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  "You're going to make a great bitter old man."

  "It's the gin. But thanks anyway."

  Zoe was once a fan of my banter, thinking it was smart and urbane and very round-table, but now she turned away and made a disparaging sigh. "So clever," she said.

  The circle had broken up and smaller groups formed. Bill and Tammy Greer saw us and waved and came over. Nervous enthusiasm creased their athletic faces. He was of Norwegian descent. She was of Finnish descent. They both wore the same shade of blue.

  "Hey, you guys," Tammy said.

  We apologized for being late, then I gave Tammy a kiss, and Zoe gave Bill a kiss, and Tammy gave Zoe a kiss, and Bill shook my hand. After that, we had little to say.

  "So," I said. "What's going on here? A barbecue? A little luau?" I swung my hips.

  "No, no," Bill said, shaking his head. "Something a lot more . . . powerful."

  "Okay," I said. "Powerful."

  "Yep." Bill turned toward the burning coals. A man in asbestos boots was spreading them with a long metal rake. "We're going to walk across those coals." He spoke like a man with a crazy dream.

  Tammy curled her arm around Bill and gave him a squeeze. They were terminally in love: if one died, the other would soon follow. "And we'll never be the same," she said.

  "That's what I've gathered," I said.

  Bill gave us a spirited thumbs-up sign. "And we can do it. We really can."

  "Together," Tammy said. "And with Robert. Isn't he the greatest?"

  Zoe nodded. "He seems very motivational."

  To show my solidarity in the world of backyard adventure, I took Zoe's hand. We were like the suckerfish on the belly of a large confused shark. "Super," I said.

  "He's very well regarded," Bill said. "In his field."

  "I'm sure."

  Tammy giggled. She was sweating. It wasn't dainty sweat—nope, she needed a towel. "And we can do it. I know we can." I could see the old Wisconsin cheerleader surfacing.

  "We can," Bill agreed.

  And then Bill and Tammy hugged us, almost tackled us, as if we had already survived some experience. Their skin smelled of apricots and the beach, their hair a floating trace of smoke, and against all my group-hug instincts, I found my head resting on Bill's shoulder and my arm wrapped around Tammy's waist.

  Eventually we separated, and they left us for another couple that wasn't mixing properly. "Walk on coals?" I said to Zoe.

  "We're guests."

  "I'll put on a silly hat. I'll run wildly with a hopeless kite. But hot coals! That's beyond the call. I don't remember Martha Stewart mentioning any hot-coal-and-canape party."

  And—thank God—Zoe smiled, and for that moment found me amusing again. "You're the worst."

  We decided to separate because we hate couples who cling, so she went off in one direction and I went over to Phil Bissel and Chuck Hubert. They were lingering by the coals, both looking defeated.

  "No drinks, Mai," Chuck said.

  "I heard."

  "I can't believe they expect me to walk on fire sober. I mean, with a few drinks, maybe." Chuck reached down and ripped up a clump of grass. "I've done worse." From his palm he picked out single blades and dropped them to the ground. "And no food either."

  "What?" I said.

  "Nope. We can't eat until we've done the firewalk."

  "Bribery," Phil said. He was a fat man who milked his baldness for humor. "There's no way I'm doing it."

  "They have champagne when we finish. The good stuff." Chuck grinned. "I might make a sprint for it now." He slipped into a cartoon gesture of running—left leg raised, elbow bent. "Hold me back!"

  I stared at the coal bed. It had a mesmerizing effect. I pictured a buried village beneath it—everything laid to waste and eventually covered in ash. "It's a shame to ruin such a nice lawn," I said.

  Chuck spat onto the coals. "Oh, you think our man Bill wouldn't think that through? See those stakes?" He pointed. "That's where the pool is going."

  "A pool?"

  "Yep, Bill's putting in a pool, has the contractor and everything, and these coals are in the deep end."

  "That's smart."

  Phil threw an ice cube on the coals. "I don't know what he's thinking," he said. "There's just no chance."

  Herb Frankel came over and mimed golf swings. "Boys been playing?"

  "No."

  He patted me on the back. "How're things? Work all right?"

  "Fine." They all knew my job wasn't going well, but some people, like Herb, pretended to empathize, while others just pretended everything was fine.

  "It's a tough market. No rhyme or reason. Have to sweat it out." The shimmering coals tinted Herb's face with a red Saran Wrap glow. I imagined him suffocating. "You going to do this shit?"

  "I can't imagine."

  "How about you, Chuck? A little zombie walk across the coals."

  Chuck cringed. He always regretted his drunken performances. "I don't think so." Then he lifted his glass of soft drink. "No booze."

  I tried to spot Zoe, but couldn't find her. The sun was down and the night was here and the coals now looked like a very cheap hell that housed very cheap souls. More people came over: the Vollopes and the Burnhams, two couples who always vacationed together; and Leslie Pomeroy, heavily medicated on a new antidepressant. She threw an espadrille onto the coals. It burned quickly, and we all watched.

  The man in the asbestos boots stomped over and warned people not to disturb his spread. "It's essential that it stays pure."

  "Are they just briquettes?" someone asked.

  "No. We get this stuff from Hawaii."

  People were impressed.

  I was drinking 7-Up with three wedges of lime, but it didn't fool me. Nothing fooled me. At that moment I knew the ending to every mystery novel, every suspense movie, and all the people around me were stupid. These are moods I get in, most often when I'm driving. No one knows where they're going except me. Standing next to those coals, their bloom quivering against faces, I saw each person as an old man and an old woman, and I saw them alone and waiting and still cold by the fire. I guess it was the gin. I should never drink on an empty stomach.

  Zoe appeared at my side. She was holding a Coke. "It's happening soon," she said.

  "What?"

  "Tammy wants everyone by the coals."

  "I wish Ray was sick," I said suddenly.

  "Huh?" A look of disgust was on her face.

  "Not sick sick, not dying sick. God no. Just sick enough so that we had to stay home."

  "Please. Don't get this way."

  "Just a little fever, that's all."

  "Mai, shut up."

  Bill and Tammy Greer walked over with Robert Porterhouse. Bill cleared his throat in a stagy way and everyone hushed. "Well, okay, great. It's great having everyone here, just great. I'm so glad you're all here. Yes. Anyway, it's going to be an exciting night. A bit scary." He chuckled nervously. "But it could be really special. Now I'm going to turn it over to Robert. So here's Robert."

  Some people applauded.

  Robert Porterhouse loosened his tie. He took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He smiled a let's-get-down-to-business smile. I was starving. The coals reminded me of the simple cookouts we used to have. Robert gathered us into a tighter circle—it was like camp—and he told us the story of his life.

  "My first memory was of fear. The bogeyman. He was an old man with sharp teeth and long dirty fingernails and he was hungry for children. He used to live under my bed. Whenever I wet the sheets, and I did quite often, I would tell my mother that it was the bogeyman. It was impossible for me to go to the bathroom. Why? Because he would've grabbed my ankles and dragged me under. As basic as that. It's that fear that stops us from doing what we really want to do."

  I looked around the group. I had to suppress the urge to nudge a few people and make loopy gestures at my head.

  "So," he continued, "how do we get over this bogeyman that lives inside of us? Do we turn on the lam
p and check under the mattress? Does that solve the problem? No, because we all know that the bogeyman can't be seen in the light. Only in darkness. That's when you see his glowing red eyes and you smell his rotten breath. Sure"—he put his hands in his pockets and paced—"I know what you're saying: those are kids' fears, and as adults we grow out of such fears." He let the last word linger in the air. I felt on the verge of being startled, like when you know that the necking couple in a horror flick is soon to be doomed. "Or do we?" he asked.

  The silence lasted even longer this time. Robert knelt down and ran his fingers through the grass. Then he started confessing. "I was twenty-three years old. I flunked out of college. I was a hundred and forty pounds overweight. I had no money. No job. I could barely get up out of bed. In fact, sometimes I spent the whole day in bed. Now what kept me there? What brought me so low? It was fear. I still had that bogeyman under my bed. I still thought that if I took one step I'd be finished."

  Fireworks would have been so much more fun. We could have leaned against each other and oohed and aahed at the exploding dandelions and the fluttering snakes.

  "How did I break the domination?" He stared at Clare Worden. She was surprised and she smiled and lifted her hands as if she were drying her nail polish. "Well, something bigger than me made me take that step. It was 1989. And there was an earthquake—a pretty big one—and I'm in bed." He began to act out the scene. "Suddenly, my whole apartment collapses, the second floor becomes the first floor. I'm thrown out of bed. I'm in a T-shirt and underwear. And I have to get out. All the windows are broken. There's glass everywhere. A ton of it. I also smell gas. But I still don't move. I'm too scared. And then I hear it, someone crying for help. Then I hear more people crying for help. I know I have to do something. So I concentrate on those cries and I walk and I crawl and I carry those people out of the building. At that moment my mind was completely focused on the task. And I kept on repeating to myself, 'Save Lives. Save Lives.' That day I took five people out of that building. Most of them were elderly, helpless. And when it was all over, and I was wrapped in a blanket and drinking coffee, I didn't have one cut on either foot."

  Some peopled sighed in real wonder.

  "Is this a miracle?" He shook his head. "Absolutely not. This is the power of the self. At that moment I overcame my fear. I took a step, and with that step the bogeyman disappeared. Now I'm not all that smart. There's nothing 'special' about me. I've just learned a way to align my belief system so that I get what I want. I've empowered myself through positive thinking. Now, I know how this sounds, a whole lot of New Age mumbo jumbo. But I swear to you, and I hope to show you, that with the mind focused, with it directed, there's nothing you can't do. Absolutely nothing."

  And for the next hour he tried to convince us that this was all true. He had us doing exercises, meditations, power screams; we played games of trust. I watched Zoe fall into the arms of Jasper Cunningham. Then he fell into her arms. They giggled. Jasper brushed aside his too-long hair and tucked it behind his ears. He acted like a tennis pro. And once again I thought I knew how everything would end. Bill and Tammy orchestrated the activities like amphetamined cruise directors. "Oh, this is fun," they said over and over again. But as time wore on, the rest of us became grumpier and grumpier. "I'm going to pass out," Leslie Pomeroy moaned. The Vollopes and the Burnhams whispered among themselves and hoarded mints. Phil Bissel's baldness radiated defeat and Chuck Hubert was beyond the semblance of life. It was already obvious that no one was going to walk on hot coals, no matter the possible benefits to the soul.

  "The heat is over twenty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit," Robert Porterhouse told us. "Right now it's hotter than the sun."

  "Really?" someone said.

  "Yes."

  People murmured.

  "And we will walk on it without burning ourselves. Right?"

  "Right."

  "Louder."

  "Right!" It was one of the first things we had learned: interjections

  empowered.

  Then Robert slipped off his loafers, slipped off his socks. The man with asbestos boots prepared a discreet first aid station which nobody was meant to notice but everyone did. Tammy Greer looked ready to cry into her sweat—she was a liquid special effect—and Bill seemed prepared to drown himself on her shoulder. "Okay," Robert said. "Here I go." A deep breath. Another deep breath. His eyes stared straight ahead, as if they were connected by extension cord to a distant outlet emanating a positive force. "Cool moss, cool moss," he said.

  We all chanted along with him. "Cool moss, cool moss."

  "Cool moss, cool moss." He goose-stepped across the red-hot coals, his heels kicking up brilliant embers that drifted like the happy fireflies of a summer stroll. But I was waiting for his feet to bubble, for his legs to melt, for this plastic man to scream out, "Oh fuck, was I wrong! Call nine-one-one!" But he kept on moving, and within seconds was finished. He let out a whoop. All of us politely applauded. He rushed over to the group and showed us his feet. They were dirty, a bit pink, but unblistered. "You see, that's the power, that's your power." He was talking excitedly, his exhilaration charging the air. "Your mind can do anything. Absolutely anything!"

  People smiled. They nodded. Clare Worden asked if she could touch his foot, and Robert happily obliged. "Unscathed," he said. "Completely unscathed because I didn't let them be scathed. My scathing is my own doing. To be scathed is to be negative. I was scathed. But I will not be scathed again." He practically conjugated that verb for us, and we lingered around the coals like a classroom of uninspired kids listening for the final bell. Empirical evidence was beyond us; we lived in speculation. Some people excused themselves to go to the bathroom. Others were fascinated by their cuticles. Even Bill and Tammy had given up on eagerness and were now in adrenaline detox.

  So Robert Porterhouse walked across the coals again. "Cool moss, cool moss," was chanted with the vigor of rote. "Hey, guys," he told us. "That's the power."

  The third time he did it people barely noticed. I was standing with Zoe and Jasper. "This is pitiful," Jasper said.

  Zoe nodded.

  "I mean," he repeated, "just pitiful."

  Robert was clapping his hands, patting backs, searching for high-fives. His face was desperate. "C'mon, we can do it," he said.

  Herb Frankel heckled, "No, you can do it."

  People laughed.

  Then I slipped off my cheap shoes—I wasn't wearing socks—and started across the coals, a glass of flat 7-Up in my hand. There was silence. No one said, "Cool moss, cool moss." A plane flew overhead, and I wondered if those passengers could see me tread through flame. Maybe they thought that this was an exotic land instead of a prime piece of real estate. Maybe I was a holy man. Maybe I had powers beyond comprehension. Maybe I could transform the elements and turn a hot-coal party into a pool party. So I imagined that I was in the deep end treading toward the shallow end, where a lounge chair floated, a gin and tonic nestled in the drink holder. Mahatma Malachi. Before I began, I was finished.

  Robert ran over and hugged me. "Yes. There it is." His face was all relief. "And how are your feet?"

  "Fine," I said. I lifted them up. They were covered in ash.

  Robert turned to the rest of the group. "See. It can be done."

  Chuck Hubert shook my hand. "That's the farthest I've ever seen someone go for a drink."

  "Well," Zoe said, "that was interesting."

  Robert stayed close to me. I was his first convert. "Don't you feel like you could do anything?"

  Now that I was his shill, I said a loud "Yes!"

  People still weren't convinced. Robert and I walked across the coals together. Then we did it hand in hand. Soon, we were skipping, but by that time Tammy was locked in her bathroom, Bill was apologizing, and everyone was drinking the champagne and eating the caviar, the toothpick-harpooned shrimp, the sliced ham, the smoked salmon. Robert packed up his motivational devices. "Some people just aren't ready," he told me.

  "Yeah
," I said.

  "But I'm proud of you, Mai."

  "Thanks, Dad." I was well into the champagne. "You're not a failure either," I said.

  "What?"

  "You're not a failure."

  "I know that."

  When the rum was brought out people cheered, even Robert Porterhouse perked up and after a few mai tais was performing handstands on the lawn. "My center of gravity is perfect," he told Leslie Pomeroy, and she pushed him over and stormed off into the bushes. Hot dogs were roasted. S'mores for dessert. Chuck Hubert somehow got ahold of the asbestos boots and started to do his zombie walk across the coals. There was laughter and applause. Tammy finally came back outside. She was smiling. "Oh, that Chuck," she said. Soon everyone was trying on the boots.

  The party was still in swing when Zoe and I left. Most people had nannies or summer au pairs, while we were lowly with a babysitter. The drive home was quicker than the drive there. "How're your feet?" Zoe asked.

  "Fine."

  "I still can't believe you did that. Crazy."

  I concentrated on the corridor of light and tried to keep the car within it.

  "You of all people," she said.

  "Did you have a good time?" I said.

  "It was ridiculous."

  "Yeah." I didn't even try to make her laugh.

  When we got home the TV was on and Gwen was lying on the couch watching a late-night movie. She quickly got up. I wanted to help her with that head. "Hi," she said.

  "Hey," Zoe said. She leaned against a chair. "Everything go all right?"

  "No problem. A little tears in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but otherwise, fine."

  I said, "The child catcher, right?"

  "Yeah."

  I walked over to the bar and made myself a proper drink. "Poor Ray hates that creepy guy. 'Children,'" I called out in a shrill voice. " 'Candies and sweets and lollipops.' "

  Gwen giggled.

  "But he was good?" I asked.

  "Just fine."

  "Good."

  Zoe sighed and then abruptly said, "Well, I guess Mr. Scott will drive you home." She made her way upstairs. "Sorry we're so late."

  "No problem."

  Gwen didn't live very far away.