It’s not a bar, though, but a backyard party, twins, and the princess and the clown never showed so it’s just the cowboy out there, shooting water from his pistols and lassoing the birthday boy while the horde shrieks and the birthday girl wails by the fence, contorted into a sticky knot of frosting and betrayal.

But where are the clown and the princess? The cowboy takes a break, can be glimpsed around the side of the house jabbing at his phone screen. Are they lost? Both of them? Maybe they did walk into a bar, maybe on the way they said You know what? Screw this and now they’re sitting at a corner table in facepaint and finery, gulping Budweiser and watching the game. The princess’s phone buzzes. The clown’s phone buzzes. The cowboy jams his phone into his pocket, whips it out again, jabs some more. Buzz. Buzz.

The cowboy shoves back his hat, runs a sleeve across his brow. The princess booted him last night after another text from the girl who was Rapunzel on Sundays and didn’t even need a wig, that was her real hair and yeah, he’d climbed it. So what? Anyway the princess was in a snit even before Rapunzel’s luminous You up? blew up the silence between them.

Whatever. Let her bitch and moan to the clown, get it out of her system. He’ll ace this fiesta solo, like the professional he is. Just watch. He holsters his phone, he sprints to the birthday girl, he bellows, “You ready to have some fun, little lady?” She shrieks and swings a snot-crusted fist at him and without thinking he swings back, hard, and then she’s on the ground, quiet at last, and damn, this might just get him fired.