Pawn Broker Mocked a Widow’s Guitar With a $35 Offer — The "Mover" Behind Him Was Ace Frehley

March 1981, Yonkers. A widow brings her late husband’s old guitar to a pawn shop to cover the rent, and the pawnbroker examines it through his father’s loupe and names a price that says the guitar is worth almost nothing. In the back room, a man everyone takes for the delivery driver has stopped working to listen. This is a work of fiction. Ace Frehley is real; Murray Feldstein, Rosemary Kilbride, Dominic Ferrante, Salvatore Russo, Agnes Delahunt and the events of this story are imagined, built around real details of his gear, his music and his era. Nothing here should be taken as a historical account. Is there an instrument in your family that nobody plays anymore, but nobody will let go of either? Tell us whose it was in the comments.