Chapter 7: Futa buffet
The silence in the penthouse lasted exactly twenty-four hours.
On the second morning, Pip was woken by the sharp ping of her work tablet. The message from Doll was terse: Stock the rooftop bar. Full service. Guest list incoming. Be invisible.
The dam had broken. Doll was re-engaging with the world, but on her own territorially aggressive terms. Pip scrambled, her body still aching from the previous day’s obliteration, a pleasant soreness that reminded her with every step. She called in the order to the concierge service: top-shelf vodka, vintage champagne, Japanese whisky, the specific mineral water Doll’s circle fetishized. She oversaw the set-up as the staff hauled up ice buckets and polished glasses to the rooftop oasis.
The guest list arrived. Not business contacts. Not rivals. It was a roster of names Pip recognized from society blogs and discreet whisper networks. All women. All powerful. All, according to the rumors Pip had meticulously filed away, sharing Doll’s particular… appetites. Anastasia Volkov, the heiress whose divorce settlement shattered records. Cassandra Thorne, a tech venture capitalist with a reputation for breaking interns in every sense. Ming Xi, a breathtakingly ruthless art dealer. A half-dozen others. A curated coven.
Doll swept onto the rooftop at sunset, a vision in a white silk jumpsuit that clung to every augmented curve. She looked restored, her RBF perfected into a mask of imperious invitation. “The city is a gutter,” she announced to Pip, her eyes on the skyline. “But from up here, you can’t smell it. You just own it. Remember that.”
The guests arrived in a blur of designer leather and sharp laughter. They kissed the air by each other’s cheeks, their assessments razor-sharp behind sunglasses. Pip drifted among them like a ghost, replacing empty flutes, presenting canapés on silent trays. She felt their eyes slide over her, dismissive, before snapping back to Doll.
“Darling, your view is obscene,” drawled Anastasia, her Russian accent like crushed velvet. “It makes me want to conquer something.”
“Conquest is stale,” said Cassandra Thorne, sipping her neat gin. “I’m into acquisition and asset-stripping this season.” Her gaze lingered on Pip just a moment too long.
As the sky deepened to indigo and the string lights glowed, the conversation grew louder, cruder. The talk of mergers and portfolio divestment slid, drink by drink, into something more primal. Ming Xi recounted a story about a performance artist she’d funded and then “decommissioned.” Laughter, sharp and hungry, followed.
Doll stood at the center of it all, holding court. “Abstraction is for the weak,” she said, her voice cutting through the night. “Real power is physical. It’s about imprinting your will on something… tangible.”
Her eyes found Pip, cowering by the bar. A slow smile spread on her overfull lips. “Pip. Come here.”
The chatter died. All eyes turned. Pip’s legs carried her forward on autopilot, a moth to a flame of terrifying attention. She stopped before Doll.
“My assistant,” Doll said, not to Pip, but to the group. “Her only function is utility. She’s the most efficient tool I own.” A manicured hand pointed to the polished concrete. “On your knees. Demonstrate.”
A jolt of electricity, equal parts terror and belonging, shot through Pip. She knelt. The concrete was cool and unforgiving. The women formed a loose, interested circle.
Doll unfastened the catch of her jumpsuit. “Network maintenance,” she joked darkly, and the circle chuckled.
What followed was not sex. It was a transaction, a demonstration, a savage ballet. Doll used her, hard and fast, right there on the ground, a graphic display of ownership. Pip choked back sounds, her face pressed against the cold floor, her mind fleeing to a distant corner of itself. The women watched, some with cool appraisal, others with dark, sparkling amusement.
When Doll finished, she withdrew and gestured casually. “The bar’s open.”
It was an invitation. A challenge.
Anastasia was next. She approached with the casual grace of a panther, a crystal tumbler of vodka in one hand. “I have always wondered about the tensile strength of your tools, Dolly,” she purred. She didn’t touch Pip with anything but the contents of her glass, pouring the icy liquor over Pip’s back, watching her shiver. Then she pushed her over, claiming her use with a brutal, impersonal efficiency.
One by one, they took their turn. Cassandra was clinical, giving sharp, instructive commands. Ming Xi was aesthetically cruel, positioning Pip’s limbs like a disappointing sculpture before taking her from behind. The others followed, a symphony of grunts and sighs and breaking glass. Pip lost count, lost time, lost herself. She became a nexus of pure sensation—pain, fullness, the sharp tang of expensive perfume mixed with sweat, the acrid burn of spirits in a fresh cut on her knee.
The night descended further. The laughter grew rawer. Someone, maybe Anastasia again, said she needed to piss. It became a suggestion, then a cascade. They stood over her, a ring of silhouettes against the city lights, and the hot streams struck her from multiple angles, a scalding, humiliating rain that pooled on the concrete, drenching her hair, her face. She sputtered, turned her head, was roughly corrected.
“Open,” a voice commanded, and she did.
Later, much later, Doll’s voice cut through the haze. “The final offering.”
Pip was half-curled by the pool’s edge, shivering in the warm air. They took turns again, but this was different. A dark, silent ritual of consumption. Pip accepted each one, her mind blank, her body a vessel for their most private waste. The flavors and textures blurred into a single, profound testament to her usefulness. She was the archive of their excess.
Finally, it was done. The women drifted away, their energy spent, their networking complete. Pip heard the distant chime of the elevator. Then, silence, broken only by the hum of the pool filter and a distant siren.
Doll stood alone by the parapet, silhouetted. She lit a cigarette, the flame a brief, tiny sun. She didn’t look at Pip for a long time.
Then she turned. Her makeup was still flawless, her jumpsuit zipped back up. She looked down at Pip, a broken, filthy thing amid the glittering ruin of the rooftop.
A strange emptiness flickered in Doll’s eyes, a hollow space where the performance had been. It was there and gone in a second, smothered by a familiar, cold disdain.
“Clean this up,” she said, her voice hoarse from smoke and shouting. “Hose yourself off before you come inside. You’re contaminating the aesthetic.”
She walked to the elevator, not looking back.
Pip lay still for a moment, feeling the throbbing ache in every muscle, the tight, dried mess on her skin. She slowly, painfully, pushed herself to her hands and knees. Her gaze caught her reflection in the dark, still surface of the pool—a distorted, ghostly figure under the string lights.
A weak, wobbly smile touched her split lip.
She had been the center of the universe. However briefly, however terribly, she had been indispensable. The tool that served its purpose to perfection.
The loneliness of the pristine penthouse awaited her below. But up here, in the evidence of her usefulness, she felt a perverse, glowing peace. She crawled toward the utility hose, ready to erase the night, ready to be invisible again.