The Barmaid Blog™: Life for a 20-something Manhattan Barmaid

It's a couple of Thursdays ago, and while most of the people in the Bar are watching the Yankees walk all over the Kansas City Royals, I've got one television tuned to college hockey. It's not even really for me, though I'm watching when I have the chance; it's for Will. It's the first time he's been back here since Samantha died, and we're all naturally worried about him. But for the moment, he's sitting at the bar talking to Mario, and Maya - Samantha's friend, and the reason she started coming here and met Will in the first place - is mostly just standing there and listening to him. Simone and I are taking up the slack willingly.

Notre Dame is playing Michigan in the national men's hockey semifinals, and they've jumped out to a 3-0 lead. Will has said in the past that he doesn't really care that much about Michigan's hockey team, even though he played on their football team, but it's the reason he's supposedly here, and he keeps shaking his head as things look bleaker and bleaker. During the second intermission, after Michigan has finally made a game of it by scoring two in a row, Will asks me a question I'd sort of been hoping wouldn't come up. But I suppose if it was to come up at all, it's best coming from him, because the main reason I wasn't going to talk about it was not to rub it in his face. "How's things with you and Jenny?"

"They're good, thanks. We've been spending a lot of nights together." Maya slips off to serve some customers so that I can stick around and talk for a while.

"Is it love?" he asks, the second reason I was going to avoid the subject.

"I have no idea, Will." And that's the honest truth. "But whatever it is, it feels very good."

"Okay, I'm - listen, I'm only going to say this once, but I'm sorry, there's just no way I can let it go without saying it at all, it's just who I am... can I, uh... please come over and watch it feeling good sometime?" Will finishes by smiling the most innocent smile. If it were anybody else but him, I might actually be a little angry, but with Will I have to laugh - and I have to be relieved that he's in a good mood.

"I'll make you a deal - as soon as New Hampshire wins the Frozen Four, you can videotape Jenny and me having sex."

Mario laughs, but Will just sticks his hand out for a shake. "You've got a deal, Debra. And you've made a brand-new New Hampshire fan." I wonder, for a moment, what I've gotten myself into... and then I wonder for a few more moments whether Jenny and I will still be together when next year's Frozen Four arrives, much less whenever my alma mater finally wins one. We've never really talked long-term.

Will sips from his Anchor Steam. "So how did you and Jenny meet, anyway?"

"Oh, it was a blind date. It's all her fault," I say, pointing to Simone, who's a few yards away trying to convince a customer that she doesn't really want to order a tall glass of Goldschläger on the rocks. "We road-tripped up to New Hampshire for a few days in mid-December. I met her family, we hung out at their brewpub in Portsmouth, then she came with me to see UNH play hockey against Maine... we got totally socked in by a snowstorm that weekend, and ended up raiding her Dad's wine cellar. She was bitching about the pressure she was feeling to get a boob job, I was bitching about the online dating thing, and suddenly she said, 'Hey, you and this lawyer I know would totally hit it off.' So she gave Jenny my e-mail and here we are."

"Wait," says Mario, "how did Simone know Jenny in the first place?"

"Oh, I think Simone used to be a Starbucks barista across from the courthouse in Brooklyn Heights, and Jenny used to come in a lot, or something."

"Nice," nods Will. "You really never know how you're going to..." He can't seem to finish the sentence, and looks away as he drinks more of his beer. Mario puts his arm around Will's shoulders. I really don't know what to do except reach for his hand on the bar, and give it a squeeze before I go back to serving drinks. When Michigan finally loses to Notre Dame in overtime, 5-4, Will has long since left for home.

First of all, many thanks to Barmaid Blog reader Stacie for sending me "5 People Who Died During Sex" from my Amazon.com wish list. It's a fun read, and much appreciated!

Barmaid Blog reader Michelle e-mailed me an article from the New Yorker's blog, "The Point of Tipping." Other than not having any idea why they picked that title for the article, I think it's well-taken. Amy, the Bowery Ballroom barmaid profiled in the post, isn't the first person to come away from a service industry experience with tipping stereotypes. In my experience at The Bar, gay men are usually the best tippers, and young, straight, immediately-post-college men are usually the worst. Women who are or have been barmaids or waitresses in the past (and they're usually not shy about telling me) also usually tip well. There's a pretty huge spectrum in the middle, but some patterns emerge, and shift over time.

But one principle holds true no matter who you are: "If you can't afford to tip, don't buy a drink," Amy says. Damn straight.

Michelle also mentioned, in the spirit of the article, a few artists she's been listening to lately - Priscilla Ahn, Sea Wolf, Beirut, Santogold, and A. A. Bondy. Of those I'm only familiar with Beirut, but I'll check out the others. My favorite recent discovery is Libbie Schrader, whom I saw a few months ago at the Bitter End... check out her incredible song "War on Science," but make sure you find the version from her self-titled album, not the one from "Letters to Boys." She's also pretty hot, but don't tell her I said so. Thanks for the recommendations, Michelle!

Barmaid Blog reader Dennis, who talked a little trash about UNH vs. Miami (OH) hockey last year, sent me another note in between New Hampshire's awful, inexplicable loss to Notre Dame (who even knew they had a hockey team?!) in the first round on Friday and Miami's first-round game against Air Force on Saturday:

I have been writing this email in my head for about a week now and since I have finally sat down to write it I am afraid that I am a bit too late. I was hoping that I could goad you into a bet should my Miami Redhawks play your UNH Wildcats.. but as I am sure you know by now that won't be happening. We are in the second year of a new building and have spent the entire year within the top five in the country, really only playing poorly in two home losses to the Great Satan of College Sports, Michigan.

I hope Michigan loses and hopefully that will pave the way for us... Also if you look at the bracket assuming we win in the first round I am hoping to play Minnesota in the second round cause I think it's unfair to play BC in Wooster, MA. Neutral site my ass.

We went over the "neutral site" thing last year, so I won't address it again... I haven't heard from Dennis since the games played out, but I have to imagine he had quite the heart attack when theoretical patsy Air Force took Miami to overtime before finally losing. I also imagine he wasn't too thrilled when Miami coughed up their 2-0 lead over Boston College, allowing three goals in less than two minutes... and eventually losing to BC 4-3 in overtime, the third year in a row that Miami's elimination from the NCAA tournament came at BC's hands.

You know you have my sympathies, Dennis, and not just because both of our teams are now playing golf - but because overall #1 seed Michigan is now in the Frozen Four and seeking their 937th national championship. *sigh* Maybe next year one of our alma maters (almas mater? almae matres?) will finally have their turn in the spotlight.

Lastly, Barmaid Blog reader Derek e-mailed to alert me to his own new site, "Tip the Hottie." It's a clever idea - barmaids post their photos, web surfers "tip" them based on how hot they think the barmaids are, and the winning barmaid each month gets $200. It's free for a barmaid to post a profile, and it's free to "tip," but the prizes are real money, so I gather that it's advertising-driven. There aren't all that many women on it yet, though - only one in all of New York state (and none in the city)! For the amount of effort it takes to post a photo, the possibility of $200 at the end of the month seems like a pretty good payoff, so I encourage my fellow barmaids to join up, and all my readers to show them some love with virtual tips.

It's a laundry day, people... time to add the fabric softener.

What would it take, I wondered, to bring me out of hibernation? Ten weeks of working, dating, writing my novel, and living my life without worrying about the instantaneous judgment of strangers.

No doubt about it, a girl could really get used to that.

I didn't even go into hiding intentionally - I was just posting less and less often, and then a few more days went by without blogging, and then a few more days, and then a few more...

In the meantime, Bonnie's modeling agency contract finally paid off, and in early February, Susan started coming around instead with Grace, a lovely Asian woman. The Coors family of products can rest confident in their place at the Bar. I haven't seen Bonnie since, and the few times I saw her in January, we managed to be civil.

Redhead took a huge leap and asked Danny out. She told me later that she'd finally thought of a good way to frame it: She asked him, hypothetically, if he could handle having a girlfriend who went out with other guys a few times a week as a wingwoman to earn a living. When he responded that he doubted it would ever come up, she asked, "Are you sure?" That was enough of a clue for him to figure out what was going on. That was the second weekend of February, after he'd been paying her for her company on a weekly basis for four months. Their first real date was on Valentine's Day, and she reported later that it was the most romantic evening she'd ever had.

I wanted to blog about it, I really did. For about five minutes, anyway. And then as usual I got busy with other things. I've been on half a dozen dates with Jenny, a very cool entertainment lawyer who writes poetry and has a beautiful black lab puppy. I like spending time with her, and it's not heavy or moving too fast or dangerous or bitter in any way. I've been working on my novel from time to time, but not nearly at the pace I'd like. At Lanie and Victor's request, I took an insurance seminar about managing bars - not because someone's leaving, but just to have me prepared as an alternate or substitute or whatever. Life, as they say, happens.

So why am I resurfacing now?

Valentine's Day wasn't a good night for just Redhead and Danny. Of all the improbable, absurd, absolutely wonderful things to happen, Will asked Samantha to marry him that night, and she said yes. She cried for nearly a half hour, I was told, while Will managed to keep the staff of the restaurant from freaking out completely. Then they danced for the rest of the evening, and argued about whether their kids would go to Michigan or Ohio State. They came into the Bar the next night to tell everybody the news, and show off her ring.

After that weekend, Samantha got sick.

Sam thought she had the flu. Will and Sam's roommate thought Sam had the flu, too. There's little about bacterial meningitis that doesn't make people who have it think they have the flu, unfortunately, and I guess timing is everything. Will was working all that next week, and although he was stopping by every night, by the time he got there that third night, she was hunched over awkwardly, barely conscious, and not responding to him. The hospital pumped her full of antibiotics, but by the time the spinal tap results came back positive, she was comatose.

Samantha died last Saturday.

I can only imagine how devastated Will is, because I haven't seen him or spoken to him yet. He accompanied Samantha's body back to Ohio for the funeral and everything else, and he's supposed to be back later today (Sunday). Maya went for the funeral and came right back, and she's worked the last few nights in a row to keep busy - in fact, she asked me for my Saturday night shift, which is why I'm sitting here at home, watching "Patriot Games" and writing in a blog I thought I might have left behind nearly two months ago. Some of you have claimed over the last couple of months in your comments that you came to care about the people in my life and what happens to them, so I thought you deserved to know what happened to Samantha.

I'm a little numb - partly because I was never Samantha's biggest fan, though it might seem callous of me to say so on this particular occasion. But it's also because I don't think her absence will change my life all that much. I wish there were some kind of deeply life-altering lesson I could take from all this, but "life is short" seems pretty useless to me. Will and Samantha couldn't have found each other any sooner than that first night they met each other in the Bar, so what good would it have done either of them to remind themselves how short life is? And I surely hope nobody would suggest that Will shouldn't have gotten involved with her in the first place, because it could have saved him the pain he's in now.

I would be deluding myself to believe that I am, every moment of every day, doing exactly what I want to do and making the most of my opportunities. But who really gets to live like that, besides people with trust funds and underdeveloped common sense? I'll take the joy I can from life and do my best not to hurt people in the process. But I can't live as if I'm racing against a clock, and I don't want to try.

It's Saturday night, and all is right with the world, because I'm tending bar.

It's good to be back, at least so far. After the events of the last couple of weeks, I can't help feeling a little bit like I'm waiting for another shoe to drop, but there's comfort in the familiar. The clink of bottle against glass, the splash of tap overflow onto rubber floor mats, the drink orders shouted out amid white noise, the pickup lines and the return volleys, the sweat on the small of my back, the dodge and bump with Jocelyn and Kira and Vince - it all feels like home.

It's a good Saturday night, probably because the weather has improved; highs have been in the low teens here in New York for the last week, but now we're back into the far more reasonable territory of thirties and forties, with some forecasts of fifties and even sixties for early next week. The crowd is deep and demanding, and Jocelyn and Kira and I are hard at work. But right now all I want to do is get through my shift, get home, and get some sleep, so that tomorrow I can enjoy myself having brunch and playing poker with my friends and roommates, and maybe get some more work done on my novel.

The novel is starting to take on a life of its own, which I've never really experienced before, but it's a wonderful feeling. One of the movies I watched while I was on walkabout from my job the last couple of weeks was "Stranger Than Fiction," which was surprisingly deep and charming for a Will Ferrell movie. Emma Thompson plays a novelist with writer's block - and when she finally realizes what has to happen next to her protagonist, she comments to her assistant (Queen Latifah) that "like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method."

This is a fairly apt description of what's now happening to the narrator of my novel, who's based on my mother. As long as I tried to restrict her actions and even her thoughts to what I knew about my actual mother when she left in 1994, I got nowhere. I felt like I was writing a trip to the laundromat. A couple of weeks ago I finally managed to let go of her as a fictional character - and since then she hasn't disappointed me once. I don't know how long our journey together is going to be, but I'm determined to enjoy it for as long as it lasts. And if someone someday thinks it's worth selling in book form, well, so much the better.

Samantha and Will walk into the Bar as it's getting close to midnight. After what Maya said the other day, I'm not sure I want to deal with her friend, but Samantha's also a customer. She also happens to be - dating? using? verbing? - Will, a good guy and a regular, so I fight off my instinct not to give her the benefit of the doubt. I serve Will an Anchor Steam right away, then ask Samantha what she's in the mood for tonight.

"I'm in the mood for a number one seed, baby! Plus a cosmo, please."

"What, Ohio State's in the basketball tournament, too?"

"Oh, honey, we're not just in the dance, we were Big Ten champions - regular season and tournament, as of a few hours ago! We haven't lost a game since early January! If they don't give us a one seed, they're smoking crack!!"

"And Michigan?" I ask Will, but Samantha's the one who answers first, with cackling laughter.

He shrugs, and sips from his beer. "Not so much this year, I'm afraid. But then I was never that big a basketball fan."

As I finish mixing Samantha's drink, she pokes Will in the side. "You're gonna be for the rest of the month, mister!" He nods and grins at me, and I get the sense he's not making out too badly on his end of this deal.

I hand off the cosmo. "So when's the opening game? Have you picked out a place to watch yet?" Hint, hint.

Samantha downs a good third of her drink, then sets it down. "Keep your fingers crossed, Debra" - I can't help smiling that she finally seems to have gotten my name right - "after they announce the brackets tomorrow, my father's going to try to get us all some game tickets and plane tickets for as long as the Buckeyes stay alive. God knows who he's gonna have to blow, but I have faith in him."

"Will, you're really going along for this ride?"

He shrugs. "I've got some vacation time saved up. Besides, it might be fun to meet Sam's folks."

She pokes him in the side again. "You will not mention where you went to college when you meet them, do you hear??"

"If they ask, Sam, I'm not gonna lie. And if they're not complete idiots, they might even guess that I played football."

Sam's shoulders slump. "I really don't know what the hell I'm doing with you sometimes."

Will turns to me and winks, then faces Sam again. "You're falling in love with me."

She stomps once, then twice, then a third time. "No, no, no!! It's not fair!! I was supposed to find some nice boy from Ohio State and settle down to raise a bunch of little Buckeyes with him!" She chugs the rest of her drink - to the extent you can really chug from a wide martini glass, anyway - then sets down the glass hard enough that I'm surprised it doesn't shatter.

Then she hits him. Right in the stomach, with barely a backswing as warning. She storms off out the front door of the Bar, leaving him grimacing and clutching his midsection with one hand - miraculously, still holding his beer with the other.

I manage not to laugh. "Will, are you okay?"

He nods, then grunts out a sentence. "This is going to be a very. long. month."

Tuesday evening I walk into the Bar for my 8-to-close shift, and standing next to Bill, who's working the door, is Will. He's dressed in a Michigan football jersey and a skirt, and holding blue and yellow pompoms. I stop in my tracks, and he glances over at the bar, where Samantha is sipping a cocktail and watching him. She coolly nods, and Will heaves a sigh.

"Good evening. My name is Will. May I tell you about Michigan's devastating loss to the clearly superior football team from The Ohio State University?"

I laugh. Samantha smiles and takes another sip, then turns around to talk to Maya, who's behind the bar with Amy.

"Will, what have you done??"

He shrugs. "A bet's a bet."

I look at his legs. "Not that I'm complaining much, mind you. Seriously, your calves are ridiculous, you know that?" He smiles. "Hey, she doesn't have you doing this for an entire twenty-four hours, does she?"

"Oh, no," he says, and leans a little closer. "In fact, she was pretty clear about insisting the rest of my debt would have to be paid in private."

"Aaahhh," I grin. "Well, good luck with that."

I make my way behind the bar, where Amy is starting to cash out. I smile and say, "Hey, Samantha, who won the big game?"

She sticks out her tongue. "I never lost faith, funny girl, I knew my Buckeyes would come through."

"Did you ask Will what he would have made you do if Michigan had won?"

"I don't deal in fantasies and pipe-dreams, Debra. But I'm sure it would have been all about sex, sex, sex."

"Wait, isn't that part of what you're demanding, too?"

She rolls her eyes. "Yes, but it's not all about sex, that's just dessert - the public humiliation is the main course."

Maya says, "I still don't get how sleeping with you is a punishment for him."

"Maya, my dear, it's not about him losing. It's about me winning. And believe me, what I have in mind for later is very much about me winning, and not about him at all." She and Maya high-five. I manage to refrain from asking what happened to betrayals and "sleeping with the enemy" and such things, and just go about the work of tending bar.

A little after ten o'clock, I'm pulling a pint of Guinness when someone walks up to the bar and asks, "Hey, are you Debra?" For a moment, I freeze, and my heart races. Has someone figured out where the Bar is and who I am? Did someone I know tell someone they shouldn't have? I look at the someone, and it's a tall woman wearing a Coors jacket, standing next to a short woman wearing a Coors jacket.

"Yes. What can I do for you?"

"I'm Bonnie, this is Susan. We're from Coors." Thank goodness she clarified that. "I spoke to the manager, Todd something - he said he'd let you know we were coming?"

"Oh, of course! You're the promotion people. Welcome to the Bar!"

"Thanks! We just wanted to check in, make sure you knew who we were before we start."

"Let me know if you need anything."

They wave and start scoping out the room, and my heart gradually stops pounding. As I serve drinks, I watch the two women approach customers, explain their music trivia game, and then put headphones on people who want to play. Winners get Coors t-shirts and keyrings, losers just get Coors t-shirts - in my opinion, losers should be served a pint of Coors. I really don't enjoy Coors, not after all the great beers I've tasted - it's awfully watery. When I finally saw "Smokey and the Bandit" for the first time, I was appalled and aghast that anybody would go to that much trouble for a truckload of Coors - or that it was considered a regional "specialty" beer at the time the movie was made.

But we sell a lot of it at the Bar, and I know there are benefits to keeping the distributor happy. Plus, Bonnie and Susan are very attractive women, which means the guys they're talking to will spend more time in the Bar tonight, and more money on beer, meaning more tips for me.

At one point, Bonnie comes back over to the bar. "Debra, what's with the guy in the skirt?" I tell her briefly about the bet, and she shakes her head, laughing. "You know, I knew a girl who got fired from Coors for sleeping with a guy from Sam Adams." I grin, and file that away for later. I guess these sorts of "betrayals" happen everywhere.

At eleven sharp, Samantha drains the last of her Long Island Iced Tea, and waves Will over. "Carry my bag, slave," she says, obviously relishing her power, and he obliges. "We're done here." They head for the door, and I find myself envying them even the bizarre tryst they're about to have. It's been a couple of weeks since I had sex. I know, a couple of months ago I was complaining about a drought of several months, but I'm supposedly seeing someone. I'm going to have to do something about that soon.

--

Speaking of which, remember I mentioned how much I enjoyed the solo piano music Warren had playing at his apartment during our first date? Warren e-mailed me a link this morning that I wanted to share. 93.9 FM WNYC, one of New York's public radio stations, is airing some of Seth Kaufman's new music tonight at 11pm, on their show "New Sounds," along with music from other solo piano artists. For those of you not in the area, I gather you can use the links on the left-hand side of that page to listen online.

The answer to your several comments and your many, many e-mails is, "I have absolutely no idea what Samantha is going to make Will do now that she's won their bet!" Samantha was theoretically in Columbus at the game with her family, and I can only imagine how excited she must have been. I haven't been at the Bar since my shift Saturday night, so I haven't spoken to Maya yet to find out if she's spoken to Samantha. Will also didn't put in an appearance on Saturday - I didn't start my shift until well after the game was over, but Jocelyn told me he wasn't there during the afternoon to watch the game. I promise, I'll report as soon as I know something.

Sunday my roommates Cassie and Jill and I have our usual bagels and pajamas brunch, and we've planned another poker game for the afternoon and evening. Our friend Scott is coming over with his colleague Arielle, but all the other regulars have declined, so I was asked to find someone else to join us. On a whim, on Saturday afternoon I called Adam, the guy I met outside the Apple Store a couple of months ago who shares my taste in ice cream and ice cream shop employees. We'd only spoken a few times since then. As luck would have it, he plays poker, so I invited him, and he was available.

He's not bad, either. We start out after brunch with a Texas Hold'em tournament for the six of us, and Adam takes second place after a protracted head-to-head battle with Scott. Then in dealer's choice, I proceed to lose three $20 buy-ins over the course of the next few hours - not all of it goes to Adam, but he doesn't do too badly for himself. By that time he has also managed to make everybody laugh a few times, too - he's a pretty funny guy. I also get the sense that he's flirting with me at times, but I've had a few drinks, so I could be imagining the whole thing. He's still really not my type, anyway. I decline to buy in a fourth time, and instead just sit and watch the rest of the game.

Afterwards, we clean up, and while Jill, Arielle, and I chat with Adam over one final beer, Cassie once again takes Scott into her room and closes the door. Jill and Arielle and I try not to pay too much attention to it, even when the noises start to get a little too loud to ignore. But Adam can't help being amused. "That wasn't part of the prize for winning the hold'em tourney, was it? 'cause if I'd known..."

We all laugh, then Arielle says, "Well, it's about time I get myself over to the hospital for my shift."

Adam says, "Oh, I'll walk you out. I should get home anyway, I have to work in the morning." He collects his things, then he pauses as he hugs me goodbye. "God, you smell good," he whispers in my ear. Then they're gone.

"I hope he's not interested in Arielle," Jill remarks as we sit on the couch flipping channels through the post-midnight television wasteland.

"Why?"

"She's gay."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I thought you knew."

"No, I didn't." In fact, evidence would suggest I'm usually the last to know. "But I don't think it's Arielle he's after. He smelled my hair when we hugged!"

Jill rolls her eyes at me. "Debra, not every guy falls for you, you know. Even if you want them all to."

"I didn't mean it that way, I just thought he... nevermind."

We settle on a "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" marathon, and Jill turns up the volume to drown out whatever it is Cassie and Scott are doing. And I sit there wondering if, after all this time fending off constant advances while I tend bar, I've come to see it as a given that men who aren't gay or already involved will be attracted to me. Am I really that vain?

(It's not exactly Indian Summer, but it's been in the low 60s the last several days here in New York City, and today, finally, it's also sunny. I was determined to get in one last outdoor blogging session for 2006, so here I am in Bryant Park, typing away in sunglasses and a sweatshirt.)

It's a slow Thursday night at the Bar because of on-and-off torrential rainstorms. I'm on with Maya, and her friend Samantha the physical therapist is at the bar chatting with us. She can barely keep still, because she's due to fly out to Ohio in the morning, where her The Ohio State University Buckeyes are hosting Michigan in football, both with 11-0 records so far. She says it's the first time those two teams have ever met as the #1 and #2 teams in the country, which I gather is a big deal. She reminds me a little bit of the way people at UNH used to talk about playoff games against Maine, but this isn't the playoffs, it's just that serious a rivalry. Her whole family is going.

"It's just unreal - we've got eight tickets, and somebody actually offered my dad a thousand dollars a ticket! I swear, I was almost tempted to tell him to take the damn money and we'd watch at home on television with a big pile of lobsters and champagne or something."

"Oh, yeah," grins Maya, "there's nothing like Ohio champagne and fresh, Columbus lobster."

"Oh, shut up, you know what I mean."

Then, in a flurry of umbrella, in walks Will. He's a regular around here, and played ball in college himself. But as far as I know, Samantha and Will haven't been in the Bar at the same time since she picked him up and took him home - and since she later complained about him being a jerk. He waves at us, and as I'm getting him his Anchor Steam beer, he says, "Hey, Samantha."

She doesn't even look at him. "Prick."

He shakes his head. "We're really not going to get past this, are we?"

"Maya, how could you let me sleep with this guy??" Samantha pleads.

Maya throws her hands up. "For Christ's sake, Sam, you've never told me what he did wrong!"

Samantha screams so loud, everybody in the Bar can hear it, even over the Clash that's playing: "HE PLAYED FOOTBALL AT MICHIGAN!!"

There's a pause, and then I can't help it - I burst out laughing, and so do a bunch of other people around us. Maya turns to Will, grinning. "Is this true?" she says, in mock accusation.

He shrugs. "Guilty as charged."

Maya say, "Seriously, Sam, that was it? He played football at Michigan years before you met, so he's a jerk?"

"Don't you get it? I was a trainer! Some of those guys are good friends of mine! How can I possibly go back there and face them? I slept with the enemy!!" I snort and start laughing again, and Samantha throws a coaster at me.

"Listen, Sam," says Will, "we had a good time together. I like you, even if you did choose the wrong college." Samantha gasps and reaches for another coaster, but Vince quickly whisks them away from her. "Can we make a deal?"

Samantha cocks her head to one side and looks at him suspiciously. "What kind of deal?"

"If Michigan wins on Saturday, you'll let it go, and stop acting like I have the plague."

"Ha!" she reacts. "Like Michigan could possibly win this game."

"Okay, so, what have you got to lose?"

She stands up, grabs Will by the shirt, and gets in his face. "When Ohio State wins on Saturday, you will do anything I decide to demand of you, for an entire twenty-four hours!"

Will's grin widens. "Well, then, it's only fair that when Michigan wins on Saturday, you will do anything I decide to demand of you for an entire twenty-four hours."

Maya says, "Uh - Sam?"

"Deal!!" she yells, with a maniacal look on her face, and a round of applause and cheers goes up.

Now I might even bother watching this thing myself.