At some point the pizza arrived, four square boxes that might as well have had mandalas painted on them too, though there was no need because all you had to do was flip back the lid of each and there were the pizzas revealed, each a perfect circle inside a perfect square, the universe laid out on a slab of hot dough. The smell was irresistible—it was pizza, after all—but after drifting into the kitchen to take a look at it, he resisted. Tonight was special. Tonight—Fanchon had called it—was a kind of graduation, another graduation, and it didn’t take him long to make up his mind. He was going to stay on, come what may, and whatever Joanie might have been thinking or what Corey might have wanted faded away into the fumes of the gin rising from his second martini. So what if he’d had a bad trip last time out? He owed it to Tim—to himself—to push beyond that and discover what the others kept talking about, the Light, the vision, the melting away of the ego and the awakening of the innermost mind. The boat had been rocked, the project attacked, but here they were—here was Tim, unfazed and unyielding, more determined than ever to push the boundaries. Fitz couldn’t go home. Not now.

And so the pizza went untouched—he didn’t want anything on his stomach to weigh him down. Actually, hardly anybody seemed to want any, except Tim’s kids and Ken, who fed slice after slice into his mouth before excusing himself (“Big day for me tomorrow”) to mount the stairs to his room. Fanchon went round lighting candles and flicking off the lights. Charlie laid more wood on the fire. Then an unseen hand changed the record and Tim got up and circulated the Delysid samples. “Great, Fitz,” Tim said, standing over the couch where he’d settled himself back down beside Fanchon and Alice. “Great,” he repeated, handing over the pill as if it were a sacrament—and it was, it was—“because this is the true path to enlightenment and enlightenment is something you have to work at, right? No fears, no worries. Just sit back and relax.”

Fitz swallowed and watched Fanchon and Alice do the same as Tim looked on, smiling his unflagging smile. “Great,” he repeated again.

“What about the questionnaires?” Fitz asked, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the sideboard. The music—another raga, or maybe the same one—jumped and whined and tap-tap-tapped through the speakers.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tim said, grinning down at him, hands on hips. “I don’t think we’re going to need them tonight, do you?”