He bides some of the remaining time watching coeds. Not any that he would be interested in—rebounding is difficult and can easily be messed up. It’s very simple to jump too fast, too far, and end up in the same snake pit as before. Girls are tricky, he reasons, content for the moment to simply look. Watch. Imagine. He prides himself on being great at imagining. Several cuties wander past, giggling and fairly intent on wasting their parents’ money. Two or three catch his eye, throw him a smile. One he sort of knows, a little, from last semester. They might have even gone out once or hooked up at some postfinals blowout. It’s hard to recall with girls like that. The Gap-clad, Abercrombie-assed, ponytailed masses get harder and harder to differentiate the longer he’s at this place. So, he decides to do what he always does. Smile back. Something about her, a brushing of her bangs as she passes, suggests that they’ve slept together, but he has no hard evidence to support this. He’d have to see her naked to be sure, and there is no chance of that right now, of this he is quite certain. See, he never forgets a body. Not ever. And in his own humble way, he prides himself on this. Every foot, elbow, curve of the neck is catalogued somewhere in that head of his. Why do they care so much if we can recall a birthday or some damn anniversary, he wonders, when it’s so much more caring to make note of the length of her calves, the bridge of her nose. An imperfection that dances in her left pupil. All this is important. The rest is artifice.

It’s edging toward 12:45 when he spots her making a move through the library crowd. Her precise haircut cutting this way and that as she moves to the reading lounge. He has absently picked up a copy of Bazaar but discards it now, knowing how she hates it when he tears out the photos. Not to pin on his office wall or anything silly like that, but just to consider in private. An attractive girl, one who has managed to get herself in Bazaar, anyway, is always worth a second glance.