“Ok, but I just—I’m proposing to my girlfriend, and I really need my cell to reach her. Come on, surely you can make an—”

The guard picked up his newspaper and put on his reading glasses, so Ezra stopped talking. If he were Frankie, he’d probably just blow right past him. He’d probably get a running start and hurdle the turnstile and leave the security guard wondering just what the hell happened, like he’d mistakenly seen the flash of a superhero. And by the time he tracked Ezra down in the stacks of the microfiche or the open reading room, he would have solved all of his problems. But he was not Frankie. His shoulders sagged, and he turned to leave.

To his right was a bank of pay phones.

“Can I at least make a phone call?” Ezra said. My God, he knew he sounded pathetic.

“You can do whatever you want,” the guard said without even looking up from his crossword. “As long as it’s on the other side of this line.” He pointed toward an imaginary border between the lobby and the actual library.

Boundaries, Ezra thought. Something he’d respect even if he didn’t want to. He nodded to himself, as if he’d found the key to the differences between him and his ex.

He dug into his pocket and found three dimes, then flipped through the white pages that were discarded on the floor of the booth. He dialed the hotel and again asked for Gregory’s room. He had a vague memory that Gregory was training for the Portland biathlon or half-marathon or something. He hadn’t read the fundraising email closely and hadn’t figured it really mattered, since he’d typed in his credit card number and donated a hundred dollars. But whatever it was, even in this weather, Gregory, who was part of the reason Ezra had blacked out, could get his ass out of bed and over to campus. It was a three-mile jog. He could be here in twenty minutes.

Gregory grunted upon answering on the fourth ring.

“I’m at Burton,” Ezra said. “I need your help.”

Gregory groaned then said: “Fucking A, fine. Give me a few.” Then he clicked off.

Ezra hung up and felt more settled, more assured that this was all going to be ok. There must have been some sort of giant misunderstanding, but there was nothing he couldn’t solve if he really put his mind to it.

As he strolled out of the foyer toward the front steps to wait for Gregory, he happened to glance upward and was surprised to see a big bushel of mistletoe. How he even recognized it as mistletoe was only coincidence: he was not generally known to be savvy in the ways of horticulture. But he and Mimi had attended a holiday party sponsored by Datify just a few weeks back. It was bonus season, and Mimi’s bosses had upped their cash promises from in-person matches to extra incentives for anyone she signed up, so she was even more romantically ravenous than usual. The theme was “Anything for a Kiss,” which Ezra thought was a little predatory, but since Mimi had organized the whole thing, he stayed mum. He knew how much she needed the cash, and besides, he didn’t want to be the guy who took one look at something and deconstructed all the ways it wasn’t working. He’d save that for Google. The ballroom had TV screens running famous movie kisses on loop; the corners of the room had spin the bottle stations set up for anyone who was brave enough; the bar served a heavy pour of a peppermint schnapps drink called “Minty Kisses” (everyone would have fresh breath, Mimi said); and of course, there was mistletoe in every doorframe. Mimi put on such a display for the potential registrants that Ezra’s lips were swollen from all the kissing. By the end, he had extremely minty breath and absolutely no desire to go home and sleep with her.