Naturally I apprehend it first: police sirens competing with squealing tires competing with pulsating lights. I know I must act before Charlie perceives the racket of the approaching law, too, so I reach around for the handcuffs but can’t grab them before Charlie breaks the embrace and sits up, giggling. She is pixilated, charged with the girlish thrill of sharing something important. It is so innocent, so megawatted, that for a moment she has no idea where she is or what is going on—it is irrelevant right now that I have pressed the button, that cops are incoming. It is exactly the reaction I had hoped she would have when I pulled the car over on Lafayette.

That it’s happening now absolutely breaks my heart.

“The ring,” she says, holding it up like a torch. It’s wrecked; it’s a bent polygon with a diamond drooping from it like the bloom of a broken-necked flower. “It stopped the door...”

She can’t finish. She is busy crying from joy and metaphor. She thinks I am, too.

I tell myself: I’ve made so many sacrifices. A last one is required of me, and I must make it before Charlie hears the sirens. So when she buries her face in my neck, her arms wrapped around me, the shockwave of love resonating through my body, I extract the handcuffs from my pocket, secure myself in one and then, while Charlie is distracted by ogling the ring, clap the other cuff on her wrist. The sound of it locking is yet another memory that I can never expunge.

Click-click.

Her body heaves and jerks as if possessed by supernatural spirits. She stands up, her arm trailing down into mine, our hands touching. She flaps her arm frantically, incomprehending. She flaps it again. The stars overhead glint dully like dirty dimes. Then she hears it. Her head whips around, her ears locating the direction of the sirens. A word embolizes in her throat. Her whole body shrinks. Everything about her diminishes, contracts, frets with disbelief. Her expression is so horrible that I have to look away. I inspect my shoes, the huddle of overturned trash cans at my feet, the flashing blue lights that stroboscope off the glass of storefronts out in the street. I can hear the many engines revving and the tires shredding on the asphalt. Nunes didn’t take any chances; it’s a cruiser stampede.

There is another click. Charlie steps backwards away from me. An opened cuff dangles like a gaping mouth at my wrist. It was a stupid idea in the first place. They would never hold her. I must have known it would come down to this.

I unholster the gun and point it at Charlie.

“Here we are again,” I say.

“Like old times.”

She takes a few wary steps backwards and I refocus the gun on her.

“I’m taking you in,” I say. “One way or another.”