I was crying again, hadn’t in ages and now couldn’t stop, tears of shock or relief or just the slackening of a body tightened by years of time and fear.

“You can’t drive, can you?” She sounded soggy, too.

I sniffed. “I’m crashing. I was kind of high. And then drunk. I think I’m still drunk.”

I could hear her head shake through the speaker. “Marysville?” I began to explain where it was, but someone said something I couldn’t hear on the other side. “Huh,” she said. “Apparently my mom knows where it is. We’re coming to you. Stay put.”

“Ani,” I squeezed out pleadingly. “What happened? Back there?”

“Which part?”

MINKUS JHAVERI WAS TAKEN into custody on the count of unlawful possession of a concealed firearm. But first, he went to the hospital for the bullet wound he had inflicted on his own left calf. The utter shock of seeing his new rival, Linda, heroically reaching for what he perceived to be a pistol but was, in fact, a mace gun bearing the empowering label SEE SOMETHING SPRAY SOMETHING caused him to lower his hand a few inches in surprise. He jumped at the sound of Linda’s mace popping, then pulled the trigger, visiting said injury upon himself.

That no one had died did not alleviate my dread or guilt. Regarding the first, there was still the matter of Minkus’s opportunity to out me to the police. And indeed, in the weeks following the expo, a pair of portly disgruntled cops would arrive at my Ashby Avenue apartment to follow up on Mr. Moo-koond Juvvery’s complaints about my odd behavior, his insistent claim that I was a bad guy. But by then, the evidence of our crime had long since been smelted away, and little came of the inquiry; perhaps the cops in the end found the whole thing to be a weird cultural entanglement beneath the dignity of the state.

“What he was doing was illegal either way,” Anita said over the phone, as the three generations of women sped northeast from Sunnyvale. “The guy didn’t have the right permits. He must have just skirted the metal detectors. But, Neil. Call your sister. Tell her you and I had a fight earlier, and that’s why you were weird, and then when Minkus came at you, you just freaked, you’re a panicky guy so you panicked, et cetera. Then we’ll get there and do the thing. It’ll all be over soon.”

I left the television on mute while I called my parents, then Prachi. A crime procedural played. Two detectives surveyed the bloody floor of a New York apartment, traded morbid puns. I was telling my family, then Chidi, that I was okay, that the dude had seemed to have it out for me since I fell down on his cart, that some primal instinct had sent me fleeing.