He reached across the litter of their meal, took her wrists in his hands, and pulled her face to his. “Can you think while I do this?”

“I do my best thinking when I’m lying down,” Angie said, when the kiss broke. “Or sitting in a chair. Your call. What?” she said, alarmed by the look on his face.

“I don’t think I have any condoms.” He got up and patted his pockets, found his wallet, pulled it out. He looked as frantic as Angie felt as he tried to open it. The wallet flipped out of his hands, spitting out a shower of credit cards and bits of paper and business cards that flew over the floor. Angie caught a flash of foil and went diving after it, came up with a half piece of gum still in its wrapper.

“Shit,” John was saying. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Angie flung herself down on the couch and the cushions crackled suspiciously. John heard it, too.

“Didn’t you tell me Tony brings women here sometimes?” John asked. And then they were both taking the couch apart. Among candy bar wrappers and store receipts and note cards covered with Tony’s scrawling handwriting there was a long streamer, bright blue foil squares each containing a ribbed circle. Six of them.

John reached for her, grinning. “I’ll die trying, I promise you that.”

Somewhere among the wreckage on the floor, Angie remembered, there was a carton of juice. She was thirsty enough to go look for it, so she began to disentangle herself from John. Her sweaty skin peeled away from the leather cushions with a vaguely obscene sound, and he cracked one eye at her.

“Who,” Angie said, “puts a leather couch in an editing suite reception room?”

John’s hand moved up her back, his thumb questing. “Hey. I may have my faults, but when it comes to negotiating with university autocrats, I am without peer. First class all the way for the new film program.”

“You’re responsible for this couch?” Angie grinned. “Did they hire you for your skills as an interior decorator?”

“No, they hired me as chair of the English department,” John said, yawning, but his hands seemed completely awake and interested in exploring. She knocked them away.

“Explain.”

He cocked his head at her. “They made me an offer, I made them a counteroffer, you know how it goes.”

“You asked for a leather couch in the editing suite.”

“God, you’re dense sometimes.” He pulled her closer and kissed her. “I told them the department needed to add a film studies curriculum. I made it a condition of my hire. I was right, they didn’t fight it.”

“Explain the couch.”

He laughed at that. “What’s to explain? I negotiated a budget for production facilities. I made some calls and had it designed. They started what, last January, finished in June. Money does make some things easier.”