In June he considered a job as a surgical technician but realized with regret that he couldn’t take it; the meager pay wouldn’t allow him to save enough to insure survival through the final medical school year. He had reluctantly decided to return to the resort in the Poconos when he saw a tiny advertisement in the Philadelphia Bulletin, seeking professional divers for a water show on the Jersey shore. Barney’s Aquacade was a boardwalk attraction featuring two Filipinos and a Mexican, but they needed five divers for the show, and Adam was one of the two college divers who was hired. It paid thirty-five dollars a day, seven days a week. Although he never had gone off at one hundred feet, it was not at all difficult to learn how to scoop: one of the Filipinos showed him, in innumerable dry runs, how to throw his arms back as soon as he hit the surface of the pool and tuck his knees into his chest, so he would slide down the ten feet of water in an arc and end up gently sitting on the bottom.

The first time up the tower the height was the worst part of the experience.

The steel ladder felt too smooth, almost slippery, impossible to be retained in his grasp. He climbed very slowly, making certain that one hand had closed tightly around the rung before releasing the other hand and moving his feet higher. He tried looking straight ahead, toward the horizon, but the great dying sun was still there and it frightened him, a golden evil eye—he paused in his ascent, hooking a rung with the inside of his elbow while his fingers made the sign of the horns, scutta mal occhio, poo-poo-poo—and he resolutely looked up and fixed his gaze on the high perch, which grew in size and proximity with agonizing slowness as he climbed, but which he finally reached. When his feet were on the platform, letting go of the ladder and turning around was a very difficult thing to do, but he did it.

It was only the equivalent of five stories, he knew, but it seemed more; nothing lay between him and the surface, and all neighboring structures were built close to the ground. He stood on his aerie and looked to the right, where the boardwalk ended and the coast took a dip and a turn, and to the left, where far away and below, tiny cars crawled over a miniaturized roller coaster track.

Hello, God.

“ANY TIME,” the impatient voice of Benson, the manager, floated up.

He stepped out.