He just appeared! Right there in the bank vault. He hadn’t been there before. I know, I was standing right there, looking between the metal bars at the piles of safety deposit boxes, ready to close up for the evening. If he’d appeared a few seconds later, he would never have been seen. Why couldn’t he have appeared a few seconds later? That would have saved me all this grief. What do I do now? Call the police, tell them someone just appeared in the vault? There are protocols for break-ins, but not for this.

This could be a problem for me, actually. “How did he get in?” they’ll ask, and my answer won’t be satisfying. It won’t satisfy me either, but it will implicate me.

Maybe I should say something. He’d probably expect that, given his miraculous behaviour. In fact, he would probably think silence on my part at this particular moment incongruous. Maybe as incongruous as materializing inside someone’s vault without so much as a “How do you do?” Would I mind less if he’d said, “How do you do?”? Probably not.

Still.

Wait, where did he go?

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