“It’s redirected anxiety,” she told Rivera when they were in the editing lab together. “Easier than worrying about what comes next.” Neither of them had gone on the job market, sticking to their early plans to stay independent. The hard part was watching the other people in their class flinging themselves out into the world, accepting jobs with Lucasfilm and PBS. Of course she had to find something else to obsess about, Angie told herself, and a man she would never talk to was just the ticket.

By January they were saying hello, holding glances a little too long, each of them calculating the next step, the potential gain and the complications. Scott called and she found herself making excuses.

John Grant was faculty; she was a grad student. Angie had nothing to do with his department, but it was touchy, these days, professors and students, no matter the details. That excuse made Rivera laugh out loud. She wasn’t one for rules when it came to basic human instincts.

“There he is,” she would say in an exaggerated whisper, elbowing her. “Your guy.”

Rivera described herself as part English, part Jewish, part Puerto Rican, part Mohawk, and all nose. She could smell attraction on the skin; she said it reminded her of apricots cooking.

On the day they finished the last of their class work—nineteen years of schooling, done and over forevermore—Angie and Rivera sat out on the roof of their apartment building on West Eighth Street and drank red wine. There were three different parties going on in the building across the street, one on each floor. It was more entertaining than television, which felt like work.

Rivera matched up people from one party with people from another, man on man, woman on man, woman on woman.

“Those two,” Rivera said. And: “Those three.” She picked out somebody for herself, a young black woman wearing what looked like a Chanel suit. Rivera considered it her mission in life to wean women from their preoccupation with penetration.

“Go on over,” Angie encouraged her.

“Soon,” Rivera promised. “Oh, no, look at that.” A tall, awkward type with a very, very short woman, both of them wobbly drunk. “That won’t last a week, but the sex will be interesting.”

Angie laughed so hard that she almost choked on her wine, and while Rivera was pounding on her back they both caught sight of John Grant, talking to the Chanel suit.

“Your guy, my girl,” Rivera said. “Let’s go.”

Angie wasn’t drunk but she wasn’t quite sober, either. Otherwise she might not have done it, followed Rivera across the street and up the stairs. She walked right up to John Grant, her blood pounding in her ears.