Triad Ch. 08

Delores took leave of us for a few hours that morning, promising to be back before lunch. Abby and I sat down to wait for our first customers. A woman and child arrived five minutes later. They asked about children's books, and Abby eagerly went off with her to show her where they were. I couldn't help but notice how happy Abby appeared. Not only was she happy, she was sober and clear-headed.

Several other people came, browsed for a while, and then bought a few books.

When Abby and I sat for a while with no one else in the store, I posed to her, "What if someone recognizes us and wants our autograph? I was thinking of saying we'd do it, but only if they made a 'generous' donation to the library. If they ask how much that is, I'd say it's whatever they think is 'generous.' Does that sound like the old me or the new me?"

Abby laughed, "That's your 'new me' talking. The old one would want the money. The new one wants the library to grow and prosper, and to make it fun for people. You're attached to an outcome that helps other people, just like doing something for education in Africa or someplace that needs it."

We kept chatting, occasionally stopping to help a customer.

Anna came in about eleven. She'd walked to town from the Cape house. I looked around, but didn't see any of her bodyguards.

"Where's your protective detail?" I teased.

One ninja is out there in shorts and a t-shirt actually looking like he belongs here; he's also unhappily unarmed. He follows me and I asked him to try to stay out of my sight. I don't want to have to think about him anymore. I told him he wasn't supposed to intimidate anybody too.

"Oh, and all the others we talked about are gone. I dismissed them and sent them home. I got them a big limo and airline tickets. I told them I'd see them in L.A. in September when our filming starts onHard Wired. There's only one other security guy who has night duty near the house."

"How's it feel?" Abby asked her.

"Like I just lost a hundred pounds of ugly fat," Anna laughed. "They were all nice people, but they didn't need to fawn over me all the time. It was bad for them, and now I realize it was worse for me. I let the trappings of my job take me over."

Anna sat and we chatted. Several people came and went in the store, each buying a couple of books. One person came in with two boxes of books to donate. We cataloged them as Delores had taught us, and then distributed them to the correct shelves. Anna caught on fast, and helped us put the books where they belonged.

One elderly woman tottered into the store with a cane. She donated two books, and then studied Anna. She finally said, "You are very pretty in person, much prettier than in your movies." She'd obviously recognized the movie star, and treated her just like meeting anyone else on the street she'd exchange a pleasantry with.

Anna blushed, "Thank you so much." She reached over and put her hand on the woman's arm in a touch of genuine care for the woman.

The woman patted Anna's hand on her arm. "Thank you. You are a dear person. I can tell you are struggling with your fame and fortune, but you will overcome those struggles in a good way. Trust in yourself ..." She glanced and Abby and me, and added, "... and in your friends."

On that note the woman turned and tottered out of the storefront door, her sturdy cane leading the way.

Anna stood there with a look of amazement on her face.

Abby said, "See. Your newness shows. Be yourself and you'll succeed."

Anna looked skeptical, "Did you put her up to that - saying those things?"

Abby and I both shook our heads and said, "No."

Anna got very pensive after that, even going off to a corner of the store and browsing at books, except I caught her standing with an open book and staring out the window at the small garden of the house next door. Her eyes were glassy and she was thinking hard.

Delores came back at noon. We introduced Anna to her, to her delight, and then left for the day as other volunteers were coming in for the rest of the day. We promised we'd be back the next morning.

That afternoon after a chat with Anna and Abby, I called a friend of mine who I knew was plugged into philanthropic circles. I described what I thought I wanted to have happen in terms of education, school, and development in some backwater of Africa to her, and she said she had some ideas but would get back to me with more specifics in a day or so.

After that and having gone through my online Day Planner to review the past year, I called my agent, Rhonda Pierce. She was still in New York working on publishing my newest book. She also handled the movie deals for me, and was plugged into a law and accounting firm that also looked out for my interests.

After our greetings, I apologized to her for being an asshole for the past year or however long I'd been overcome by that affliction. I promised a change was already underway. I did elicit her help in giving me a red flag when she sensed I was backsliding.

I asked Rhonda, "Do you know how many days I was on the road last year?"

She guessed, "No, I never counted them. Why?"

"Well, there were a hundred and forty days and nights away. There were only three-hundred-sixty-five days in the year, so that's almost forty percent of the year I was hawking my books and movies."

Rhonda reminded me, "And you were making a shitload of money too."

"I want to set a limit starting now. No more than five nights away in any single month, and no appearances from mid-May through the end of September."

"We already have you booked six months out. I know you're on the Cape until September fifteenth, but after that you're solidly booked through February. I get more requests every day, and your new book will guarantee even more."

"So, I guess there'll have to be some rescheduling and maybe some cancellations. If you tell me who they're for, I'll call them myself, apologize, and work out a new schedule."

"Jim, don't do this to me ... to us."

"Thanks to your talk with me, I've woken up to the fact that I've been living my life for other people. I want to live MY life. The appearances are fun when there are a few of them, but the past year has been a colossal pain, and it's hurting my family so much we're on the verge of collapse. I'm on a rescue mission here. If you have something VERY special that violates my rules you ask me before you commit me, but 'five in one' is the new rule."

Rhonda was unhappy but acquiesced. I think she hoped I'd change my mind.

As I hung up the phone Anna and Abby both applauded me.

Anna stood and flowed into my arms. "You deserve a reward."

Abby wrapped her arms around me from the back and kissed my ear. "I agree. Do you know what we haven't been doing? We haven't been making love. We've had sex a few times, but we need to get back to making love. I think now would be a good time to start."

I turned towards our bedroom, but both women prevented me from moving very far.

Anna explained in a teasing tone I hadn't heard for a long time, "Making love should be spontaneous. There's not a prescribed location to do it. In THIS case, it's going to happen in the living room." She grinned at Abby, who was nodding, and then at me.

My t-shirt flew away by magic, and then so did the T's the girls had been wearing. Both were braless, and seeing their breasts in the daytime made me harden with lust.

Of course, there was some kissing and stroking going on too. That turned out to be highly contagious, because the phenomena spread quickly to the three of us, especially as we shed clothing to facilitate the spread of the disease.

The next I knew I had a warm pussy snugged tightly around my throbbing cock, and an even hotter pussy engaging with my mouth, lips, and tongue, as we played on the living room sofa.

Amid a lot of words of both lust and love, we played for over an hour. This was the best I'd felt about our threesome in a year or more. We were coming back together.

I blessed each girl with a full load of my manly juices, and then we were cuddling up together on the sofa. Each of us was moist and leaking. I held a beautiful naked girl on each side of me, and could alternately kiss them.

The front door opened up, and Jean and Connie came in. Jean said, "Oh, looky what they've been doing? And they've left each other complete messes too. Haven't we taught you any better than that?"

On that note, Connie laughed, but then knelt in front of Abby. She first leaned over and sucked my flaccid cock into her mouth, cleaning me, and then went down on Abby. Jean had already started to toy with Anna's cunt, adding fingers to pull my semen to the daylight so she could lap up the mix of my cum and the movie star's girlish fluids.

I recovered and with Connie's help got restored to a 'ten.' She had Jean lie beside me, and directed my cock to Jean's pussy, the two of them having joined in our nudity along the way. With pleasure I filled Abby's mother with cock, and proceeded to make love to her - slow penetration and even slower withdrawal until Jean was moaning at nearly every move.

Jean became enthusiastic about our union, and started to hump faster, frustrating my attempts at a slow fuck. I accommodated her desire, and soon we climaxed in great satisfaction with each other. This time, Abby was the one who went down on her mother to clean up her quim.

Since we'd only been at the Cape a couple of days, we hadn't seen Connie or Jean that much, and Don not at all; he was teaching in summer session again at the college. The visit and our union was an ice breaker, of sorts - the first time we'd engaged in sex since we'd visited for two days over the Christmas holiday.

We sat around and talked after we cleaned up and got dressed in a bare minimum of thin, nearly gossamer clothing.

Abby explained about how we were changing our lives and why. She reported on my volunteering at the bookstore, and my change of schedule. She also announced she was thinking of similar changes, as well as ways to get the three of us to do things together that would draw us closer together and that would be oodles of fun.

Jean strongly approved of our intent to change, but warned it would be dangerous because so many other people wanted to control us because their incomes, fame, and satisfaction came from having us do their bidding.

Jean and Connie left later in the afternoon. We agreed to meet for dinner.

Right after they were gone, Anna called Sony Entertainment and got the director of her next movie on the phone - a man named Chaim Biterman, who everyone called Chaz. He'd done two other movies in the spy series with Anna.

Anna explained that rules needed to change about out-of-country time, and away from L.A. time. I heard her say, "I need to be home with my family at night. An occasional day or two away is OK, but not the weeks on end we had in the other movies. There was always down time in foreign locales, but that didn't do you any good if your family wasn't around. I had the feeling if the scheduling were tight we could have done all the foreign scenes in a week, not over eight weeks."

Chaz apparently agreed with her, because Anna looked happy at the end of the discussion. She came more into the room from the open-plan kitchen and said, "I'm also going to be home more with the two of you. If we're a family, I plan to start acting like it again. I still apologize for the part I played in our near schism."

I spoke, "The way to build a relationship is to have one. The way to see one erode is to not be around a lot of the time."

Abby agreed. Despite the success of her two books, she was the only one who had managed to maintain a reasonable 'at home' schedule. Her excuse, and a good one at that, was that she needed to be home to work on a series of books that would be a true work of art for her: a six book, multi-million word, action thriller series, with multiple adventures, and the same major characters across the books. The publisher was enthused about the concept, and based on a proposal had given Abby a $200,000 advance. The money seemed to help motivate her to work on the books for many hours each day. That said, Abby promised 'quality time' with each of us individually and as a group. She also resolved to move her workstation down to a corner of the living room, so she could be part of the ebb and flow of those of us in the house.

Abby's term 'Quality Time' became a mantra for the three of us. We could feel ourselves drawing together because of it.

I made the serious mistake of saying, "Quality time means we're all home at the same time."

Abby leapt on my cavalier remark, explaining how wrong I was. "Quality Time means you're not only home, but also you're giving someone your undivided attention. The TV isn't on, nor are you perusing your iPad or iPhone, or anything else. Not only are we together, we're giving each other focused attention."

After that, we had more than a few discussions about what 'QT' meant, how to create it, why it was important, and what each of us needed to do to create it for the others and ourselves.

I realized midway through the discussions that we were spending 'QT' with each other in that discussion because we were paying attention and learning from each other as we shared our views on the subject.

As we started to talk, we also started to plot and plan more activities together. We knew Anna had been slated to do filming in Milan, Paris, and Moscow, but she'd tried to divert some of that time by staking out some new rules with her director.

We decided to do a European work-vacation while she was there, blending our three jobs in movies and personal appearances to coincide with her schedule. When she called Chaz back to tell him she could be there a little longer, she reported that he was monumentally relieved and grateful. After that we had a lot of fun together blocking out places we wanted to go and see.

Don, Jean, and Connie became frequent visitors. We asked them how they managed quality time together, especially now that Connie had moved back with them and was working. Jean laughed and said, "No TV, and Don's not allowed to be on the computer after dinner. He has to spend time with his wives."

Later Don told me that they often read together, so he at least got to have his iPad handy. The threesome had also decided to read some of the same books and discuss them, and they too were planning some trips for the various vacation periods at the college.

I got a call one day from Leah Maron, the head of an education-oriented foundation targeting peaceful countries in Africa. I asked what that meant and got a long discourse from her about the agency's goals and target areas, specifically those with long-term potential to grow and prosper providing they had moved beyond the tribal conflicts, which plagued much of the continent.

Much of our discussion involved where money went, how it was spent, who got it, what checks and balances were in place, and what volunteers did. I explained that I wanted to be both a donor as well as a volunteer. I quickly learned that I might be contacted regarding a position on their board of directors, and separately about being a volunteer.

At the end of the summer, Anna, Abby, and I traveled by private jet back to L.A. and Anna's home. We were together like we'd never been before, resolving more than ever to push back against the forces that had threatened to tear our triad apart.

Our little triad solidified even further when I came back from a meeting at a film studio one day to find Anna and Abby positively abuzz about some great secret. They held me off until dinner, begging forgiveness, but the moment had to be just right.

I finished up some details on one problem chapter in the afternoon, paid some bills, talked to my agent, and then we segued into the dinner hour, which usually started with cocktails. I realized I was the only one drinking wine.

I looked at the two women and they were both grinning like Cheshire cats as I made my observation about their forbearance about alcohol. They each had ginger ale.

Anna came and kissed me. "Pregnant women shouldn't drink alcohol," she said in a teasing tone. I wasn't sure she was serious, but if she were this would be one of the happiest days in my life.

I looked at Abby, and she was smiling and nodding too. She said, "Yes, we're both pregnant. You are going to be a daddy times two. We're due a week apart."

I saw our loving triad moving in a new direction as I hugged and kissed the two mothers-to-be - the two women I loved more than anything in the world. Everything was again moving in the right direction, and life was good.

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