‘The fact is, Hope, I do have the most awesome mind on the planet,’ said Jim, his glass still bouncing against the force field of his irrepressible jocularity.

Jim and Hope were old antagonists in the uncivil war between liberal and conservative values that unfolded even at this high altitude of American society, but the basic solidarity of being rich meant that they could still have lunch together; their antipathy was more like an unattended jousting tournament than a primetime wrestling match, beloved by millions.

With her high cheekbones, her tangled blonde hair and her sun-faded denim jacket, Hope looked to Olivia as if she had surfed to lunch on a Beach Boys album. She was bewildered to discover that Hope was already forty. Her wide-open face could easily have been ten or twelve years younger and her body was sinisterly flexible. She sat through lunch as if she were in a yoga class, arching her back like a stretched bow and folding her legs like shoelaces. For Hope, it was just so much simpler to sit in a double lotus than keep her feet on the ground. She refused most of the food that Raoul brought around, but sometimes took tiny helpings of the healthiest dishes, her slim brown wrists decorated with an alluring turquoise and silver bracelet, as well as an accumulation of red and yellow cotton threads she had promised not to remove until they fell apart of their own accord: tokens of commitment to a surprising number of fragile vows and friendships. When she bought the property next to Hunter’s, it had been called, with crushing literalism, Hilltop Ranch, but Hope had renamed it Yab-Yum, in honour of the Tantric symbol for the union between male compassion and female insight, portraying the highest spiritual state in the most primordial sexual act; an image of copulative fusion that represented the transcendence of duality.

‘Oh, Francis has a Yab-Yum image in his study, don’t you, darling?’ said Olivia.

‘Yes,’ said Francis. ‘It’s a nineteenth-century Tibetan thangka,’ he explained to Hope.

‘Beautiful,’ said Hope, like a woman glancing approvingly at some new earrings in a mirror. ‘Do you have a meditation practice?’

‘I practise ineptly,’ said Francis, ‘when I remember.’

‘I’ve got a dojo at my place,’ said Hope, ‘that was blessed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.’

‘Gosh,’ said Francis. ‘Did he just happen to be in the area?’

‘He just happened to get a donation from the Schwartz Foundation. My family made a fortune in pretzels and I’m laundering the money with philanthropy. It’s a beautiful space; you’re welcome to come over and sit there.’

Why don’t you just say, ‘fuck’? thought Olivia.

‘Thank you,’ said Francis. ‘I do less formal meditation than I used to; I just try to integrate my practice with whatever is going on.’

‘That doesn’t sound inept to me,’ said Hope, flashing him a smile, ‘more like the highest path.’