“I thought the festival is supposed to be our last big blast of the summer together,” I remind him.

“It will be. I’ll just be selling some acid on the side.”

How is it possible that I’ve wound up with a best friend who’s a materialistic bourgeois capitalist anachronism disguised as a longhair? No one I know wears aftershave anymore. Or tools around in a muscle car. Arno claims he doesn’t wear bell-bottoms because they make his short legs look like tree stumps, but that’s not the reason. He just doesn’t want to be identified too strongly with the counterculture. Sometimes I think that if we weren’t best friends since childhood, we wouldn’t be friends now.

He opens the sock and proudly displays the multitudinous circular white tablets inside. “Took me days to make these suckers.”

“Looks like aspirin,” says Milton.

“No, they don’t.” Arno takes offense.

“Yeah, they do.” I agree with Milton.

“The people I sell to’ll know it’s not aspirin,” Arno says.

“How?” asks Milton.

“Because why would anyone want to sell them aspirin?” Arno asks, as if the answer is obvious.

“Uh, because he thinks they’re a bunch of stupid hippies and he can easily rip them off?” I venture.

Arno’s face scrunches the way it does when he knows you’re right but he can’t admit it. He shoves the bulging sock back under the bed. “Let’s go see what’s going on with the moon landing.”

“The troglodytes emerge.” Mr. Exley reclines in his black leather Eames chair with his shoes off. The sour scent of feet wafts from the gold-toed black socks that stretch up over his calves. He’s wearing baby-blue Bermuda shorts and a yellow paisley shirt. A half-empty martini glass rests on a small table beside him. Five days a week, Mr. Exley puts on a dark suit, white shirt, and tie and takes the train to the city. (The paterfamilias used to do that before he conned a dying friend into selling him a Laundromat chain for cheap.) At home after work each evening Arno’s father sucks down two or three vodka martinis. (I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen the paterfamilias drink. And then only a beer.)

Arno’s mom sits on a couch near her husband. Her dark bouffant hair is piled high on her head. Her lips, fingernails, and high heels are matching bright red. Under her blouse is a bra that comes to points like the armor of a Norse goddess. A cigarette in one hand, a small glass of sherry in the other.