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inside, and I step into the joyous fray.
    The place is a madhouse. Hundreds of people — a thousand, even — all in college wear, all drunk or getting there fast and
     all clutching tournament pools, those single betting sheets that get passed around every office before the games begin. Along
     the bar are four big-screen televisions, each showing a different game, and in the middle of the big open floor are bleachers,
     actual full-size bleachers like you’d find in a real stadium, and they’re packed, too, jammed with fans and bettors, shouting
     or cursing as they watch the screens, stomping their feet when their teams go on a run. It’s bedlam. I hold my purse tight
     to my chest and make it through the crowd to the bar.
    “Hey, she made it!”
    Mark waves me down to the far end, where Sherry and Alan give me hugs and Alan pulls his jacket from the barstool he’s been
     guarding.
    “My car’s not worth what I got offered for this seat,” he says, and I laugh.
    The three of them are all decked out in Huskie caps and sweatshirts. They are drunk already and revved up for the game. “For
     you,” Mark says, handing me a sweatshirt, which I pull on right over my blouse. Alan waves down a crazy UConn booster, a guy
     with his head painted blue and white, our school colors, who comes down the bar with a hand stamp and presses the school logo
     onto our cheeks. The bartender is another alum, and he puts Jell-o shots in front of us, blue and white again, of course,
     and we four hold them up and say, “To the Huskies!” Mark, Alan, and Sherry toss theirs back. I give mine to Mark, and he tosses
     it back.
    We’re playing UCLA, and down the bar is a good, rowdy crew of their fans, too, blond Californians all. They start chanting
     their school cheers at us, and we chant ours back at them, before the game and then during it, as first their boys go ahead
     and then ours come back to take the lead.
    I sit on the outside, next to Sherry, and when she slips away to the bathroom, I move to her seat for a better view.
    Alan is watching the screen, living and dying with every shot, and then suddenly, after we score a pretty basket, I feel his
     hand on my leg, squeezing the inside of my thigh so hard that I gasp. And as he does he turns, his eyes shining, his mouth
     a curl; when he sees I’m not Sherry, he jumps right up off his barstool.
    “Jesus!” he says, and then laughs.
    “She’s in the bathroom, Alan,” I say, and laugh, too.
    Alan laughs again. “Hit me, Mark,” he says. “I just put my hands on your girl.”
    “At halftime,” says Mark, pumping his fist as the Huskies score, and then Alan is watching the game again and Sherry is back,
     too, and at the first commercial Alan turns to her and says, “I just strayed, baby,” and tells Sherry what happened, and we
     all laugh again.
    After a minute I walk to the bathroom and into the stall and sit down on the closed seat of the toilet. And I’m shaking. Shaking
     so hard, I drop my compact. And the spot where he touched me is… there’s no other word for it, it is burning. I almost roll
     down my stockings to see if there is a mark. “Mimi, Mimi,” I say, but minutes later I’m still shaking, and when I put my hand
     to my forehead, it is red-hot. What is going on? It was an accident, clearly, and there’s been nothing, ever, between Alan
     and me, less than nothing, but… his touch was like an electric shock. Finally I gather myself, step from the stall, walk to
     the sink, and pat down my face with a cool towel, careful not to smudge the UConn logo. It is five minutes before I can join
     the others again.
    After the game we all leave together. UConn lost in the last seconds, and there was some official’s call that went against
     us, and Mark and Alan are lost in argument over it as we walk out to the street and up to the corner. Sherry asks me about
     the wedding, which I can discuss in my sleep now, but I’m only half there as I talk to her. I