Bill is at her doorstep at eight sharp, nervous from the sleepless night, not knowing what to expect. She comes out wearing a khaki trenchcoat and knee-high black boots. Her hair is pulled back tightly, not a single strand straying, and she’s lined her eyelids black, so her eyes appear to flash. There’s a hard glitter about her—buttons, belt, zippers—as if she’s armored.

“Yowza!” he says. “Are you planning to take the city hostage?”

“That’s the idea,” she replies, climbing into the car.

An intoxicating joy wells in him as they drive downtown. Already the city feels different—with Seema beside him—burgeoning in its chaos. Some streets appear cordoned off, and side streets are jammed with cars nosing their way around blindly, diverted from the main thoroughfares. A few intersections are blocked by crowds seizing the center, with no one to stop them, as if the police have abandoned the city. Bill and Seema park and make the rest of their way on foot.

Downtown clamors with the honks of cars and the din of protestors. The mystery of the missing police is soon solved. The crowd at Embarcadero is much smaller than on the Sunday of the march, but the city’s entire police force seems to have gathered here. At one intersection, a group of eight protestors, in orange overalls, have chained themselves together to newspaper racks dragged to the center. To prevent their circle from being broken, they hold hands through thick pipes, and iron chains run between bicycle locks around their necks. Almost two dozen policemen surround them, with glass shields and three-foot wooden clubs. The sidewalks are lined with more police, preventing supporters on the pavements from breaking free and going to the aid of the group in the center. An officer with a bullhorn screams, “If you don’t disperse we’ll arrest all of you.”

The supporters don’t obey but instead chant, “Stay strong, this war is long.”

Seema pushes her way through the crowd toward the front, beckoning Bill to follow with one backward glance. This is more confrontational than he’d expected, but he plunges in behind her. They come face-to-face with an impassive policeman, his arms outstretched and linked to policemen on either side in an attempt to contain the crowd, as firemen in goggles, armed with circular saws and chain cutters, approach the group in the center. The supporters grow louder as it seems more and more likely that the firemen will succeed. They thrust themselves forward trying to break the cordon, only to be shoved back.

Tiny in front of the huge policeman, Seema is a spark of fire—skipping, darting, hissing, throwing herself at the policeman as though she means to bust through. Bill hovers protectively by her, ready at any moment to interpose himself between her and the policeman. He feels compelled to provide a foil for her, shaking his fist and screaming full-throated with the rest.