This morning, Ezra squeezed his eyes closed and inhaled the dank scent of malty yeast and wondered if he needed to give Frankie more credit. No. His consciousness pushed back. He’d offered her everything he could: loyalty, love, commitment.

“I found it!” Frankie popped up from the bar area with a box stuffed with electronic equipment. She glanced around the room, then headed to the back wall by the framed headshots where there was an abandoned TV sitting on a Formica table.

Frankie fiddled with various cords and muttered to herself while plugging one thing into another, and then she wedged herself around the back of the TV and pressed a button and piped: “Is it on yet?” And Ezra watched the screen come to life and said: “Yeah, but can you clue me in here?”

She righted herself and pressed a palm against the lump on her head.

“Ouch, shit.” She wobbled for a few seconds but then turned to Ezra. “Don’t you remember? They keep a record of who comes in and out, to cover their asses against underage drinking.”

Ezra did remember now. Henry had given him his expired driver’s license when he headed off to Middleton so Ezra could use it at bars, and he got nervous every time, which became a running joke among his friends, especially Frankie, who gave him a pretend pep talk every night when they headed out. “Ok, Ez, you can do this. Your name is Henry Jones, you are twenty-six but still a junior in college for reasons no one can explain.” Then she’d fake roar and pound her chest, which he thought was meant to pump him up but mostly made all of them giggle, and that was enough; that was, in fact, just what he needed.

Today, Frankie turned on the VCR that she’d connected to the TV and dug out a remote control from the box.

“How do you know how to do all of this?” Ezra asked.

“Connect a VCR? This is like the bare minimum of my job requirements,” Frankie said. “Do you know how many amps I’ve scrambled to fix, how many guitar plugs I’ve scrounged up?”

Ezra didn’t mean connect a VCR, because no one was that ignorant, but he stopped himself from arguing. Instead, he walked over to the broken window and wondered if he could tape it back together. There were some larger shards on the ground, and some might have been salvageable if he put them back like puzzle pieces. He squatted down, and his knees cracked. No, there were too many—hundreds, really—of minuscule shards, the ones that are nearly impossible to see with the naked eye but could still draw blood when they pierced the skin. Just like Frankie, he thought. He stood and jutted his head out the window. Still, the alleyway was quiet.

“Hey,” he heard her call from the barroom. “It’s working!”

He lingered one more moment in the silence and the snow, and then turned back toward her. He found her fast-forwarding through the frames, as various students stood in front of the camera and held up IDs as if an ID were verification of the truth. How odd, it occurred to Ezra now, that they just took everyone at their words for this. Obviously, the bouncers knew plenty of kids were breaking the law, yet they all mutually agreed to be part of the ruse. Lie to me well, and we’ll all pretend that’s enough to be mistaken for honesty. Ezra rolled the gold band on his left ring finger and considered the multitude of sins this ruse could explain away. Where had he even found a gold band last night in the first place?