"Wiggin," she said.
"John Paul," he added, holding out his hand.
She looked at it, then at his face. "Isn't it a little hot for a sweater," she said vaguely.
"Funny, I was just thinking that," said John Paul. Clearly this girl was distracted by something.
"Is this some technique that works for you? Telling a girl she is dressed inappropriately? Or is it merely the mention of clothing that ought to come off?"
"Wow," said John Paul. "You saw right to my soul. And yes, it works on most women. I have to beat them back with a stick."
Again a momentary pause. Only this time he didn't wait for her to come up with some put-down. If he was going to recover any chance, it would take some fast misdirection.
"I'm sorry that I spoke the thought that came into my head," said John Paul. "I said 'Isn't it a little hot for a sweater?' because it's a little hot for a sweater. And because I wanted to see if you had a minute I could talk to you."
"I don't," said Ms. Brown. She walked past him toward the door of the building.
He followed. "Actually, we're in the middle of your office hours right now, aren't we?"
"So go to my office," she said.
"Mind if I walk with you?"
She stopped. "It's not my office hours," she said.
"I knew I should have checked," he said.
She pushed open the door and entered the building.
He followed. "Look at it this way--there won't be a line outside your door."
"I teach a low-prestige, bad-time-of-day section of Human Community," said Ms. Brown. "There's never a line outside my door."
"Long enough I ended up clear out there," said John Paul.
They were at the foot of the stairs leading up to the second floor. She faced him again. "Mr. Wiggin, you are better than average when it comes to cleverness, and perhaps another day I might have enjoyed our badinage."
He grinned. A woman who would say "badinage" to a man was rare--a tiny subset of the women who actually knew the word.
"Yes, yes," she said, as if trying to answer his smile. "Today isn't a good day. I won't see you in my office. I have things on my mind."
"I have nothing on mine," said John Paul, "and I'm a good listener, amazingly discreet."
She walked on up the stairs ahead of him. "I find that hard to believe."
"Oh, you can believe it," he said. "Practically everything in my school records, for instance, is a lie, and yet I never tell anybody."
Again it took her a moment to get the joke, but this time she answered with one yip of laughter. Progress.
"Ms. Brown," he said, "I really did want to talk to you about ideas from class. Whatever you might have thought, I wasn't coming on to you with some line, and I'm not trying to be clever with you. I was just surprised that you seem to be teaching a version of Human Community that isn't like the standard stuff--I mean, there's nothing about it in the textbook, which is all about primates and bonding and hierarchies--"
"We'll be covering all that."
"It's been a long time since I've had a professor who knew things I hadn't already learned through my own reading."
"I don't know things," she said. "I'm trying to find out things. There's a difference."
"Ms. Brown," said John Paul, "I'm not going to go away."