A number of cries, the words wildly enthusiastic but unintelligible. Leah reeled, unsteady on her feet. The hall zoomed around her, a slow-motion tilt. She caught a glimpse of Chris in the back, crouching beside his chair, his sharp and lucid expression standing out from a sea of softened faces.
Shrieks of laughter. Her head buzzing with sugar, her eyes still adjusting to the dimness and the flickering lights, Leah felt her lungs inflate, her mouth open, her sides shake, and then she realized she, too, was laughing.
"Here" – TD's arms drifted out, shadows consuming the upward drift of the footlights – "we live in the Now."
Janie chattered next to Leah. "Living in the Now. That's so brilliant. It's so crucial to growth."
The drum continued its measured beat. Leah felt herself swaying with the crowd, with the cadence of TD's words. His sentences flowed into one another, rivers merging.
"We negate Victimhood. Those who can't need to -" He stopped abruptly, touched a hand to his ear.
"Get with The Program!" they roared.
"We are a powerhouse of resources. Attorneys. Investment bankers. Computer engineers. Recruitment is on the rise every day. Cambridge and Scottsdale will be ready to launch by the end of next month. All of our future ambassadors are right here among us."
Janie crossed her fingers, squeezed her eyes shut.
"It all starts here. Here in our utopia. This will be the model for all of California, then the U.S.A., then the world. But no matter how we grow, it all comes back to us here in this room. That's you. And you. And you. Why don't you all give each other hugs? That's right, stand up and embrace one another." TD waited, hands clasped.
A few of the wiser Pros remained seated, grinning knowingly.
"Come on, folks. If you want that self-help, feel-good crap, go to a Tony Robbins seminar and Awaken the Idiot Within. We don't need the Common-Censors. We don't need Deepak Chopra and his platitudinous spit-up. We each have within ourselves the potential to do anything. In The Program we don't even need each other. But we're stronger together." TD came to a halt onstage. "Now" – a darker tone – "in the past a few people have left the Inner Circle."
Murmurs. Leah was going hoarse.
"And they haven't had an easy go of it. Because once you've been fulfilled, once you've been part of this great practice, you can't turn your back on it. What's happened to those who have left the security of the Inner Circle?"
Leah's cheeks were wet; she couldn't stand the thought.
"They've gone insane, literally insane, stranded out there with the Common-Censors." TD's voice grew deep and sorrowful. "They've been abused. Abandoned. Controlled." The footlights glowed through his hair like a golden hood. "Many of you remember Lisa Kander."
Boos and shrieks. TD's hand snapped up vigilantly, fingers spread, stealing five streams of light and shooting them to the ceiling. The noise ceased. "Let's be fair. She wasn't a bad girl. She just couldn't make the grade. She couldn't -"
"Get with The Program!"
And then, quietly, "I just found out she killed herself." A mournful pause. "She threw herself into the La Brea Tar Pits. Living out in the world, with them, was so hurtful, she asphyxiated herself with steaming tar."
Hushed silence, broken by a few gasps, even sobs. A row up from Leah, Winona was shaking so hard she seemed to be convulsing. One of the oldest Pros at forty-two, Winona had made sacrifices to Get with The Program, leaving behind a Common-Censor husband and infant twins. As a strong role model, she was accorded a special level of respect on the ranch.
TD fanned his arms, a gesture encompassing the entire hall. "None of you will ever have to feel that emptiness. That loneliness. That abandonment. Not as long as you stay On Program and with The Program."
A tidal wave of emotion. Squeaking chairs and undulating arms. A moment of disorientation as Leah's view was blocked, and then she rose to join the throng.
TD lifted his hands, and the sound ceased abruptly, as if a plug had been yanked. Everyone sat and held hands, rocking gently now in preparation for the Guy-Med. Leah's ears hummed.
TD's voice came calm and smooth. "Everybody close your eyes. Take a stroll back to your childhood. Remember your mind as it was. Free of your Old Programming. Empty of adult cynicism. Empty of adult negativity. Let TD guide you. Picture yourself at five years old. You're standing before your childhood room. Let's go inside. Go ahead – push open the door."
Leah felt her insides rear up as on a roller-coaster drop, then avalanche down and out of her, leaving her adrift in an intoxicating emptiness. When she came to, she felt drained. The formal part of the Orae was over. TD was sitting at the stage's edge, legs dangling, talking to the lucky Pros in the front row. She'd lost a lot of time, as she often did during meditation; Stanley John had told her it was a sign of her great sensitivity.
She never remembered what happened inside her childhood house during Guy-Med.
Squeezing past protruding legs, Chris made his way down the row, the others leaning sluggishly out of his way. Leah first thought he was heading for his wife, but the seat next to her was vacant; Janie was in the back replenishing the punch. Chris squatted in front of Leah, hands cupping her knees.
"Go away," Leah said. "You'll disrupt the Teacher if you're out of your seat when he's onstage."
Chris shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. "He's not looking. Just listen. I wanted to say I'm sorry for pinching you in the Wellness Train."
"You were right to. I needed it."
"No, it wasn't right." Chris's voice was rising. "It's not right for us to treat each other this way. It's not right to be treated this way."
Leah nervously regarded the others talking distractedly around them. "I don't know what you're talking about. It's our own growth."
He stood, flustered. "After TD scolded me, I thought about what you went through, then about my daughter from my first marriage. She's just a few years younger than you."
"It's fine. Chris, you're in a loop. Just sit down."
TD's voice boomed through the mike. "Yes, Winona?"
In the chair in front of them, Winona lowered her hand. Leah and Chris stared at the sprayed shell of blond hair in horror. "I experience Chris as undermining my time here tonight," she said.
Chris's whisper came garbled from his throat. "Please don't do this."
"I experience him as being negative about The Program, Teacher. And about you."
TD's voice, projected through the floor speakers, filled the entire hall. "That's okay. I'm open to criticism. Input, Chris?"
The certainty steeling Chris's posture just minutes before decayed. "No."
"Is that true, Winona?"
Winona's southern accent lent her words a haughty zing. "No. He's deflecting."
Leah felt TD's energy going away from her toward Chris and Chris alone. For a moment she thought the relief might send her unconscious again.
TD's voice assaulted them from the four corners of the room. "So you're willing to be negative to other Pros but not stand up for what you say. That's not a very strong position to take, is it?"
Chris shifted his weight, his eyes darting.
"I think I angered you when I took away the tape measure from you because of your inability to do a job and gave it to your beautiful younger wife. Did that anger you?"
The Pros pivoted in their seats.
"Answer him," Leah murmured, barely moving her lips. "Just give a response."
But Chris stood dumbly, legs shaking, watching some point on the floor between his shoes and the stage.