Fictional/real location

In 1997 or thereabout, I was reading a science fiction magazine called Terra Incognita while on the train to a memorial for someone who'd been well known in one of my social circles, named Frank Lovell. I put the magazine away when I arrived at the venue, the Tamiment Labor Library at New York University in New York City. When it was over I left the room and walked to the elevator on the mezzanine level, that of the library. While waiting for the elevator to arrive, I resumed reading the story I was on. It was a story about someone who's received a mysterious job offer, and he has to meet someone in front of a specific building to be interviewed for it. So now I get to the description of where the building is, and it's described as being on a particular side of Washington Square. I realize that I am at that very moment in a building on Washington Square and, further, that it is the only building on the side specified in the story. So I am on the mezzanine level of this building "at the same time" that the protagonist is standing in front of it! Spooky. Eric