The flash of the siren pushed over and through the car. Officer Dunt could see the back of the violator’s head through the rear window of the salt-crusted Kia. Long hair. A woman. Or a hippie. He really hoped it was the former.

Officer Dunt had been pulling people over for years, and rarely got more than three different reactions from women. Some were a panicked anger, mostly at themselves for being caught, but had taken it out on him for stopping their speedy trip to the mall. Even more flirted. They’d press their breasts together and up with their arms while awkwardly handing them their license. Dunt didn’t mind this so much, he even found it amusing when the woman wasn’t especially attractive or young. He couldn’t help but find any woman over forty giggling like a school girl positively hilarious. Once some dumb broad had kept licking her lips so often she lisped every time she spoke.

Is’ss s’there a problem offis’cher?

He had let that one off with a warning just so he could go back to his car and laugh his head off. He chuckled inside as he wrote out the plate number on his notebook and approached the driver’s window.

The flashing lights gave him sparse flashes of the girl’s already pink face. There she was. Glorious number three. The crier. Her license and registration were already in one ungloved and trembling hand. Officer Dunt pulled his cap down so she couldn’t see his eyes. He was almost certain she could read them like a stock ticker.

“Let’s get this over with, damn it,” he thought.

“License and registration, ma’am?”

She handed it to him coldly, silently, tears still steadily dripping from her face. He read her name aloud, holding it in the bright beam of his flashlight. She nodded and continued to look foreward. He shone the light on her face and could see more clearly the mess of black liquid cosmetics that were coursing down to her chin. Dunt wanted to recoil, but had learned to control his facial muscles like a well-oiled machine. Get it over with, Dunt.

“Are you aware of how fast you were going back there?”

A tiny head shake.

“Sixty…the limit’s forty-five.”

She still didn’t respond. The girl was in shock, or on drugs. He moved the flashlight from her face.

“Hey, are you okay?”

She turned to him and her face crinkled slowly in on itself. Dunt felt panic. It was the very same expression that his teenage daughter would sometimes get when he causally asked her how her day had been. The look of that tiny implosion was a mere shadow of its chaotic aftermath.

Her initial cry had to have been heard up and down the interstate. The stream became a torrent, wetting her whole face. She wasn’t merely crying, but heaving the breath in and out of her body like it was a heavy load. Her strong sobs made her inhale and exhale the salty droplets, misting the car window. Dunt wanted to hand the girl a ticket and leave without another word, but the girl could easily have been on some serious drugs.

“Hey, it’s just a ticket,” he said. “No need to get that upset. Look, miss, you’re going to have to calm down, cause I can’t let you drive like this.”

She nodded, taking a tissue from the dashboard. This was not the answer Dunt was hoping for. He regretted the question before he even spoke.

“What’s the matter, huh?”

Her face oozed like a pile of damp nylons.

“He left me.”

Dunt felt his utility belt drop. All officers had training in diffusing potentially violent situations, protecting themselves and others from harm with words or force, but the statement that she spoke made him feel suddenly impotent. He flashed back again to a crying teenager, clunky heels beating desperately up the stairs, and slamming doors. The only unbearable echoes afterwards were his wife’s words:

“Norton, what on earth did you say to her?”

Dunt gathered all of the feminine comfort he could and slowly said:

“It’ll be okay.”

She suddenly began to spray words as copiously as tears.

“It won’t be okay! He left me, after four years he left me! I have no place to live now and he’ll be moving that bitch in! How do you do it? How do you give someone all that time and energy and leave them because you feel like it?! Where does that leave me?

What does it say about me? Four fucking years and someone can’t love me? Why does this always happen? What the hell is wrong with me?”

She was still sobbing as she screamed the words. Dunt tried to focus on her but was suddenly worried about what this looked like to the passing cars. Cops had a bad enough rep already, without someone catching a glimpse of an officer nonchalantly over a hysterical woman. Her single tissue was barely recognizable anymore. He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and handed it to her.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, miss,” he said. “You’re just a little upset.”

“And ugly and unlovable…”

She was calming down a little as she wiped off her face. Dunt didn’t think she was that bad, after she stopped drowning in her own mascara.

“Hey, don’t say that. It’s not true.” Dunt scraped the snow with his toe. “You’re just a little hysterical, miss, that’s all. It’s understandable.”

“I just can’t believe it. It’s the second time he left me. The second damn time…”

“Well, you’ll know not to make that mistake again.”

He scolded himself inside. He was supposed to be giving this girl a ticket; instead he was becoming her best friend.

“Well, miss, you’re still responsible for you actions.”

“I know. I can’t believe it. You must think I’m such a bad person. How can anyone love a bad person?”

Dunt mustered his most sincere tone.

“You’re not a bad person, you’re good. You just made a coupla mistakes. One is taking some jerk that wasn’t worth it back, and the other is speeding. I’m gonna let you off with a warning for both of them, alright. I never wanna see you doing that again, crying or not, got it?”

“You really think I’m not a bad person?”

“No, I don’t, miss. Now you get someplace where you can have a good night’s sleep, you hear?”

The girl wiped a remaining tear off of her face.

“Thank you, officer, really.”

Dunt smiled, nodded, and got into his car. He punched a few things into his computer, still smiling a little. Hell of a job, Dunt. You dealt with her like you learned how to swim. Just threw your ass in and tried not to drown.

The salt crusted Kia pulled away and into the darkness. Dunt’s radio hissed and Swalavski came over from dispatch.

“How’s your night, Dunt?”

Dunt smirked. “Average.”

“Yeah, well, I pulled over this nutty girl crying about her boyfriend an hour or two ago. The girl was like Niagara Falls. Thought I was gonna have to hug her before she stopped.”

Dunt recoiled. He didn’t need to ask what kind of car she was driving, or wonder if she had reapplied her mascara in between the incidents.

Dunt sniffed. “Weird.”

The radio fuzzed out. Dunt looked up the street after the tiny car.

She was a kook. Or a glutton for attention. Dunt sniffled and reached for his handkerchief to find nothing. It was gone. It was the first time he had ever lost one in his life. It was the first time he had ever let someone else cry on it. Norton Dunt looked in the rear view mirror and then at the clock. It was time to go home. He would ask his daughter how her day was.