I glide down the streets smiling to myself. I know everybody isn't going to understand this, but it's just that the highs are so very high, and the lows don't scare me from up here. The loosed balloon's just a speck on the horizon; as it climbs higher I trail with it. I enter the corridor, treading carefully on the shiny, wet cobblestone. This could be very romantic. I start to weep, though I'm not sure whether it's because of the beauty or the suffering. I lean against the cool brick at my back and bear the weight of my quixotic dreams, getting far enough lost that I don't hear the footsteps that dead end at my own feet.

She pulls my hood off and nuzzles my neck for a moment before resheathing me. This tenderness is the first gift since the copper-plated bullet. Warm, I shiver. Her arm slips underneath mine, placing cold metal in my hand. I shudder. "It's like those new cameras--just point and click." I whip around, teeth chattering, chest to burst, but before I can say one word, she purrs, "shhh," one finger over my lips. I kiss it eyes closed. At long last we are courting.

A noise midway down the alley severs us. There, a figure clutching a sodden pair of wings is fumbling with a door key. A light flashes on, and for one second I see the guy's face illuminated. As if expelled from a cannon, "Hey, Asshole!" fires past my ears. In silhouette, he turns, and my confused mind records the next several moments in slo-mo.

Shoving me from behind, she demands, "Now!" And I just do it. Partly because she said so. And though later I try to claim there was no malice aforethought, I guess the overriding thought in my head at that moment was a questioning: Why am I in this kind of love and not another?" At that moment, I hate Cupid too.

My arm rises. I see it as if it's someone else's. I close my eyes, squeezing them tight, finger on the trigger, hoping the signals don't cross in my mind. I laugh. I've got it now; I can do anything I want. Which of us is more mad--the one in temporary possession or the one who handed it to her, knowing full well that we always return to the scenes of our crimes. I picture Bonny & Clyde. "There's always tomorrow," she says. To make sure, I blow her away. Close range.

The newspapers all clamor that I got off too easy. Nobody can figure it out. They speculate some kind of squabble between the two of us, but they don't get it. The only witness has never more than greeted us and doesn't even know us by name. In his police report, he insisted that initially I pointed the gun at him, but the only thing that matters is where it was pointing in the end. The one thing they all agree upon is that I'm crazy.