Chapter 20: Rebuilding. New Friends

Dave was impressed that the rubble from the destruction left by the grenade and two mortar rounds had been cleared away by the end of the same day the police had saved Alice and caught Angus Morton. Jack told several people gathered around at the bar that the next day reconstruction of the core living space, the core kitchen, and the cabana would begin with three separate work teams. He’d asked that the emphasis be put on restoring the kitchen to order, and had a four-week time estimate providing that the crew in the core could work from seven a.m. to seven p.m. or later six days a week. He’d approved that, including the overtime. The city had been exceptionally solicitous in granting ‘emergency’ permits to the Circle so demo and construction could begin.

As had been done on many of the core buildings when they were first built, there was a six percent incentive to finish ahead of time. That percentage would rise to twelve percent if the crews beat the four-week estimate by a whole week.

Most of the Circle members were gathered on the patio as the mid-week cocktail hour started. Alice was asked to stand and give a short recounting of what had happened that morning so everyone could hear her comments first hand. With questions she was under the gun for a half-hour.

Lieutenant James Hotch arrived about five-thirty dressed in blue jeans and a sport shirt accompanied by a cute woman similarly dressed and about a head shorter than he was. The pair had a kind of Mutt and Jeff appearance to them.

Dave went out of his way to welcome Jim and Mandy and introduce them to about dozen people crowded around the bar. He insisted on a high stool for Mandy, and that they join him there so they could talk. As other people came to the bar for drinks, Dave would introduce them. There was an unspoken short-hand in how he introduced them that signaled that they were potential pledges and that this was their first visit to the Circle for unofficial reasons.

About a dozen Circle women came to the cocktail hour straight from having been working, reading, or dozing on the patio chaises. They were topless or had very thin wraps on that didn’t hide much.

Mandy, who Dave figured was around thirty years old, didn’t blink an eye, but she obviously took in the relaxed dress code. Nobody else was paying much heed to the way they were dressed so he figured she decided she wouldn’t either.

Jim observed, “Most of the drinks that you serve are non-alcoholic.”

Dave shrugged, “We try to drink healthy. We have no lushes here. If somebody started to tie one on, we’d stop that in its tracks. We really watch out for each other. I do think because people are driving to dinner our consumption of beer and wine is way down. Were you worried?”

“No. I’m a one beer or one glass of wine kind of guy myself. Mandy, too. Right, honey?”

Mandy smiled, “Right. I am so impressed with what you’ve built here. I haven’t read it yet, but Jim gave me a copy of a book by an author named Cricket. He told me a little about it on the way driving over here.”

Dave commented, “Cricket is one of my wives. She’s in L.A. for a month working on a screen play with her other husband.” Dave just loved to bait the unfamiliar.

“Huh?”

Jim kind of snickered to himself Dave noticed. He said in a casual tone, “Dave has ten wives. Cricket is the author of Road Trip and Crystal Clear – those movies we liked. Alice, the pretty blonde surrounded by about twenty people over there, is also a wife. She’s who we rescued from a hostage situation this morning.”

Mandy digested that, “You really have ten wives? Shouldn’t Jim arrest you for bigamy?”

Dave laughed, “Only Alice is my legal wife, but I made the same commitment to nine others. Fortunately, that’s still legal.”

Jim said in his nonchalant tone, “Scarlett Johansson is one of them.”

“The movie star?” Mandy’s voice had a touch of awe.

“Yes. I believe she’s in Patagonia for the week doing some special shots which needed that kind of scenic background for the current movie she’s working on.”

“Are you two men having fun at my expense?”

Dave and Jim each shook their head. “Not a bit.”

Just then Nikky came to the bar. Dave stopped her, “Nikky, tell Jim and Mandy our relationship.”

“I’m Dave’s wife ... one of them. I think I was number six or seven, but we don’t really keep track of the order, except we all know that Alice was first.”

Mandy asked Dave, “How long have you and Alice been married?”

Dave blanched at his weak memory, “Errr, I think our next anniversary will be twenty-six years.”

“Children?”

Dave blushed again, “Errr about a fifteen.”

Mandy leaned in, “Not all with Alice, I presume.”

Dave laughed, “No, only one with her so far, but only a few others with my wives. There’s the one with Alice, two with Pam, one with Heather plus one adopted, and one adopted with Scarlett. The other children are all by other women in the Circle for whom I became the baby daddy.”

“You get around,” Mandy teased yet the dry tone indicated she was slightly shocked at the same time.

“As you’ll see in part of that book, this place is a very close community. As a result, many here don’t think of paternity with the same degree of reverence that people outside our gates do. What we want are healthy and smart children. We have a school for most of them here, too.” Dave pointed to one section of the core next to the construction.

Dave said, “As a result of the construction, the teachers are holding classes down at Scarlett Johansson’s home on Perimeter Road. The kids should appear up here any minute to be with us for dinner and bedtime. She volunteered her spacious home. They’ll move back here to their regular classrooms when the rebuild is complete.”

“How many students are there?”

“About twenty-two now. We also have six older teens, and they go to the regular school system, and they also get some special tutoring in subjects they think they’re weak in by each of us. They’re all straight-A students. The younger kids are getting to an age where we’ll have them participate in some of the public-school activities that involve larger groups, such as sports, band, choir, or orchestra. We have a close relationship with one of the elementary and one of the middle schools in the county. Several women in our midst also work as teacher’s aides at those schools as well as in our own.”

Jim said, “Yes, I read that the Circle has quite a service ethic as part of its ethos.”

“We do. Everyone in the Circle is on some kind of team to help keep our collective home clean, neat, and functioning the way we want. This is one of the reasons I’m tending bar. I’m also on the Board, and when we have a kitchen, I run the omelet station for the weekend breakfasts. I do a few other odds and ends, too.”

Dave explained, “I’m also one of the pilots in the Circle, and we have a flying club. I’m on that board as well, and am part of the team that cares for the hangars, runways, and tarmac. We try to run a tight ship.” He laughed at his add-on comment.

Mandy glanced around taking in about ten women who were topless lying on the chaises or sitting and talking, “And the nudity?”

Dave looked around. “No one is nude – I think, although we used to be a good part of the time – we were more ‘active’ then. We’ve toned it done mostly because of the younger children being around. We maintain a European atmosphere here now. The kids have been educated about what that means. They also don’t talk much about what goes on here when they meet outsiders.

“When you read the book, I think you’ll get more of a flavor about why we’re the way we are today, as well as the history of the place. Cricket did a good job. She’s an author and her love of the Circle comes through in how she wrote about the place.

Alice was snuggled up against Dave later that evening. “Do you think Jim and Mandy will be back?”

“I think he will. He was pre-sold by reading the book twice. I’m not so sure about Mandy. She played her cards close to the vest. We never got to talking about the sex, but it was in the background of what we talked about when the Circle was the subject. She may not even know about it since she hasn’t read Cricket’s book. She was mildly concerned about the nudity, I think. I told her that we used to be fully nude before we got to this stage and hinted about the sex part of things.”

Alice chuckled, “I bet she devours that book tonight and tomorrow. She’ll be back if she’s the least bit horny.”

“I couldn’t tell whether she was or not. We ‘hyper-sexuals’ don’t always announce our presence, even when possibly in the presence of like-minded people. I didn’t push the issue with her.”

“Will you make love to your wife? I happen to be horny all the time, and you know how to scratch my itch.”

Dave teased with a poke and a scratch on her heart-shaped tattoo, “Which one?”

He got poked back, but before it could happen again, he sank over eight inches of solid man meat into the velvet vagina of his true love.

A few days later before the sky got too dark to work, Dave watched the last of the steel girders go into place over what would again become the core kitchen. This was good news. He guessed that the roof might appear before the end of the next day – a Saturday. It’d then get sealed within a week as the permanent roof was installed, making the space weather and HVAC tight. After that some of the re-wiring and plumbing could start, and even some appliances brought into the space. He could see they might make the three-week window.

Dave joined Phil, Ron, Cindy, and Rachel tending bar and serving bar snacks. Bobbie had arranged to use Dave’s somewhat larger home kitchen to prepare some hors d’oeuvres, so those came out on trays carried by Bobbie and Shelby to some light applause and accolades for her effort.

Aaron took it upon himself to collect orders for pizzas or subs so that the crowd wouldn’t have to leave the Circle and go out for dinner. With so many orders, he ended up splitting up the order between three pizza places that delivered. After ordering he gave a heads up about the deliveries to the guard at the gate. Later, only a few people left to go out to dinner.

Alice and Dave were surprised to see Jim and Mandy return. This time they were both in shorts and not looking like they just came from work. Alice worried that her nearly naked appearance in a monokini would turn off the couple, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Of course, Jim looked very pleased. Mandy watched her friend with a smirk more to see his reaction.

Alice had decided she really liked Jim and wanted him around in the Circle. She also discerned that one key to getting him involved was to convince Mandy that she should also belong.

Alice ran across the patio to where the couple appeared between Owen Bennett and Jack and Grace Anders’ homes. She gave each of them a warm, full body hug and effused with genuine emotion that they had returned to visit. She took both their arms, pulled them to her bare breasts, and led them to the bar, calling ahead to her husband for several glasses of wine. As they walked Alice explained about the pizza orders – a guarantee of plenty to eat, and the likelihood that most people would stay around the Circle that evening.

Dave also bubbled with glee about the return of the couple after having not seen them for a few days. He said, “I was worried that you wouldn’t come back. We really liked having you visit with us.”

Alice agreed, “Yes, you have personalities, jobs, and interests that are diverse from most of the rest of us, so we need you to hang around with us – a lot. We like the whole idea of diversity.” She gestured to the larger group of Circle members milling around or seated.

Mandy smiled, “I do, too. If everyone in a group is so homogeneous, whatever do they talk about? You never learn anything new or have your viewpoints challenged.”

Alice teased, “Did you read the book?”

Mandy nodded, “Most of it. I confess to focusing on the parts Cricket wrote rather than the newspaper articles. I’m sure my colleagues at work were wondering what I was doing on my breaks because I had my nose in the volume most of the time.”

Jim volunteered, “We’re going through it together in the evenings. This is my third pass through the material and Mandy’s first. She’d tell me what chapters she was reading and I’d rescan things before we got together for dinner and discussion. That was one of the reasons you didn’t see us all week. We felt as though we should be better prepared when we arrived than we were the last time.”