“Never better,” he’d said, and then went on to give him the story everybody already knew, about taking time off to finish his thesis and make a few bucks just to pay the bills—he knew how that was, didn’t he? Oh, yeah, he did—“I hear you, believe me”—and the subject of Millbrook, Timothy Leary and LSD never came up, but it was right there, front and center, in Ron Wiesenthal’s baggy eyes and everybody else’s too.

Still, the communal experiment went on, more devotedly than ever, Tim presiding, Peggy and a handful of her Upper East Side friends showing up most weekends, Maynard blowing in and out with his air of glamour and untouchability. This was America, wasn’t it? What they were doing on their own property was their business and nobody else’s. And Tim—Tim was never happier than when he was flouting one convention or another. As far as the local constabulary were concerned, Tim borrowed an expression from Hollingshead to convey his sentiments: I piss on them from a great height.

It happened that the vernal equinox fell on a Saturday that year, and so it was all but irresistible to throw a party—a big party, the biggest yet—to welcome back the sun and the promise of the lengthening days to come. Invitations went out—Celebrate the Equinox, the Alte Haus, Millbrook, 7:00 P.M.—and by eight the party was running on all cylinders, Dick and Charlie having stationed themselves at the door to greet each of the guests with a three-and-a-half-ounce paper cup of the sacrament, in liquid form, mixed with cherry Kool-Aid. For his part, Fitz was ready to let go and travel where the drug—and the company—took him. He’d had an especially galling time the previous day, when he’d gone in to substitute for a history teacher and wound up losing it over some little shit of a kid who refused to take his feet down off the desk in front of him and had to be escorted out into the hall and pinned up against the wall before he came to appreciate the nature of the transactional psychology going on between them. What he was thinking was I don’t need this shit, and he’d actually gone down to the principal’s office to tell Dave Jacobs to forget it, thanks but no thanks, but Dave wasn’t there, which just made it all the worse.