“Watch out for the tear gas, sir,” the agent warned him. Mike walked back down the street he’d come and, once past the bulletproof barricade, was lucky enough to find a cab. He headed straight to Theo’s apartment.

He could tell the crowd was restless when he got there. People were shouting, throwing small random objects, and a few of the young men in the crowd were breaking car windows and starting to light fires when he got to her address. The cab driver motioned to him to go inside quickly, and Mike thanked him and wished him good luck. He rang the intercom, and her door guard buzzed him in, and he hurried up the stairs. Theo was waiting at the door seeming nervous, in a black sweater and jeans herself, her hair barely brushed, with no makeup, and he loved the way she looked, except for the worried expression.

“It seems like it’s getting bad out there,” Theo said. The security guards were closing the shutters, leaving one of each two open so they could see outside. The windows were all tightly closed so tear gas wouldn’t enter the apartment, and they heard the first cannons go off, shooting tear gas into the crowd. Mike was shocked at what was happening, it looked like a war zone in the most civilized city in the world.

“They were starting to set fire to cars when I got here,” he told her. He followed her into the kitchen, where she made coffee. It was only ten in the morning, and she turned the TV on so they could see what was happening on the various streets in Paris. Violence was erupting everywhere.

“Does this get them what they want?” he asked her, fascinated by it.

“No, they wind up hurt or in jail, but they do a hell of a lot of damage before that happens. It’s pathetic—and a crime what they do to the city. They actually come from other cities during protests, just to loot and burn and vandalize and destroy property. The real protestors are usually peaceful, but it’s the bad ones and the hoodlums who blend in with them who do all the damage. They shouldn’t allow them to demonstrate anymore, it always turns into this now. People forget that this is a country that loves revolution, and the French think it’s their civil right to protest about just anything. But this isn’t protesting, it’s mass destruction.” She was angry, seeing the city she loved so torn apart and damaged. They could see that violence was breaking out on the streets all over Paris, mostly in public squares and in front of national monuments. And on the fancier streets of expensive stores, rioters were breaking store windows and rushing into shops to steal whatever they could, as the police followed, grossly outnumbered.