“I’m so glad I saw you,” she said. “I want you to come over again. Come play. We had a great game last week. We had six people. We played all night. We had two pints of whiskey and we had some cheese straws my mother sent. You think you can come sometime?” She held me with her hand. The conversation between Sheffield and Hap was waning. The crowd was filing into their seats. The band was playing. The Crimson Tide were taking the field.

“We’ll miss the kickoff,” the boys said.

“I might,” I whispered to May Garth. “I’ll come if I can.” Hap took my arm and we parted. May Garth kept looking back over her shoulder at me as she walked away. Not stooping, with her cousin Sheffield at her side, but still longing. I was only a little half-baked nineteen-year-old girl, how could I have filled her longing? I had longings of my own.

“Who was that?” Hap asked.

“May Garth Sheffield. Her family owns a bunch of banks. She’s brilliant, but she’s very eccentric. She’s always trying to get me to come to a poker game she has in the Tri Delt house. But I barely know her. I don’t know her very well.”

“It’s a shame she’s so tall. She has a pretty face, a really pretty face.”

“She does crazy things.” I stopped at that. “I mean, she’s nuts about this poker business. I don’t know why people want to play games for money. When I played with my brother I would always lose. Every game I ever played for money I would lose.” I leaned into Hap’s soft jacket. He was getting more and more valuable to me, dangerously valuable, in the cold fall weather, underneath the stands.

“Let’s go sit down,” he said. He pulled my arm into his arm, he was so kind, so loving, it embarrassed me to death.

“I hope they have some whiskey,” was all I could think of to say. “I love to get drunk at football games.”

We went to our seats in the stands. The Sigma Chis had a section of seats together. Hap’s fraternity brothers were all around us with their girlfriends. They slapped us on the back and offered us some whiskey. We drank the whiskey, then stood up for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The football players ran out onto the field. The whiskey crossed the blood-brain barrier. I dug my hands into Hap’s arms. I buried my face in his jacket sleeve.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is something wrong with you?”