“Are you quite done?”
“No need for hurry,” I say, and she turns away; apparently, she had had enough.
I sink to one knee.
“Babe,” I say.
“Fuck off,” she tells me without looking.
“Babe,” I say. “Will you marry me?”
She spins around, looks at me, her eyes wide, mouth slightly parted.
“You are out of your fucking mind,” she whispers.
“I might be. Still, marry me.”
She stares at me as she covers her mouth with her hands. It took her that long to process what I am doing.
“You planned this all along,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “For a long time. This was the moment.”
“Yes,” she breathes out with watery eyes.
“Yes?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” she says, and tears run down her cheeks as the Mona Lisa, luckily safely packed, rushes to the floor and she squats down to me and kisses me.
When we end the kiss, I grab her hand and put the ring on her finger.
“Got one for me, too,” I say, and lift the velvet inlay, with a second ring in it. She grabs it and puts it on my finger.
“They look quite different,” she says.
“On purpose,” I say. “So you don’t get into trouble.”
“I will anyway,” she says.
“Not if I can help it,” I say.
“You can’t help that polygraph,” she says. I know it’s her routine polygraph year, but I couldn’t care less.
“I can,” I say. “I can fool every test in the book; you can learn that, too.”
“But I don’t want to!” she shouts and jumps up.
“Then don’t,” I say, and get up. She walks up and down in front of me.
“I gave an oath; I am lying and breaking rules, and?—“
“Do you think the AG doesn’t do it by tipping off his friends? Everyone has their secrets; you just don’t know them.”
She stops in her tracks.
“We are stealing the fucking Mona Lisa!” she shouts.
“Who you did drop onto the floor, by the way,” I say and point at it.
