Within minutes she was in the pool herself, her clothes hastily shucked in the room she’d barely had time to glance at (four walls, double bed, ceiling fan, a cot for Corey), and everybody was gathered round, the whole crew, laughing, chatting, smoking, drinking. They might have been back at Tim’s on a Saturday night, but for the pool and the heat and the high hot Mexican sun. And the margaritas, an example of which had magically appeared in her hand. Propping herself up on the coping of the pool, her hair gloriously wet and trailing over her shoulders, her legs kicking lazily in the cool embrace of the water, she sipped her exotic slushy drink that was sweet and tart all at once, almost like a whiskey sour, only better, and when that one was gone, there was another to replace it, and another, and before long she was singing a ditty she made up on the spot, with a little help from Carmen Miranda: “I’m Chiquita Margarita and I’m here to say, margaritas are good for you in every way.” And then Alice took it up and Rick Roberts’s wife, Paulette, and Susannah Eggers too and they were all belting it out, making up the verses as they went along, and what the hotel staff must have thought—or the kids, for that matter—nobody really knew. Or cared.

At some point dinner was served poolside, a kind of fish and shrimp stew you sopped up with tortillas and washed down with cold Mexican beer. The talk, at least at first, was of the project, which was unconstrained now by any consideration other than pushing the boundaries to see what lay beyond them. They’d decided that people would rotate their trips so that on any given day a third of the group would be doing the sacrament, a third acting as guides, and the remaining third recuperating from the previous day’s trip and writing up their experiences. There were thirty-three adults present that summer, meaning that on any given day ten or so would be tripping, and the lifeguard tower on the beach was reserved for those who wanted to withdraw from the scene and go deep with or without a guide. Climb up into the tower and it was yours, though most people preferred the palapas along the beach, where they could stretch out in the sand and feel the thump of the surf radiate through every fiber of their being, and wasn’t that the true heartbeat of the earth?

“Your choice,” Ken told her and Fitz. “Freedom, it’s all about freedom.”