The place was mobbed. It was just off campus, in the upstairs apartment of an old house that shook with voices and a thumping bass. At the top of the landing, I pushed through the crowd and stepped right up behind a young man with dark curly hair who I thought was Frankie. I tapped his shoulder. “You rang?” he said, looking at me with tired eyes.

“Sorry. I thought you were …” I glanced at the surrounding T-shirts and multicolored heads of hair. It was like being in a field of tie-dyed sunflowers. “Do you know Frankie Kerrigan?”

“I don’t know last names,” he replied. “There’s Big Frank and Little Frank.”

“Here’s Big Frank,” said the girl he’d been talking to, and she reached for the arm of the person behind her.

Big Frank wasn’t Frankie. He was at least six two, was nearly bald, and had an indignant-looking face tempered with one of those five o’clock shadows that seemed tattooed on. “What’s your last name, Big Frank?” the girl asked.

“My last name is Who-the-fuck-wants-to-know,” he replied. Then he focused on me and his mouth widened into a smile interrupted by a gap in his front teeth. “Hello.” He extended a wide hand. “Who be you?”

“Joe.” I shook his hand.

He could see only a wedge of me, but he made a quick assessment of my clothes, my haircut, or both. “Rush week is over,” he said. “But I can still be your big brother.”

“I think he wants Little Frank.”

“Oh, who doesn’t?” Big Frank’s teeth disappeared. He glanced around the room. “Over there, in the corner.”

Arms lifted to let me through. My shoulder brushed an elbow and was splattered with beer. At last I reached the corner, where a cluster of people were sitting at knee level on overturned milk crates. I spotted Frankie among them. He’d gained a little weight, I thought; his wiry body had filled out just enough so that he no longer looked like a little kid but like a handsome young man. He’d cut his thick, dark curls down to a soft-looking brush and dyed a bright blue patch the size of a cracker into the hair above the left side of his forehead. He was wearing jeans that were snug against his legs and a plain white T-shirt with a wide neck hole that exposed his collarbone. He was talking a mile a minute to the guy sitting next to him. The music was too loud for me to hear what he was saying. Then abruptly he turned. His eyes brightened, his cheeks lifted, and he looked like a child again. “You sneak! They were supposed to announce you! I had your theme song all cued up on the stereo!”