They’d been treated to an introductory lecture by Tim and Dick, in which they learned about meditation, transcendence, set and setting, the group mind and the importance of avoiding the imposition of their own jargon or experimental games on others. They would eat in silence, gather around the big fireplace in the sitting room for a meditation session led by Dick and then proceed by candlelight to their rooms. In the morning, after a breakfast featuring black milk, violet eggs and home fries the color of Christmas tree ornaments, they’d be allowed to converse with one another, but only if they avoided any sort of ego game whatever, beginning with a prohibition on using their names. If, for instance, someone wanted the person seated beside him to pass him something, he would say, Please, brother (or sister), pass me the eggs or waffles or carnation-pink coffee, would you?

Was it all a bit much? Yes, it was. Did she feel, in Charlie’s words, like a sellout? Yes, again. Was it a violation of everything they believed in to hold a session without the sacrament, to trip without drugs? Was it even possible? Did she want to throw down her apron and go upstairs with Fitz—or Ken—take the sacrament and feel him inside her all night long while their minds soared and their bodies melded like the first animalcules in the progression of life, like protozoans and paramecia merging and budding and whatever else they were capable of? She did. But she understood the importance of what they were doing and what these anonymous strangers meant to them (money, just that, money), and as she bent over the elbow of a Park Avenue housewife and poured her another glass of Chablis the color of squid’s ink—or the restauranteur from Scarsdale or professor from Columbia—she tried to keep that in mind.