Chapter 11: A Taste of Hollywood

The trio of women flew into the Circle in Owen’s corporate jet. The Gulfstream 650LR landed Saturday morning after a red-eye flight from Orange County Airport where they connected with Owen and the plane. They all admitted to sleeping for most of the flight since they were each worn out from a hellish week wrapped up in their individual activities.

Dave met the plane on the tarmac with a couple of others from the Circle and several golf carts. He’d been waiting for the radio call, and as arranged got a warning as the plane started to descend from six-thousand feet about thirty or forty miles away. Dale, Paul, and Dave had brought golf carts down to the airport to shuttle luggage and the women up to the main set of homes.

As the engines spooled down after having run flawlessly for over seven hours, Dave watched as the door opened. He and the other men got a wave from Owen’s chief pilot, the stairs were deployed, and before anything else happened there was a blur in dark slacks and a white blouse that came down the stairs three at a time, and then launched herself into Dave’s arms as he walked towards the plane.

Cricket was sobbing. “I never should have left you. I felt so empty the entire time I was away. God, it’s been weeks. I can’t believe so much time has passed. OH, GOD, I LOVE YOU.”

Dave held her as she sobbed and nearly crushed him with her long hug. Similar greetings were going on around him as Ashley and Scarlett hugged Paul and Dale, but without the tears or the raw emotions that Cricket demonstrated.

After a hundred kisses, Cricket finally let go of Dave, but only so she could hold his arm. Scarlett and Ashley took turns also kissing him. Dave was surprised at Scarlett’s passion. She whispered, “I missed you almost as much as Cricket. She’s been nearly inconsolable most of the time. We did find a few ways to distract her, but she is REALLY glad to be here – with you. For that matter, I am, too. I hope I’m staying with you.”

Dave laughed, “Tonight, in my bed – you, me, Cricket, and Ashley if she wants.”

Ashley had heard the conversation and interjected, “She wants. I’m not sure I want to wait that long.”

Dave nudged them towards the golf carts. The copilot of the jet said, “Don’t worry about their luggage, I’ll bring it up to the core living room in one of the carts and you can decide what to do with it from there.”

Cricket rode in the golf cart with Dave holding his arm to her chest, Scarlett with Dale, and Ashley with her father. The animated conversations about powered the carts.

Upon reaching the core, Dave pulled Cricket into the kitchen and situated her at one of the kitchen counter stools. He had just started to do the Saturday Brunch for the Circle members when he’d heard the plane’s radio call ahead that they were arriving. Dave wanted Cricket near after so long; he also knew that she needed him. Scarlett and Dale took the other two stools. Ashley went off with Paul to see her mother, sister, and new nephew, promising to bring everybody to breakfast.

Ken and Patti were helping with breakfast, but took time out to welcome Cricket and Scarlett ‘home’. The others went out of their way in their welcome, too. Dave noticed that not everyone exhibited the blind awe or adoration of a movie star in Scarlett’s case; only the welcome of a long-missed friend, much as Ken and Patti received when they’d been gone on one of their two-week circuits around the country.

Alice, Julie, Pam, and Heather came and stood or sat around the kitchen bar after kissing the women in greeting.

Dave said to Cricket, “Time to tell us your story.”

Cricket began, “I feel like I’ve been in a blender going around at a billion miles an hour. The past six weeks have been the most unusual time in my life – surreal. Before I left, Scarlett had read my draft novel of Crystal Clear, and then had two friends of hers that were a producer and a screenwriter read it. She’d gotten together with them and the three decided it needed to be a movie. Scarlett wanted to play the part of Crystal, the lead character in the novel. As some of you recommended, we split the book into two parts: Road Trip and Crystal Clear.

“When I got out there, the questions were piled high. Would I work with a man named Don Abrams the screenwriter to turn the novel to a movie script? Would I work with Melissa Culpone at Random House to finish the book and speed it to print? Would I sign this and sign that? You know I ran a couple of things by you and Jason, but there were more and more, so Jason arranged with a friend of his in Hollywood to become my lawyer – Bert Munday.

“Melissa and I worked about twelve to fifteen hours a day for almost three weeks on the first novel – word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. She’s good. She called herself a Grammar Nazi. As we finished a chapter, it would go to yet another editor who scrubbed through it. Suddenly, after all that we had a finished book. It went to a preliminary printing immediately, and I sent you one of the proof copies, but we were done with it by that time. The publisher still had lots more they wanted to do with it, plus organize the marketing campaign in concert with the movie. That’s still going on.

“Then I started in with the same level of intensity with Don Abrams. Converting the book to a screenplay took even more effort. I write about what characters are feeling and thinking. In a movie you have to SHOW that somehow; the actors have to say things or do things that reveal what’s going on inside them. I had to rethink whole sections of the book, and reconceive what they might do or say as a result, but everything had to hang together and closely resemble the book.

Don was good. When we started, he had me watch part of a movie after reading the same part of a novel that had been turned just the way Road Trip and Crystal Clear were. Then I’d go off and attack a couple of chapters of my book, and then run them by Don. He’d also work on them. I was working and eating in his office from seven in the morning until nine at night. It seems so long ago, but we finally finished yesterday Road Trip. Carl Reed, Scarlett’s producer friend, read the play as it came off the word processor. He liked it and signed on. We have a fully funded, fully staffed movie that starts production right after New Years.

I barely saw Ashley or Scarlett except when I’d get home to her house exhausted. I actually had a limousine driving me around Hollywood. Most of the time we’d all fall in bed and just sleep, but we did make love some of the time.

Scarlett had been listening, but laughed. She chimed in, “A lot of the time, actually. Your little girlfriend is an insatiable little minx. We did get her to take a little time off to play here and there. She can tell you about a couple of the parties we went to and I did get her to shop with me on Rodeo Drive one day.”

Dave teased Scarlett, “And what kind of a critter are you?”

Scarlett grinned, “I guess I’m more like a horny rabbit. I just like to hop from cock to cock to cock, but mostly yours.” Everyone laughed.

Dave turned to Cricket. She dug in her shoulder bag and put three pages of paper down on the counter. Even from a distance Dave could tell they were new clinic lab reports for Ashley, Scarlett, and her.

Cricket said, “I hope you’re not mad at any of us, but we hooked up with a few guys at the parties Scarlett took us to. They were crazy and sexy and quite amazing. There were four parties – Saturday nights; bacchanalian orgies towards the end of each night. We wouldn’t leave until the sun was coming up. I also got it on with Don Abrams and his girlfriend at the one a week ago.

“Scarlett warned Ashley and me ahead of time about the parties. Most of the A-listers left around eleven o’clock, but those that stayed knew what was coming. One was the raunchiest and wildest party I’ve ever seen. The first time, I’d been pent up for three weeks working on the novel. I missed you and everybody here, I missed the sex, and I was super horny because Road Trip and Crystal Clear are not exactly children’s books, so I’d been reworking some of the love and sex scenes in it. I was horny and looking for an opportunity.

“Because I’m small and I’m told kind of sexy, I appealed to most of the men there. Scarlett warned me about what to expect; she’d been there, done that. I liked the men, and we talked and laughed for a long time before anything happened, and then I decided to allow a different relationship to come forward. I didn’t think of it like ‘Do this; get that’ kind of transaction. It was just about the relationship, but later Scarlett told me that things would go easier in Hollywood for me after the party.

Dave teased, “So, you did the entire cast and crew?”

“NOOOoooo!” Cricket said in a pleading tone. She threw a punch at Dave’s arm. “I was with six men while I was gone. They were nice, and all told me that they loved me. I’m sorry I was weak and wasn’t faithful to you.”

Dave shook his head to show the last thought was of no concern. “You weren’t UNfaithful to me. Get rid of those guilt feelings. We have an open relationship.”

“But ... I want to be your wife.”

Dave gestured to Alice and Pam.

Alice chuckled, “A short story to set an example. When Pam and I went to get our instrument ratings we met Doug and Pete; we’d never met them before and only had the briefest of professional conversations with them by phone. That first night we’d gone up to Asheville and all the nights after we had one huge fuck fest with them. We were and are Dave’s wives, so don’t get upset over what you did. Doug and Pete joining the Circle later turned out to be a fortuitous surprise, but Pam and I fuck on the first date – almost everybody here does.”

Scarlett laughed, “I like that story. A good relationship has a lot of flex in it.”

Cricket looked relieved. “Thank you. I feel better.”

“And Ashley and Scarlett?” Dave probed in a teasing tone.

Scarlett laughed, “I already have my steady friends that go to these parties. It was comfortable to slip away and reestablish old friendships.”

Cricket volunteered, “Ashley will have to tell you about her exploits herself, but they were similar to mine. I know she was worried. We were all careful about our partners having the right papers and all. We took no one’s word for their safe condition.”

Dave set breakfasts up on the counter for everybody as things came off the grill. Cricket was visibly more relaxed. She really had thought she’d screwed the pooch in terms of her admission to Dave and the Circle. She sat with a long face. Scarlett seemed a tad subdued.

As the dirty dishes were cleaned away, Dave casually said, “Oh, by the way, last Monday the Circle annexed a group of new members. Scarlett and Cricket, you were included. Welcome to the Circle.”

The screams of joy could be heard across town. Both women threw themselves into Dave’s arms, who received the brunt of their enthusiasm despite his protestations that he was only one person that had wanted them to join. The two women also hugged and kissed Dave’s wives and thanked them for their support. Those around them eagerly expressed their congratulations as well.

Cricket had tears in her eyes.

Dave told the two who else had achieved Circle status. Scarlett was very touched and got very romantic and tender about the whole situation. She pleaded, “Couldn’t you see to going off with Cricket and me for a little while right now? I am a very needy person and I love you.”

Dave took some kind of imaginary measurement of the sun and horizon with his hands, checked his watch, and then kissed her. “I think that is in the stars.”

The threesome didn’t surface until one o’clock, and only then after Julie had confronted the group in the bedroom and gone into her bizarre cleanup mode on Cricket and Scarlett. Dave thought to himself about what a great intentional family he had.

Afternoon on the patio was full of Circle members coming by to greet Scarlett, Cricket, and Ashley, and also to welcome the first two into the Circle for the first time as members. Dave had a further surprise for Cricket but he’d decided to wait for dinner. The pretty girl was never very far from him, and stuck with his wives when he had to leave and go do a few chores.

Alice gave an update about the happenings in the Circle, including Sheri Seaton’s seduction, Elise’s engagement, and the rapidly emerging plans for another Halloween party with lots of attendees. The trio of women were intrigued with the progress the new graduates had made resulting in their becoming Circle members. They didn’t know Jim Danforth that well, since most of his interaction with the Circle had been right after the group left for Hollywood. Dave could see resolve in Cricket’s eyes to get to know the new man much better.