Each day was more or less like the one that preceded it, people tripping or not, writing up reports or not, but everybody tanning on the beach and sipping cocktails by the pool come dinnertime. There was snorkeling, canoeing, fishing for the men and shopping in the plaza for the women, where in the stalls there you could get silver necklaces, pottery, Mexican blankets and embroidered peasant blouses so cheap they were practically free. She took advantage of it all. For the first time in as long as she could remember she wasn’t expected to do anything, the food and cocktails prepared for them and the maids there to change the bedding and hang fresh towels on the rack, the kids vanishing after breakfast and reappearing only for meals, and always somebody to chat with or indulge in a game of cards or chess or checkers. She read. Relaxed. Tripped. And if anything happened at all, like the time the mayor of the village and five other officials dropped by with bottles of tequila and mescal to welcome all the Harvard researchers to Mexico, it barely caused a ripple. The Mexicans were courteous and soft-spoken and capable of drinking every bit as much as anybody at Freedom House, and if they knew about the LSD—or had an opinion about it—they never let on. Of course, she could barely understand a word of what they were saying, but it was a thrill just to be there to look into their darting black eyes and imagine the time of the pyramids and stelae and the mushroom cult that had sent its tendrils north to bring her here all the way from Boston, which was a kind of miracle in itself.

Toward the end of the summer Peggy flew down with her brother Tommy for a ten-day visit, and that did produce a ripple, though it was no fault of Peggy’s. It was never clear whether Tim had miscounted the days or Brenda had stayed on longer than expected, but now both of them were there at the same time, and the first night, after a tense dinner during which Brenda sat off by herself in the shadows at the far end of the patio, tipping back shots of tequila and flicking one cigarette butt after another into the flowerbed, things came unglued.