Tony thrust his face so close that their noses almost touched. “It’s real money.”

Rivera said, “We can’t pass this up because you don’t want to run into an old boyfriend.”

Tony pulled up short. “Boyfriend?”

Angie took the next page from the machine and turned her back on him to read.

“Now you’re looking for loopholes,” Rivera said.

“No, I’m looking at the budget. It’s … generous.”

Tony leaned over her shoulder, his eyes running down the page. “Oh, man,” he said in a low voice. “Oh, man. Who ponies up that kind of money?”

The chair of the English department could pony up that kind of money. But the time wasn’t right to bring up John Grant, so Angie kept that thought to herself. She said “The endowment? Rich alums? It doesn’t matter to us where it comes from.” She kept her eyes on the paper, but even so she could feel Rivera’s attention fixing on her.

“We’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this forever. We can’t pass this up.”

Angie forced herself to hold Rivera’s gaze. She said, “Of course we can’t. Of course we’ll do this.”

Rivera narrowed her eyes and then made up her mind to believe Angie. “Good.”

“Good?” Tony echoed. “It’s fucking great.” And he grabbed her for another polka around the room, leaving the details to Angie.

That’s what Angie did: she took care of the details, she kept things going, she talked suppliers into another month’s credit, the clients into seeing things Rivera’s way. Tony Russo did camera work and sound, Rivera Rosenblum directed and edited, and Angie did a little of everything, from writing the script and lending another pair of eyes to the editing process, to balancing the books. She was the practical one, lacking the urge to polka, or even to be unreservedly happy about this change in fortune. And after three unfunded grant proposals and a year made notable by the fact that even wedding work wasn’t coming their way, “miracle” was the only word that came to mind.

And now, according to the words on the page in front of her, she would be talking to John Ogilvie Grant, chair of the English department, about the arrangements for a long stay in Ogilvie, Georgia. Starting as soon as they could get there.

Rivera looked up from the fax. “We could teach, too, if we wanted. In the fall semester. They’ve got film theory for you and introduction to digital filmmaking for me. Or the other way around, but I don’t think Ogilvie undergraduates are ready for my film theories.”

“We’ll be done shooting by September,” Angie said. “And we can come back here to do the editing.”