Chapter 52: At the end of the following year

The next year flew by for everyone in The Circle.

Willow and Darrell had moved to New York City, taking Ariana with them. She made it back to Dillonville six times during the year with the baby, who by then was approaching four years old. We saw Willow on the evening news almost every night; she was prominent, and had started to do some high profile interviews including many controversial senators, and eventually the President of the United States. She was in the big leagues, and she regularly distinguished herself.

Zoey and Lolly's babies, named Ashley and Christopher, were growing like weeds, already toddling around the house, following the four year olds from Sheila and Alice, and the three year old class that included Monica, Tina, and Ellie's tots. Tammy, Lynn, and Michelle were the eager universal grandmothers, but Jim's mother Denise had also started to be an afternoon regular to play with the growing herd of grandkids. She always bugged out before dinner and never stayed around for any evening activities, but she often laughed when one of the other nannies would kid her about avoiding the sexual side of things.

The reality TV series went on for another season. It was hard for The Circle to keep track of where things were on the TV series because by the time some of what The Circle had gone through got aired, almost six months or more had gone by. Some of the fan mail often addressed problems and things that were long past.

Towards the end of that season, NBC politely told us that the show was ending. It all involved something about ratings and not wanting to 'poison the well' for other reality TV shows they might air. In any case, none of us were too disappointed. We were each known 'stars' and continued to find it difficult to carry on a normal life without someone asking for an autograph or a selfie with us.

Many in The Circle got invited to do commercials or become spokespersons for various products besides the Cialis commercial Mike and Zoey had done. Those were airing with a lot of laughter by the rest of the crew.

The end of the show also meant that everyone in The Circle could again indulge in some spontaneous sex around the house so long as the kiddies were abed. The effect on everyone was truly therapeutic. Relationships that seemed to have been flagging suddenly caught fire again. Privacy is a good thing.

Nancy had moved in, and slowly integrated into the sexual mores of the house. Stacy helped with her assimilation. She didn't launch into a huge gangbang orgy, but slowly over a couple of months she established loving relationships with each man and woman in the house. I think we all learned a lot from Nancy about love and tenderness.

Nancy started her freshman year at the nearby university a little older than the rest of her classmates, and was eating up the territory because of her adult attitude. While many of her classmates were partying and flunking out, Nancy kept taking course overloads and trying to figure out how to turn a four year college degree in computer science into three years. She'd already blown off a year after her high school graduation working in Best Buy's Geek Squad, and cleaning up her family's affairs after her mother's death.

Sheila, Monica, Renee, and Steph got pregnant. Their time was getting near, and the various house committees were trying to figure out how to integrate four new children into the house situation. There was even talk about having Bill and the rest of the work crew build another addition.

Renee had expected her baby bump to take her off the modeling circuit for at least a year until she got her figure back. Instead, she became even more sought after as a supermodel. Whether it was sexy nude photography, lingerie for expectant mothers, or contemporary clothing for those in a family way, she was the number one choice. Ellen and Rhonda (Renee's agent) negotiated her rates into the stratosphere, and no one blinked so they did it again and again.

Jessica Slarinsky's paper was published in the Journal of Relationship Psychology. In the first few months it triggered a huge outpouring of erudite mail and editorial pieces in the journal. She also had a book going through the publication process. Jess had finally bitten the bullet and moved into the house full time. The distance she'd tried to maintain for professional reasons while she wrote the paper and counseled Tammy and Ellen, eventually disappeared. She realized that no one else cared, plus the two women were both doing fine in the atmosphere of love and caring in The Circle.

Zoey and Ellie were flying high and having a ball as the co-anchors on WWLX-TV. The pair had doubled the viewership of the news, in part because of their antics and banter that often had some kind of sexual innuendo to it. They were getting more fan mail than any of the sitcoms that came on later in the evening. Moreover, Willow had led a move to use one or both of them whenever the network needed a local 'grassroots' perspective on something in the state, so they were all getting national exposure.

Thanks to Zoey and Ellie, Jess's article and book also got some local media coverage including personal TV appearances by Jess. NBC picked up one of their stories about the article, encouraged because they had been the network airing The Circle TV show. They made sure it got recognition on some of the talk shows; that Jess became a frequent guest talking about relationships; and that in turn spread the coverage of Jess's work even further into the populace.

Because of the publicity of the TV show, BSKM Construction had become well known for building custom large homes in record time, albeit at premium rates. They didn't always have the same incentive program encouraging them to finish in record time as the women in The Circle had instituted, but they did have a business backlog of several years' worth of work. Bill, Steve, Kurt, and Mike were each happier than they'd ever been – and wealthier.

Jim and Brad both moved up to separate vice presidential posts in Evans Electronics, Jim for security systems, and Brad for consumer electronics. The company had gone public, enabling them to each participate in the IPO in a lucrative way.

Alex and Marlene had also bought into Evans before the IPO. The venture capital gave then a percentage of the company and enough to warrant a board position. To everyone's surprise, Alex ducked that honor and assigned Marlene. Of course, everyone knew of her rough start in life as a porn queen, but it's hard to keep dragging that up when the self-made woman was listed in Forbes magazine as one of the nation's top-100 wealthiest women.