thought. Her jaw clenched, and her hand balled up into a fist. “You know what?” She tried to slow her breathing. “However long. Long as you want.”  She spread her hands apart. “Whatever gets us where we’re going.”

Trixie One picked up her notebook. Mona had the fleeting impression the three of them, the Trixies and their Cube, were in some kind of silent cahoots. The Recorder clicked her pen. “Lifelong,” Question Trixie intoned.

“Sure. Absolutely.” Mona fixed her with a level, deadpan gaze.

“Respondent must answer in the form of a sentence.” Trixie Two’s complete affectlessness didn’t change. There was nothing in front of her but Mona, but you would have sworn she was reading off a card. “Question One. How long have you been a lesbian?”

What a Beth, Mona said to herself. She hadn’t used that term in a while. The Beths had been her crowd’s nemeses back in high school. The pretty-girl club. No particular meanness in them, they were just vapid and vain and very much a single uniform type. The actual Beth was a sophomore Mona had developed a first-year crush on, before she’d got the sexuality business sorted out. It had probably been mean of her, actually, to turn Beth into a collective noun like that.

She didn’t even like saying the word “lesbian.” But if she obeyed the instinct to snark her way through it—she checked the Cube again. We’ll be here all afternoon. Besides, Beth didn’t look like someone with enough mental process to even register snark.

Give em what they want then. Maybe a little more than what they want. Mona licked her lips and narrowed her eyes and tried to put herself in a predator mindset. “I am a life. long. lesbian,” she told the girl, making sure to really get her tongue into the Ls.

The Cube flashed at her approvingly. Beth didn’t blink. “Accepted,” Trixie One said, making a note in her book. Officious little slut, Mona thought at her. Quit horning in.

Beth looked kind of pleased, actually, in her unfocused way: like she was gazing at something scenic off in the distance. Waiting passively for the next cue card to drop. Her eyes were captivating, somewhere between brown and green, or brown with little flecks of green. There seemed so little of the girl herself behind them that Mona couldn’t feel too self-conscious about staring.

“Question Two.” This time, Mona caught a shimmer of consciousness on the girl’s face as she spoke. It was a very pretty thing to see. There was a longish pause while she waited for the ether to bring her her words. “How often do you think about eating pussy?”

Mona snickered to herself and looked down at the few inches of banquette separating them. The girl’s skirt—pleated and patterned like a cheerleader’s—was drastically short. Especially for this weather. She had on a pair of opaque dark thigh-highs, and all Mona could focus on was that stretch of bare thigh above them. Those thighs were an eye magnet. She ached to think how cold they must have been on the walk over. The flesh all goosebumps, all the way up to her skirt. Little downy hairs pricking up where maybe she’d missed a spot. So fine you’d barely feel them.

Oh I am so gonna mess with you, Mona thought. The Cube seemed to be anticipating her; it was pulsing warmly, repeatedly, in a way that flowed through her and made her feel almost tipsy. “Every—” she started, but caught herself and remembered, complete sentences. She directed her attention pointedly back to Beth’s crotch. What are the odds you’re not wearing panties under there, naughty girl? she wanted to ask.

“I think about eating pussy every time a hot girl shows me thigh,” Mona purred.

“And why is that?” Beth droned unperturbed. Mona grinned. She couldn’t resist the impulse to flirt her tits at the girl a little, really sell the idea of a come-on. “Because I am a life. long. lesbian,” she whispered.

The Cube flashed a delighted white. A crisp click of the pen. “Accepted,” said Trixie One.

In the end she never quite got what the prank was about. It all went by so fast Mona almost felt cheated. The girls were very complimentary, though. They even crowned her with one of those cat-ear headbands, like as a parting gift. Made a little ceremony out of it, Trixie One handing it over to Beth from her bag and Mona bowing her head to accept. The Cube practically beaming at them the whole time.

Before they left Beth made her promise to keep the ears on till she got home. Mona stuck around just till the opera was over. Denise kind of looked at her funny on the way out,— and it felt absurd carrying her nice warm hat in her hand while her human ears were getting chafed by the wind, but it wasn’t a long walk and anyway, who’d be so cruel to disappoint a Beth?

She kept them on once she got in. They were all she kept on. Somewhere in the four blocks back to her apartment Mona got an image of herself naked in cat ears and heels, and it was so fetching she needed to see what it looked like for real. She was stripping as soon the front door closed.

What it looked like was, it looked pretty damn fuckable. Mona had always enjoyed her body. To her eye she was every bit as trim and her skin was as good as when she was twenty-five. Not that she was anything to compare with Beth, that minx. Damn. The way the girl bent down after she slid out of the booth so she could press her hot mouth into Mona’s ear. You could see the lipstick traces on it. She wondered if Denise had noticed.

Mona’s hand strayed down into the thatch above her cleft. She tugged at it, feeling vaguely dissatisfied: Beth probably went shaved. She wondered if it wasn’t something she ought to do herself. As an honorary sister of the cat ears and all.

But Mona was still watching herself masturbate when the knock came at the door. Her heart thudded. How had Beth said it? There won’t be so many questions next time. Or maybe it was any questions. Right before she swirled her tongue around Mona’s ear and got her all dizzy and wet.

Mona hadn’t thought that next time would come so soon. Maybe she really aced the test. Anyway it was perfect timing. She pulled her hand away from her unsmooth crotch and gave her shoulders an excited little shimmy. She entertained a mental preview of opening the door and seeing the look of shock on the girl’s face. We’re gonna make that Beth flinch yet, she promised her reflection.