The way Jimi worked, they found a neighborhood mom-and-pop coffeehouse that was doing good business and opened up across the street. A Jimi franchise could operate at a loss for months—years, if necessary—however long it took to put the competition out of business and claim its customers. And this was looked upon as an outrage, a borderline criminal act, and never mind that the mom-and-pop usually served watery, third-rate instant in thimble-size cups and couldn’t be bothered to keep a clean bathroom. As for child labor, the protesters didn’t like it but were apparently at peace with children starving because there was no work at all.

Saunders couldn’t hate them. He understood their mind-set too well. Once upon a time, he had marched himself . . . marched, smoked weed, danced in his underwear at a Dead concert, and trekked in India. He had gone abroad looking for transcendence, a mantra, meaning, and goddamn if he hadn’t found it. He had stayed for three weeks in a monastery in the mountains of Kashmir, where the air was sweet and smelled of bamboo and tart orange blossoms. He had walked barefoot on ancient stone, meditated to the ringing drone of the singing bowl, and chanted with all the other potheads who had wound up there. He had given himself over to it all, trying to feel pure, trying to feel love—he even gave himself over to the food, daily servings of a mealy rice that tasted like waterlogged chalk and bowls of what appeared to be curried twigs. And there came a day when at last Saunders received the wisdom he had come looking for.

It was a scrawny, raven-haired kid from Colorado named John Turner who pointed the way toward a higher purpose. No one prayed longer or more intensely than John, who sat through the guided-meditation sessions, stripped to the waist, his ribs showing in his painfully white sides. They were supposed to focus on something beautiful, something that filled them to the brim with happiness. Saunders had tried picturing lotus petals, waterfalls, the ocean, and his San Diego girlfriend naked, without feeling that any of it was quite right. John seemed to get it, though, right away—his long, horsey face shone with rapture. Even his sweat smelled clean and happy. Finally, their third week there, Saunders asked him what he was visualizing.

“Well,” Turner said, “he told us to picture somethin’ that filled us with happiness. So I been imaginin’ the fuckin’ Quarter Pounder with Cheese I’m going to sink my teeth into when I get home. A couple more days of eating sticks and spiced dirt, I think I might be able to visualize a bag of the flavorful motherfuckers right into existence.”