He was hanging upside down from a trapeze. There was an enormous net stretched beneath him and a harness around his chest, which was tied to a safety line that ran up to a scaffolded system of pulleys. He was wearing what looked like white footy pajamas. His glasses were gone. His arms were folded across his chest and his thick black hair was hanging in the shape of a pope’s hat. On the ground, a gray-bearded instructor was yelling at him. “You will be laughed out of the ring, Margolis! You will be dead on the floor, and the last thing your lazy-ass soul is going to see before it floats off to lazy-land is a whole tent full of people laughing at your dead body! Now, how about you show me you’ve actually practiced this glide, or am I wasting my time?”

Margolis. Even though it was upside down and from a distance, I could see the scowl of frustration on his handsome face. He tightened his stomach muscles, folded upward, then dropped and commenced swinging. I waited for him to take hold of the opposite trapeze, but it was the swing and the reach he was practicing; after a few carefully executed grabs at the air just in front of the second bar, the instructor yelled, “Thank you!”

Other than learning his last name, I hadn’t really accomplished anything, but I felt elevated as I repeated it to myself. When I got back to the dorm that night, I exited the elevator onto the second floor and sailed across an inch of water, landing flat on my back. The drinking fountain had been ripped from its foundation. One of my neighbors, dressed in baggies and flippers, burst into a laugh, then stuck his head out the window that overlooked the entrance to the building.

“Hey, bitch! Lose some weight!”

There was no number on his apartment door. I checked the numbers on either side, and knocked lightly. I knocked a second time. A voice exploded from somewhere inside, a single blast of sound I didn’t recognize as a word. Then I heard Frankie’s voice: “Jason, hold on! I’m coming!” The chain rattled and the bolt unlocked. When the door opened, Frankie was standing in front of me in his underwear and a T-shirt, squinting against the sunlight.

“It’s not Jason,” I said.

He looked confounded by the sight of me. Then his face snapped to life and his head dipped as if he were laughing hard, though he wasn’t. “Wow! Look at you! What are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d drop by, finally see your place.”

“Wow,” he said again. “That’s great.” He glanced back, his head disappearing behind the door. “You just showed up.” His head reappeared. “Well, come in.”