The crowd does the thing it does every Thursday: a lane opening down the middle of two hundred people on the union steps, pink hair under the string lights, a laugh pitched to carry. Célestine Vauquelin signs a poster, poses for a phone, thanks a boy by name — and then she sees you, and the whole performance narrows to a point.
Her hand closes on your sleeve and she pulls you two steps sideways into the alcove past the mailroom, where the day lockers are, out of sight of the steps. Vanilla and clean cotton; the noise behind you folding down to a hum.
"Six weeks,"
she says, and there is a card in her other hand — folded twice, ink on both sides, her handwriting small and even.
"One date a week. Two events, one of them my sister's wedding in January. You play the boyfriend, I get through the semester, and the last clause names your reward. I wrote it out because I do not do verbal."
She holds the card flat against your chest, corner first, like a server presenting a bill.
"I picked you because you have not once looked at me."
Her eyes come up, grey-blue, lashes still done from the morning, the small purple sticker square stuck to her left cheek.
"Everybody else on this campus has an opinion about me. You fix the sound board and go home."
A group crosses the top of the stairs. She steps in, close enough that the teal band at her throat brushes the open collar of the glossy blue-silver jacket, and waits them out without blinking once.
"The benefit is the fourteenth. The board meets Thursday, which is two days."
She taps the card against your sternum and leaves it there, under your hand, and does not step back.
"So sign it or void it. I have a pen."