And while Tim might not have been there that weekend, Maynard Ferguson dropped by, along with his wife, Flora Lu, and her pet monkey. The monkey—a rhesus macaque, same as the ones used in research—had a rhinestone collar and a little leash and she dosed it with a few grains of psilocybin and called it Thelonious Monkey. Which would have been a bit much—excessive, really—but for the fact that she was one of the most stunning women Fitz had ever laid eyes on, a celebrity’s wife who traveled in celebrity circles, leagues ahead of Joanie or Fanchon or practically anybody else, and it was a certifiable fact that whatever a stunning woman did or said was intrinsically fascinating. And right. And correct. And inarguable.

The trips—three trips, three weeks running—were as powerful and transformative as the ones that had come before, though God remained elusive, at least for him, even if He did play a prominent role in Charlie’s and Alice’s experiences, and to hear her talk of it in the aftermath, Flora Lu’s as well. For her part, Joanie seemed to negotiate her own trips with equanimity, never experiencing any strong negative reactions (Charlie was calling them “freak-outs” now, a whole new vocabulary replacing the standard Freudian lexicon) and if she climbed the heights or embraced the Light, she kept it to herself. And there was no sex, both of them gone so far inward their bodies were no more than afterthoughts. Husks, just husks.

“So what was it like for you?” he asked her after the second Saturday, the one on which the monkey tripped with them.

“I don’t know,” she said, “it’s hard to put into words.”

“Ineffable, right?”

She smiled, a soft compression of her lips. “Isn’t that the whole point?”