All caseworkers signed a nondisclosure agreement. If they breathed a word of it, I would sue them into oblivion. I told everyone I had eyes and ears out in the world—and, considering the scale of my project and the attention to detail they witnessed each day upon coming onto my property, my claim seemed entirely possible. But most of all, I tried to hire people with an artistic temperament, who could appreciate the sacred nature of the project; an NDA is only as good as the person’s appreciation of money or law. What I really needed to do was to instill a deeper, heart-level obligation—I needed the workers to feel like a public reveal of my project would be an abasement of their own moral fiber, a betrayal of values.

That is why I nurtured the clannishness of a hippy-dippy commune by providing several opportunities for camaraderie. I offered food and drink in lavish fashion. I brought in picnic tables and set them around the grounds, which were already vast and park-like, and on rainy days I provided shelter inside the huge dining room in the main house and a hot meal. They were forbidden to talk about their current work, but all other subjects were open for discussion. Sometimes these rainy-day lunches began in an oddly monastic mood, with everyone sitting down together at first quietly, solemnly. Slowly the atmosphere turned jovial in the way that enjoying a meal with strangers can turn, and occasionally, when the bright, cozy, raucous interior held back the dreary day outside, I was blasted with nostalgia for Geannie and Jim, or some other part of my past life that included the love and communion of other people washing over me. When that happened I excused myself and walked around the half-finished foundation of the apartment building until the lunch was over, my feet sucking at the mud. Joy was a contagion I needn’t catch at that late stage.

Many of the caseworkers were artists, carpenters, artisans—when I could not locate original art prints that hung in Apartment 201, for example, I had copies commissioned, and the same went for all the furnishings, carpet, and knickknacks. Even the doorbells, even the dish towels. I had each inanimate object in the apartment cataloged by episode number, and then the original was located or re-created when possible.