Royce outlined the advantages of the arrangement in terms Tim might have employed (overturning taboos, casting off societally imposed strictures, strengthening the group bonds and driving a stake into the heart of the bourgeois games they’d been stuck playing all their lives), his voice pinched in lecture mode, his hands like white birds fluttering round his face. He’d had an awkward time of it in the meditation house during his week with Alice (she told Fanchon, who told Joanie, that she wasn’t attracted to him and no matter how much of the sacrament they ingested or how much they saw of each other, that wasn’t about to change). Instead of growing closer, they seemed to have lost any sympathy they might have built up for each other over the past two years. They barely acknowledged each other, and invariably, at meals, you’d find them sitting at opposite ends of the table.

When he was through, no one responded at first because they were all privately assessing what it would mean to them personally, vis-à-vis interrelationships—sex—and Fitz was no different. He was sitting beside Joanie, but he wasn’t looking at her—he was looking at Lori, who was giving nothing away, just doodling in her sketch pad as if all this chatter was meaningless to her.

Tim said, “We don’t need it to be anything formal—the more informal, the better, really. If people want to get together, with or without the sacrament, well, here’s the opportunity. No fuss, no hassle, the kids all tucked away and the rest of us up there peeling back the layers whenever the mood takes us.” He paused, glanced round the table. “Everybody in?”

Lori looked up from her sketch pad, then pushed back in her chair and raised her hand as if she were in one of her classrooms at Bennett, where she hadn’t set foot since October as far as anybody knew. “When do we start?”

Tim shrugged. “Whenever we want—again, the whole idea is to make it second nature.”

“How about now—is now good? Tonight, I mean?”

Another shrug. “Why not? All we have to do is drag some mattresses up there.” He paused, flashed his grin. “Lord knows there’s enough of them around here.”