Chapter 28: Moving in the Right Direction

“Mr. Prentiss, this is your friend from Houston. I believe the possible threat to you and your community has passed. Just so you know, the opposition visited about thirty other gated communities in your county. Vigilance is always recommended, but whatever their mission, they seemed unsuccessful. The two men we’d tracked went back to Colombia two days ago, and seem to have assumed their old jobs. We have reason to believe they convinced themselves that your friend is dead or that erasure is total and effective.”

The call ended immediately after Dave said, “Thank you for sharing.”

Although the potentially warring sides never talked to each other, Dave felt as through the tensions between them had been reduced now that the men from the cartel had come and gone. Knowing that the Circle’s ‘opponents’ had visited about thirty other gated communities in Sarasota County, all without success, seemed to remove the bullseye he’d imagined painted on the Circle. They’d discovered something about a gated community in the county, but without further specifics to go on.

Dave imagined that many of the gate guards at the other communities had acted the same way he and Mike had with the two men from the cartel, trying to be helpful, but without developing any substantial leads for them.

Dave never learned why the men had homed in on Sarasota, only that they were striking out everywhere else they’d tried across the United States. Dave wondered and worried whether it might have had something to do with one of the earliest episodes of the Circle that had appeared on television. Dev had barely been mentioned in Cricket’s early editions of the book, and not at all in the currently available edition. Nonetheless, some of that information remained in the public domain.

The Circle security committee met again, and decided to return to their more normal status. Regular gate guards took over again. The obscure rear gate was left unstaffed, but with an alarm, audio, and video link to the main guardhouse should anybody try to come in that way.

One story did emerge that gave everyone on the committee some chuckles. The dirt car path to the back gate ran through a wooded and undeveloped lot in a zig-zag way so people couldn’t look in from the residential street and see the gate. Attention had been paid to keep the road looking derelict and unworthy of use for any reason. The lot had been posted with No Trespassing and Water Hazard signs, although there was no hazard.

A young teenage couple in an older car discovered the dirt road and would drive in to near the back gate where they would park, make out with great intensity, and then fuck until neither one of them could walk straight – sometimes with the girl splayed over the hood of the guy’s car. They’d cleanup and get dressed outside the car, and then turn around and leave.

What they didn’t know was that the entire lot and entry-access had extensive video and audio coverage so that every spot was covered from multiple angles. Thus, every kiss, lick, twist, suck, turn, and penetration had been covered from multiple angles in high resolution video with sound. The antics of the young couple provided some arousing relief for the otherwise stressed yet bored gate guards.

The security committee opted not to change anything, and to just allow the evening gate guards the opportunity to perve on whatever the young couple was up to that night. The ‘leave-things-alone’ recommendation had been Rose’s; she said it reminded her of how Matt and she would sneak off to do their thing when they were younger.

While everyone laughed at Rose’s comment in the committee meeting, they also followed her wish. Many of her earlier ideas had paid off for them. Since Rose had done her striptease at the Club Ecstasy everyone on the committee – everyone in the Circle – paid her more respect and treated her more like an adult rather than a teen whose opinion could be easily dismissed.

Three members of the committee had been present for her dance and also for Odessa’s: Jim Hotch, Dale Harnett, and, of course, Dave – who’d set the whole thing up so she’d stretch her wings.

Dancing to complete nudity, except for her CFM heels, in front of two-hundred horny men had turned her on like nothing else in her life. She still grappled with her feelings from knowing that most of those men would have liked nothing better than to lay her across one of the tables in the club and fuck the stuffing out of her.

As she finished her dance and soon after the four lap dances that had been auctioned off, she realized how in that one evening she’d dropped some crazy feelings about nudity, sex, men, relationships, and many other things. She was loosening up. Dave had even called it that, stating that he wished that he and Alice had started to do that at her age rather than over ten years later.

Since the night at the club, Rose had the opportunity to be with Dave several times. The fact that he was her stepfather had been long forgotten by both of them. They were lovers. Of course, she had Matt ... and Toby, and some of the other men in the Circle. Now, she realized she was ready to expand to all the men in the Circle. She liked all of them, and it was time to forge a stronger relationship with them.

Rose also liked Alice. She’d done some girl-on-girl stuff. She and Danica had played around with each other during some of the swaps she and Matt did with Danica and Toby. She’d done more the night of the graduation party with some of her female classmates.

One night when Dave had pounded her body to her delight in one of his large beds, she realized that Alice was right beside them with Cooper – also a nice guy. She felt love for Alice, and the next she knew she was between Alice’s legs sucking cum from her pussy, fingering her clit, and doing everything she could to deliver pleasure to her. Alice nicely reciprocated, and then the two women made love. Rose thought those orgasms were special because of their source and how she felt about Alice.

After that, Rose’s times with Danica were more special, and she expanded her repertoire to other women. She liked their taste and their texture and how they treated her. That she was the youngest and perhaps the horniest female in the Circle didn’t seem to enter into the equation. She was loved and had a rapidly increasing number of lovers – both men and women.

Odessa was going through much the same process with the Circle. She arrived and everyone knew she was special and had been chosen for a special scholarship. Erin had even done a full-page feature about her in the weekly Circle Newsletter.

After doing the striptease at the club, suddenly Odessa was everyone’s friend – not that she wasn’t before, but people felt closer to her. She’d made herself vulnerable and had taken personal risks. Circle members were no longer concerned about talking to her, in case she’d be put off by their friendliness and their approach to her.

Overnight, Odessa became a sought-after commodity. People wanted her to dine with them, or share a cocktail while they got to know her better. When she was present during the afternoon on the patio, other women would invite her to join their conversation circle and seek out her views or experiences in some area. Even she expressed the opinion that she’d become popular.

Odessa did start to travel back and forth to St. Croix to visit her parents. Dave flew her down one day in the jet. They collected her father and the next day flew him and her mother to Sarasota. He was carefully brought to a guest room in the Circle and the next day taken to the Kennedy-White Osteopathic Medical Practice to see some of the top doctors in the country about his condition.

Poppy Black had been hit by a car one night when he was walking along a country road on St. Croix. The doctors on the island had helped him heal, but had done little about the broken bones in his body other than to try to arrange them in more or less the same way they’d been before the accident. That approach had been far from adequate.

The Sarasota doctors took x-rays, MRIs, and CT scans of his whole body, and studied them with each other. In doing so, they realized that with a couple of operations they could repair much of the damage. Poppy would have to have some of the pelvic bones that had knitted together the wrong way separated and pinned together in a new ‘arrangement’ that would enable him to walk and move about in a less restricted way. He’d also get a new hip joint on his left side that would be made of Titanium. They were even optimistic that after their work, he might not limp or need a cane or crutch. Another goal was to alleviate the frequent pain he felt.

Poppy cried at their recommendations. He thought he’d never be a full man again. The first operation took place two weeks later. Even as he was groggy from the operation, two pretty nurses from physical therapy had him up and holding onto a walker as he moved about his hospital room.

Poppy’s second operation took place three weeks later. Like the first, they had him moving around within hours of when they finished putting the new hip joint in place and adjusting the lateral position of the joint. After that, he spent several hours in physical therapy each day, at first while he stayed in the hospital and then as Odessa drove him back and forth to PT each day as he healed.

After four weeks, Dave flew Poppy and Odessa back to St. Croix. During that time, all their possessions had been moved to an apartment over the large garage at Mark Worthington’s villa. Della, poppy’s wife, was offered a new job personally by Mark Worthington that she accepted while in Sarasota. Instead of working as a maid making beds each day in one of the hotels on the island, she was a new maid for the villa, but had an extensive role in just about every aspect of keeping the villa in good shape and working with the visitors when they were there. The pay was outstanding, and the job included the beautiful apartment for Poppy and her. She reported to James Butler, the major-domo. Odessa had explained to her about the open and racy relationships and activities at the villa.

Poppy couldn’t believe how great the family’s new quarters were. Every storm he’d worried about whether they’d have anything left to live in. One time they had been wiped out completely. Poppy assumed a job at the villa worrying about landscaping, the pool, and the beach area. He was finally able to work again as he started to walk and move about without being in pain or feeling limited in mobility. He didn’t have to do the heavy work, only direct that it got done.

Odessa had been very open with her parents while they were staying at the Circle about her new life. She even told him about the striptease she’d done in front of two-hundred men. Poppy had laughed. Della confessed that she had done something similar at a nightclub on the island named Tootsies, only she’d worked and danced there for two years while they dated and then got married. Della was forced to stop when she got pregnant with Odessa and started to bulge in a family way.

Odessa had never heard the story about her parent’s early life. She was fascinated with the time with them, and the stories he revealed about their life. She was treated as a full adult for the first time in her life. Even while her parents were in love and dating, Della would go off with other men. It was one of the ways the girls at the nightclub supplemented their income. On that bit of news, Odessa’s eyebrows about rotated off of her face. Poppy just laughed. He told her to loosen up and get used to the real world. Della told her that what she’d found in the Circle was so much better.

Mid-summer, Odessa started taking two courses at the university. One was a repeat of a college-level algebra course she’d taken at UVI, but that she found the university version considerably more challenging. The other was the start of an advanced Biochem class that she’d continue in the fall semester. Both were condensed classes that would cover twelve weeks of material in five weeks.

After the class started, whenever Odessa wasn’t at the university, she was sitting in the shade on the patio doing homework and studying for her classes. Heather, Christie, and Kellie had all worked with her on study habits, and helped her keep her nose to the grindstone in terms of studying. As a result, Odessa ended with two ‘A’s’ for the classes. The top grades at the tougher school greatly improved her self-confidence.

Dave went back to Georgia several times to visit the researchers trying to develop something novel and commercial enough with their lasers and algorithms. Eventually, he reported to Mark that while more money would be well spent, he didn’t see anything coming from that group of people that would generate the kind of double-digit returns Mark was looking for. He didn’t see they were doing anything disruptive to their potential markets. Mark accepted that, but still decided to invest so they could keep up their research and commercialization.

Dave spent time working with Mark on doing a strategic plan for Worthington Industries, working division by division to blend the executives’ ideas and suggestions into a coherent whole. He was surprised at how diverse some of the opinions were.

Of course, JR had him back repeatedly at EneRG. Dave had more knowledge than he gave himself credit for in running the battery business, and JR, as the new CEO, continued to tap into that stream of consciousness.

Dave also got some opinions from JR, Heather, and Cricket about his motorcycle trip around the country. The three of them were enthusiastic about him taking the time for the trip. They thought he should space out the visits of wives and other friends to accompany him, and be sure to do segments of the trip alone.

Cricket said, “Part of the reason for the trip is to get in touch with the ‘inner you’. I know you think you know ‘you’, but you’ll keep finding new skills and attributes that I don’t think you can even imagine exist.”

Heather had teased, “Besides, like Jim Mellon in the book Road Trip you’ll meet all sorts of interesting women that you’ll want to make love with and bring into the Circle in some way. We love all the others you’ve influenced that are here.”

Dave often used the road atlas app on his iPad as he scanned various routes and tourist spots he wanted to visit in the states. He started developing a list, state-by-state. Some states had nothing that appealed to him, but others were full of sights, friends, and associates – even past friends he’d almost lost touch with from high school and college. He got to thinking he’d start this adventure after the weather warmed sufficient to allow comfortable camping in the northern states the following spring.

As the Circle had grown, the martial arts classes had continued to take place on a weekly basis with Wan Suh. He reminded everyone, to Rose’s chagrin, that she had been attacked by three men and had decimated the playing field with her skills just up to that point. Dave approved of Wan’s efforts to work with the women in the class to prepare them for similar situations. Even his own confidence had increased in situations with rowdy men around, such as sometimes at the Club Ecstasy.

Deke from Mark Worthington’s clan also showed up every other Saturday to continue the training in weaponry, focusing on handguns, but also expanding to knives and other nasty tools of the trade. He was ex-military and knew his subject matter well.

Matt and Rose each had summer jobs as they prepared to start college in August. Matt had gotten a job with the software company where several others in the Circle worked. The company developed and sold computer games. Matt’s job wasn’t in the software end of the company, but rather in the packaging, wrapping, and shipment of the games to various retail outlets around the country.