Someone was speaking as we entered the room. I recognized the monotone of the born chairman. “It is always a pleasure,” the voice intoned, “to come together, to express our concerns and compare experiences.”

At that moment the only experience I cared about was the sinuous river of kisses down my shoulders and backbone, but I managed to sit straight on my folding chair and to look alert and responsible. Lois-Ann, in lawyerlike fashion, inspected the agenda, running a little gold pencil down the list of items, her tongue tight between her teeth.

The voice rumbled on. Minutes from the previous meeting were read and approved. There was no old business. Nor any new business. “Well, then,” the chairman said, “who would like to speak first?”

Someone at the front of the room rose and gave his name, a name that conveyed the double-pillared boom of money and power. I craned my neck, but could see only a bush of fine white hair. The voice was feeble yet dignified, a persisting quaver from a soft old silvery throat, and I realized after a minute or two that we were listening to a testimonial. A mystical experience was described. Something, too, about the “search for definitions” and about “wandering in the wilderness” and about the historic symbol of the fish in the Western Tradition, a secret sign, an icon expressing providence. “My life has been altered,” the voice concluded, “and given direction.”

The next speaker was young, not more than twenty I would say. Lois-Ann and I took in the flare of dyed hair, curiously angled and distinctively punk in style. You can imagine our surprise: here of all places to find a spiked bracelet, black nails, cheeks outlined in blue paint, and a forehead tattooed with the world’s most familiar expletive. The Orange Fish had been a graduation gift from his parents. The framing alone cost two hundred dollars. He had stared at it for weeks, or possibly months, trying to understand what it meant; then revelation rushed in. “Fishness” was a viable alternative. The orange fins and sneering mouth said no to “all that garbage that gets shoveled on your head by society. So keep swimming and don’t take any junk,” he wound up, then sat down to loud applause.

A woman in a neatly tailored mauve suit spoke for a quarter of an hour about her investment difficulties. She’d tried stocks. She’d tried the bond market. She’d tried treasury bills and mutual funds. In every instance she found herself buying at the peak and selling just as the market bottomed out. Until she found out about investing in art. Until she found The Orange Fish. She was sure, now, that she was on an upward curve. That success was just ahead. Recently she had started to be happy, she said.