Return to faith in what?

Dave is wary of shamans. Will demons be involved? “I’m a committed Christian,” Dave says. “This is not my world.”

He eyes the crystals, chimes, ostrich feather and beads laid out on a table like surgeon’s tools. “Do I get a lollipop in the end?”

“If you’re good,” Larry says.

“Define good.”

Larry begins by asking Dave to remove his belt, wallet and keys, and to stand, legs spread, prison-style, so that Larry can pass burning sage between Dave’s legs. Dave looks down at Larry kneeling: “Talk about blowing smoke up your . . .”

Larry tells Dave to lie face-up on the bed, on a yellow spread printed with pink flowers. A church bell in the street below chimes 10 a.m. Larry says: “Visualize energy coming from God into your palms. Vibrancy.” Gong. “Health.” Gong. “Peace.” Gong.

Fred sits watching, no longer wondering — “Is this real?” — as he did in the hot tub days. Since then, Fred’s wife was diagnosed with leukemia. In the hospital, Larry performed a healing ritual on her. She went into remission. Now Fred is hoping that Dave will be blessed with remission. Last February, Dave, a father of three, lost a kidney to cancer.

Larry bends over Dave. “You’ve got a double challenge,” he says, “the economic challenge and the health challenge.” Dave has just completed chemotherapy. Shamanism grates against his nature, but if believing in it might cure him, he will try.

“Let your mind float, that this completely crazy wacko visualization could be something real, that it could help your body,” Larry says, drawing Dave into a trance. “Fake it till you make it.”

An hour and a half later, Dave sits up.

While in the trance, Dave had felt Larry brush his face with feathers. “What, did I have a duck on my head?”

Larry pats Dave on the back. “God and the angels, you had the whole gang here,” Larry says. “Drink a lot of liquids today.”

Dave says he’s feeling both strong and shaky. “Back to work,” Dave says, threading his belt through pant loops. “Back to reality.”