She laughed. “None of them are young. Ben was never young. I was never young. You probably were an old child too, and you like us because you can act out. It is heaven to play, isn’t it? You like coming here because the rest of your life vanishes. You never mention your wife, so there must be troubles there. Your job must be troubles. Jesse gives everybody permission to be themselves and to think about themselves. That it’s okay to be selfish.

“Being with Jesse is sort of a meditation. Like sitting zazen, or being in a sensory deprivation tank. The past and future disappear. Problems and decisions disappear. Time disappears and the present acquires an exquisite color and exists within a frame of only now this second, exactly like the frames we make with our hands.”

I saw she was drunk, but still I knew what she meant, knew she was right.