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"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 lamp 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.