It was one of those summers when people just kept coming to stay, and I’d pull out the futon and slap on the sheets and set my friends up in the living room. My place was small, and the overcrowding really bugged my girlfriend, who was far more solitary than me. There’d be a breather of two or three days before each new onslaught, and we knew that in a couple of months, the visits would all be history. But then the Pope called, and I couldn’t really turn him down. He was coming to Toronto for a few days, and he’d be pretty busy, but he wanted somewhere to crash at night, and he remembered my futon fondly from years past.