A hint of anger and jealousy could be seen in the drunken stuper of the idiot as he scooted his chair closer to Jen in my absence. "It's fine," she said. "I'll take one for the team." There was some game on I didn't know anything about but pretty much everyone was wearing red and white and the chairs filled the room. They were thick and sturdy and made me feel like a queen.

Suddenly we were surrounded and the only potential non-idiot asked for Jen's number and then proceeded to impress her by making a star out of toothpicks. It fell apart and she couldn't get it back together and then he left to study chemistry.

Jen looked up and said "You're leaving me?" and he just nodded.

I saw him outside later smoking a cigarette by the door. After this intense disappointment, Jen and I ate chocolate and went shopping, and this time encountered no homeless-looking scientology missionaries or foreign coin collectors asking me if I was having a good time writing in my diary.

Jen almost bought a green shirt with a zipper down the back and I thought about buying an umbrella. We went back to the apartment to be with our computers until dark, when I could finally convince Jen to come out with me and fantasize about next year when she had to go home to pay off her student loans and I would be the only girl left in toy land.

"What do you think would happen if I came down here by myself?" I asked.

"You'd probably get molested," she said.

At the intersection of the bars, on our third drink, she said "I'm tired of playing this game," and told me all these amazing things about horses like how you have to approach them with hunched shoulders, but they make this gurgling sound once they recognize you and that the part of their nose right underneath their nostrils is so soft. She is worth all of the idiots trying to be clever.