She was proud of what they had done to the apartment and would have liked to entertain all the people they both knew, but trusted herself only with Dorothy and Spurgeon. Susan Haskell came to lunch and was awkward and miserable, so obviously waiting for juicy revelations about how Adam mistreated her that Gaby knew she would never repeat the invitation. But she found she maintained a kind of intermittent salon for some of their neighbors from Joy Street. Janet Williams dropped in frequently but not so often that she created a nuisance. Several times she brought another digger, the big blond boy who had delivered the paper flowers. His name turned out to be Carl, and he was gentle and polite and knew a lot about music and art. Another time she brought a scraggly-bearded somebody named Ralph, who looked as though he hadn’t bathed for a long time and was groggy and distant, obviously high on something. Janet appeared not to notice. She treated him just as she treated Carl. Or Gaby, for that matter. After every visit the diggers left with a small portion of her grocery budget.

Inevitably, they came one evening when Dorothy and Spurgeon were there.

“Hi,” Janet said to her sister.

“Hello,” Dorothy said. She waited while everybody was introduced and then she said, “Don’t you want to know how Midge and Dad and Mama are?”

“How’s Midge?”

“She’s all right.”

“How are Dad and Mama?”

“All right.”

“Great,” Janet said.

Everybody was very polite. Adam offered and mixed drinks, passed the salted nuts, joined in the talk. The problem arose when Spurgeon said something about the national election.

Ralph frowned and blinked. He had climbed onto his chair and now sat on the back of it with his feet on the seat, as though on a throne looking down at them. “If everybody would only listen to us,” he said. “And turn on and tune off. The bastards wouldn’t have anybody to govern. We try to tell you, but you won’t listen.”

“You don’t really think that would work,” Spurgeon said to him mildly.

“Don’t tell me what I think, man. I think everybody should just bugger off into the woods and get high and do his thing.”

“What would happen to the world if everybody got high?”

“What’s happening to the world right now that’s so crazy swell, with all you squares dead straight?”