VACANCY & ARIEL

Capuano was beginning to look bored. “What’s this got to do with Springheel Jack?”

“Let’s say Springheel Jack came from a universe pretty far from ours. When he arrived, because of the strongly anthropic nature of reality, our perceptions caused his particulate structure to begin decaying, changing toward something approximating our own, and he grew more and more human. More what we expect. The bubble of reality he generated was being eroded by the strongly anthropic process. That would account for the gradual normalization of his appearance and physical abilities. If he was from a universe too far away, the change he’d have to undergo in order to adapt would be so drastic, he’d die. That would explain a lot of unexplained phenomena. Like the chupacabra. Those mutated goat-things down in Puerto Rico? Rahul and I figured they’re from such a far-off universe, they disintegrate. They don’t leave a trace. All through history there are reports suggesting this happens frequently. Like in pre-Christian England, there were these two green-skinned children found wandering on the edge of a village. A boy and a girl. The boy died. He couldn’t eat the food. The girl was able to eat. She survived. Springheel Jack didn’t die…at least not right away. Could be he finally normalized. He seemed to be looking for a woman. At least he kept accosting them.”

“So,” said Capuano. “How long do we have?”

“Before she changes beyond recognition? Years, maybe. But you want to find her quickly. It’s not just her shape that’s changing, it’s her mind. Long before she adapts to our reality—if she does—she’ll forget who she is and why she came here. Particle change in the brain. She’ll probably regress to the level of a child. She may retain some memories, but they’ll seem like dreams.”

Capuano punched the remote and brought up the image of the woman crouched on the rim of the hollow.

“Look at her,” I said. “Extremely tall and thin. Capable of leaping forty, fifty feet in the air. You might just have Springheel Jill on your hands.”

Capuano’s aide shifted behind him—his eyes grazed mine and I had the impression that he viewed me in a poor light.

“If you’re still hunting for her,” I went on, “tell your guys to take particular notice of intense bad smells and feelings of nausea. Those effects would be produced by electron decay when the bubbles of two different realities overlap.”

“Okay,” Capuano said, drawing out the word.

“Rahul and I really geeked out behind the idea. We figured out all kinds of stuff that synched with it. Like with ghosts. We decided hauntings might be resonance waves from nearby universes.”

Capuano made an amused noise. “That must have been some hellacious hash.”

“Yeah, it was! Outstanding!”

He continued to question me, but I could tell by his diffident attitude that he had written off his trip to Ann Arbor as a waste of time. He said he would be checking back with me and to give him a call if I thought of anything else. But I never called and he never checked back.

After the interview I headed home to the brunette whom I’d followed to UCLA and ultimately married. Her legs were still beautiful, but she had developed an eating disorder, then exchanged this problem for alcoholism, an addiction I was beginning to acquire. We were most of the way down the path to divorce. I decided I should steel myself for a confrontation with her and stopped for a drink at a bar a few blocks from our apartment. The place was decorated for the season with wreaths and merry red and green stickers affixed to the mirror above the liquor bottles. I swilled down a vodka martini, ordered a second, and sat studying the reflections of the other holiday drinkers, their glum expressions similar to my own. My thoughts shifted back and forth between the brunette and the woman in the pit. Seeing her had excited me in a way I had not known since I was a sophomore—her appearance validated the obsessions Rahul and I had shared, our belief that the universe contained miraculous presences unanticipated by mainstream science. I polished off the second martini, signaled the bartender, and was overcome by nostalgia. The good old days at Cal Tech. If I had stayed, what a life I might have had! I was almost to the bottom of a third martini when I realized I was staring at a sticker on the mirror whose outline resembled the image on the monitor screen that Capuano had shown me. The tapering wings partly spread, halo obscuring the shape of the head, making it round. “Some type of vehicle,” he had said.

It was a Christmas angel.