It was in the quietest time of quietest times that Derek Scrivener and his girl friend walked into our shop. I guess it would be more truthful to say that he swaggered in and she swayed along beside him, looking at Derek with adoring eyes. Which could only mean she was a very good actress because there was nothing about Derek to admire -- except maybe his luck.

You see, Georgina and I know Derek. Or, at least, we used to know him in his former life, when he ran a small deli only four doors up from our boutique. But a few months beforehand he'd inherited a nice round sum from a distant relative, sold his business, then set up as a day trader on the net. Since then we'd heard some wild stories about how he'd fluked onto a real killing with some lucky or inspired investments.

I guess we hadn't taken too much heed of what we'd heard. Partly because neither of us had ever had any interest at all in the man, and mainly because it was too depressing to find out that a brainless big mouth like Derek had made it big time while our own business was getting about as many customers as a self-serve funeral parlor. But it was true: true in every word, every detail and in every dollar. We knew it was true because if Derek hadn't made a pile of cash the girl who came in holding his hand wouldn't have pissed on him if he was on fire.

Neither Georgina or I needed to even glance at each other to confirm our joint judgment on that score. In our line of work we've learnt how much value somebody puts into their appearance, and how much they spend on it, especially their clothes. Derek's girl was a stunner, tall and lean and beautiful, with close cropped fair hair, a perfect complexion and the bluest eyes I've ever seen. She looked around the boutique as though it was a subway station, and a one star subway station at that. With what she was wearing, maybe she had a point -- a silk pinkstripe Dupioni skirt suit.

What I couldn't quite get a handle on was why she seemed to get so much fun out of looking at both of us. I didn't think I had any straws in my hair and I knew that Georgina hadn't. If there was anybody she ought to have been sniggering at, it was her escort. Derek might have become rich but neither the cash nor Kelly seemed to have made any difference to his appearance: he still looked as if he'd gotten dressed inside a Salvation Army discard bin before sun up.

"Hello, Derek, how's it going?" I asked, just going through the formalities.

"Pretty good, Rebecca, pretty damn good. How's things with you?"

"So, so."

"Yeah? I've been catching up with a few old contacts along the mall. The word is that this has been the worst tourist season around here since Sherman's army did their big shoot, loot and scoot gig in the civil war."

He was hardly exaggerating. What really puts the zeros behind our profit numbers are the snowbirds coming down on vacation from the north. But this year the migrating dollars had avoided our part of the state as though it were a plague spot. As if three hurricanes in one season and a major report on CNN about our beach pollution problems should have made anybody change their plans. But Derek knew about all that, every business person for miles around knew we'd been dumped on, and I just shrugged my shoulders.

"Hey, I'm forgetting my manners here, ladies. Georgina and Rebecca, this is Kelly. Guess you may have seen her in the fashion pages of the city papers. She does a lot of modeling work."

I could believe that. Kelly could probably have strutted her stuff along a runway in sanitary department coveralls and still gotten a big round of applause. I'd sure be happy to see her walking around with some our lines on her back. But I couldn't see that happening; we weren't the kind of glitzy place where she would bend her plastic and I couldn't understand why Derek had bothered to bring her to our boutique. Come to think of it, I couldn't understand why he was here either. Unless maybe he was thinking of buying us out?

I felt a surge of hope in my heart. Hope and despair: despair at having to abandon a dream but hope of being able to walk away from a bad investment with a clean skin and a fresh start adawning. It wasn't to be that way though.

"The thing is, ladies, Kelly has decided to take me in hand and give me a makeover. We're booked for a big European trip and she says I've finally got to get myself dressed in style. She's going to select all the gear herself because she won't trust me to buy it."

We three girls exchanged looks on that part of the wavelength spectrum totally reserved for feminine messaging: if there was one thing we all knew for sure it was that Derek didn't know the difference between cool and coolade and never would. Kelly must have felt like she was dating a scarecrow. First things first, I guess; she'd obviously started the makeover by changing his brand of soap. Even if he wasn't exactly mint fresh now at least he'd stopped smelling like a pair of zookeeper's boots.

"OK," David continued, "So Kelly has a favorite clothes shop uptown she wants to take me to, but then I remembered you girls and wondered whether you were still here. I thought maybe I'd check out some memories of the good old days."

Now the unspoken message was between the two of us: 'What good old days?' Derek in the deli had pestered both of us for a date and gotten nothing but the pits as far as we were concerned: did Derek the day trader want to try again? But if he did, why had he brought Kelly with him?

He grinned, put his hand inside his pocket, pulled out a bankroll thick enough to paper a small wall, pulled off the band around the bills and spread them along the top of the counter as if he were a kid showing off a conjuring trick. Mind you, from where I was standing it looked like a pretty good trick. There must have been thousands of dollars laid down before our goggling eyes.

"Well, ladies, now I think hard about it, I seem to remember that neither of you would even give me the time of day in the good old days. But maybe these are the good new days for me. See, this is the money I'm going to let Kelly spend for me today. Now we can either spend it uptown or here in your shop. And from what I've been hearing, you could really use a big spending customer just about now. So how about it, have you got some things you'd like to show me?"

"Sure, Derek, sure," Georgina answered quickly. "We've got lots of things you'd love to see."

He laughed. "You bet your sweet ass you have, honey. Kelly, get the camera out."

The girl undid her shoulder bag and took out a small camera.

"OK, ladies, here's the deal. If I buy up big here I want some very special pre-sales service and the pictures to prove it, right."

"What sort of service do you mean?" I asked. The sight of all that old fashioned money must have stunned me. No wonder Kelly shook her head at my stupidity.

"I think he means the kind of service where he gets to screw you two," she drawled. "Although, personally, I hope you turn him down. The classiest item of clothing that this place has ever sold has probably been a Homer Simpson T-shirt."

"You . . . !" I bit my tongue on what I was going to say. Mainly because Georgina was tugging at my arm to shut me up.

"Rebecca, maybe we should talk about this out back."

Derek made a big performance of looking at his watch: "Two minutes and counting down ladies. In the meantime I'll start collecting my dough together again and getting ready to walk. If you want this fine collection of Treasury artwork to stick around you'd better hurry back with a good offer."

Georgina almost dragged me back into the shop and into a changing cubicle, pulling the curtain over to muffle our voices. "What do you think?"

"Hell, we'd have to need the sales really badly to do anything for that asshole, especially with his bitch standing there watching us."

"I'm the one who handles the books, remember? Believe me, we need that money in the till in the worst way. We're going to have to do it."

"Is that the Harvard Business School solution to our cash flow problem?"

"No, the ideal solution would have been for one of us to marry Derek when we had the chance and divorce him as soon as he got cashed up. But because we didn't do that we're going to have to get screwed instead."

Derek's voice bellowed through the shop and past the cubicle curtains: "One minute and counting, girls. Better make your minds up fast!"

Georgina clenched her fingers up into small fists and glanced up at the ceiling in an angry and useless appeal to a fate worse than death -- well, almost as bad as an IRS review, anyway.

"On our knees for Derek Scrivener. I can't believe it's come to this!"

"Our knees?"

"I thought it was our shop. You and me together in everything, partner."

That same bellowing voice: "Thirty seconds and dropping. What's the answer, girls?"

I said: "Georgina, this is another fine mess you've gotten us into!"

Then I pulled open the curtain and called out to Derek: "OK, OK, we're coming out with our skirts up." I thought his laughter was maybe loud enough to crack all our dress mirrors.

Yes, Derek was pleased with himself, Georgina and I were trying to smile at him and Kelly looked like Hilary Clinton watching the Letterman show. A kind of magnolia petals in boiling oil look. Not because she cared about David undressing us but only in what we might end up dressing him in.

"OK, girls, entertain me," he demanded. "I've already put the shop closed sign up because I knew you didn't have any choice but to go along with the offer."

I didn't even have to glance towards Georgina to know that right then her most ardent desire was to pick up the nearest pair of shears and detach Derek's testicles with them. I knew it because that was my second most pressing ambition: the first was to rip Kelly's expensive clothes off her back. Unfortunately, neither idea was a viable option.

"What . . . " My voice was squeaking like Minnie Mouse's. "How do you want us to start?"

Derek walked over to one of most comfortable customer chairs and settled down into it, waving to Kelly to sit in the one beside him. "Tell you what, Rebecca, why don't you two go back inside that cubicle and I'll give you another two minutes to think of a starting routine. And your time begins . . . . now!"

Back behind the curtain again, knowing I was looking at Georgina with blank eyes as she unfastened her skirt and hung it up.

"What are we going to -- hey!"

I heard Derek sniggering at my yelp. But what else does a girl do when she finds her best friend -- her best female friend, that is -- with her hands underneath her skirt and hauling down her panties.

"You don't mind a bit of make believe muff diving do you, Rebecca?"

"Is that a multiple choice answer question?"

"One minute and running hot here, girls. Let's be seeing you real soon," Derek called out.

"When we get out there I'll sit you on the stool and then leave it to me. Just make lots of noise at the right times."

"When will be the right times?"

"You'll know."

"I don't think I've got the motivation the role calls for."

"Just pretend you're sitting on a bar stool watching the horniest male stripper you've ever seen. I'll provide the rest of the motivation."

Derek's voice ended the discussion very effectively: "Ready or not, out you come, ladies."

Georgina muttered: "Fuck!" and drew the curtain aside, then led me out by the hand, as though I was lost. Derek's eyes fastened on Georgina's minimal style black panties, flickered over to my apparently unaltered state of dress, then went back to my partner as she picked up a stool and set it down in front of him.

"Come on, Rebecca."

She took my hand again and led me to the stool: "Hop on."

As I sat down facing Derek the split at the side of my skirt opened out almost to the top of my right leg; his expression brightened up at once. It got even brighter as Georgina nibbled my ear and then licked it. I think that surprised him but nowhere near as much as it surprised me -- I'd known Georgina for a while and she'd never given the slightest hint of any girl-on-girl interest. Yet she started in on me as though I was Tom Cruise. Well, Tom Cruise if he had boobs.

First of all though she played with my hair, licked at my ears, kissed me on both cheeks like a French general awarding a medal, brushed her lips against mine, and then plucked at my nipples through my top. I felt like a guitar being tuned up for a show. Georgina was right about one thing, it was easy to know when to make the noises -- and even what sort of noises to make. What wasn't easy was figuring out why Georgina was willing to do these things to me, especially with two other pairs of eyes watching. And while I was thinking about it she pulled up my top to show Derek and Kelly my tits. Then her hands came around me and sharp fingers tweaked the nipples into tingling lumps. I gulped, closed my eyes and followed Georgina's advice of thinking about the sexiest man I'd ever seen.

As it happened I had no trouble at all in remembering every little detail about him, even down to the butterfly tattoo on his cock which showed up clearly in the stage lights at the end of his act -- and it was an act which had finished up with a real big number. The recollection of that butterfly combined with Georgina's butterfly touch on my nipples was too much: I couldn't help letting out a long whimper of unrepressed desire.

"Good girl," Georgina whispered in my ear. She moved around between me and our audience and I opened my eyes again as she kissed me gently on the lips, took hold of the waist band of my skirt and twisted it around until the slit was between my legs.

Georgina's voice was so low I could hardly catch it, as close as our heads were. "Moan, rub your hands up and down my back, rub my ass."

I did those things as she pulled the skirt open and her fingertips started landing on me again, dropping like thistledown between the inside of my opened thighs -- very close to the top of my thighs. It was an eye-opening surprise to me, the way Georgina was behaving; literally eye-opening, I guess, because she giggled at the expression on my face.

"I've always liked you a hell of a lot, Rebecca, didn't you know that? Now sit right on the edge and keep those legs wide open so everybody can see your bare-faced pussy, you hussy. And keep looking at me."

I was still too surprised to speak but I gasped. The first time because it wasn't so much a matter of me rubbing her with my hands but much more a case of her bottom rubbing against my hands. The second time was because of where her fingers had just touched me. The third time was when she moved sideways to let Derek have a clear view of me.

"Haaaaay, Rebecca! Isn't that the smoothest little snatch I've seen in a while! Come on, Georgina, you stuck up little bitch, give your friend a real friendly kiss where it counts."

I was sure that was where Georgina was going to draw the line. And I was wrong.

She went down on her knees in front of the stool as if was something she did every day. Like re-arranging a dummy in the shop window with Derek and Kelly as casual watchers on the sidewalk. But I still couldn't believe she was serious, even when the tip of her tongue began touching the very tops of my opened legs.

Hot and damp, gliding and sliding, to the left and right, cautiously getting closer to the bared lips like a nervous animal expecting to be warned off. But all I did was to grip the sides of the stool and take deep, nervous breaths. And then, incredibly, the connection was made and I was looking down between my legs at Georgina's upturned face as she licked me -- and kept on licking me.

I guess I must have looked funny because even Kelly giggled as she leaned over to let off a flash and Derek whooped with laughter as he saw the expression on my face.

"Hey, Rebecca, it looks like you two have just found a whole new way of passing the time between customers, right? And maybe you'd never have even found out about the hots your partner has for you if I hadn't given her chance, huh?"

I'd once heard a character in an Australian film say that he/she didn't know whether he/she was Arthur or Martha. I was beginning to feel the same way as Georgina's tongue boldly went where no woman had gone before, and with a skillful touch far beyond anything that any man had ever shown. As I kept staring down at her eyes she winked at me, but what the message was, I didn't understand. Was it just that everything was OK, or was she reassuring me that Derek had got it all wrong -- or was she saying that he was completely right!

Whatever, it was a hell of a time to have to start re-defining a relationship. Quite apart from whatever might be going on between the two of us, we had Derek to deal with as well. And he was up on his feet, unzipping his pants, breathing as heavily as I was.

"You're doing good work there, Georgina. Now come over here and try this on for size. And don't go worrying about Rebecca, I'll let you put on a special floor show with her later."

Georgina winked at me again, gave the slightest shrug of her shoulders and then -- and this I couldn't believe -- crawled on her hands and knees to Derek like an obedient bitch being called by her master.

He looked surprised as well: surprised and delighted. I suppose he'd dropped by the boutique with the hope of paying off a few old scores and not realizing how perfect his timing was. Timing seemed to be Derek's forte in life right now. A favorable forte for enforced fellation. Because now he had Georgina rubbing her lips against his jutting prick and Kelly taking a happy snap of the humiliating scene. And, of course, there was also good old Rebecca, the other girl who'd told him to get lost, to her cost. Rebecca the stool pigeon, with her feathers now well and truly plucked and about to get fucked.

It was the world turned upside down. It was a show ending with Buffy dead and drained, the Roadrunner getting eaten. And with me watching this horrible little man being able to do almost whatever he wanted because he had the dollars we desperately needed. Then his eyes lifted up from Georgina's face and fastened on mine.

"Come on, Rebecca, time to make it a group photo. Come over and give your partner a hand -- or a mouth, anyway." He roared with delight, up there in hog heaven.

END OF PART ONE