Angie first saw John Grant crossing Waverly Place; he caught her attention because, she told herself, he was a new face in the familiar river of students and staff and faculty. She soon realized two things: first, that she saw him most often around the English department building on certain days of the week, and second, that he was watching her, too.

There was nothing she could do about needing to pass that particular corner every day. It was on a straight line between the apartment she shared with Rivera and the film center. And anyway, she lectured herself, why should she? She saw thousands of faces every day, about half of them men. Some of those men looked at her; sometimes she looked back. She had had a fair share of men in her life, and would have more.

She could simply stop one day and ask him if he wanted to go for coffee. Except she didn’t, but neither could she keep herself from looking for him, and when she did find him, he was looking right back at her.

Not a month after it all started Rivera caught on. She was at first mystified that Angie, who had never been shy, should hang back. Then she decided to take the matter into her own hands. In short order Rivera had established that John Grant wasn’t new faculty at all, but a visiting professor who came downtown from Columbia three days a week to teach a course on Whitman’s New York. Straight and unattached.

“Good for him,” Angie said, keeping her eyes on the script in her lap.

Rivera said, “The only question is, which one of you will give in and make the first move.”

“Not me,” Angie said. “Not this time. It’s too corny for words, falling for a professor from afar.”

“Sometimes corny is what you need,” Rivera said.

“No, what I need is very simple, and I get that from Scott.”

To which Rivera snorted. She didn’t think much of Scott, a grad student in comp lit who was too quiet and too predictable for Rivera’s tastes. Angie liked having Scott around for just those reasons.

The problem was, there was no avoiding John Grant. The very idea of him was everywhere, floating in the air, unavoidable. Total strangers seemed intent on sharing things Angie couldn’t possibly need to know. Waiting in line at Starbucks, she heard undergraduates discussing ways to run into him, what might interest him, if it would be a good idea to try to get into one of his courses uptown, if it was true that he was one of the Grant Grants and lived in twenty rooms on Morningside.

“He rows every morning,” one of them said.

“Should have gone out for crew,” said her friend.

But Angie didn’t have to hatch plots; wherever she went she ran into John Grant, and soon he was featuring in many of her dreams.