The poets in the mathematics department are flirting over a game of chess. Each piece is an airline sized bottle of vodka, and each one you take, you drink. No one in the department can afford to be sober, though differential equations prefers marijuana. But in number theory it’s vodka, clear as the day, fast and painful, easy to palm. Not that it matters; they’re playing in the building’s atrium, and have already weathered one stink eye from a wandering college president.

It’s a cold winter’s night a week from finals and everyone has gone slightly crazy. Someone has climbed up the outside of the atrium and is laying sprawled out against the clerestory, face pressed against the glass. Sheila’s off by herself, too large for her skin, flopped over the arms of a padded chair, desperately squinting at proofs that refuse to cohere into any meaningful sense. She’s read the same paragraph of logic a dozen times in the last hour and none of it is sticking. She’s dropped out twice, she can’t face a third time.

Someone around the curve of the hallway lets out a muffled sob and everyone sighs in recognition. The poets have finished their game and are leaning against each other, fingers twined together in mingled lust and despair.