68 THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2019
still aloft by the window, my back to
the flaming skyscrapers, when her
specific buzz sounded. Viki immedi-
ately said, “Maya?”
I glided to the intercom. There she
was, humorously blowing a cloud of
breath and cigarette smoke into the
door camera. Before I could react, she
was looking through the glass front
doors and waving at someone inside.
That person had to be Becky, whom
Maya had known for years. Maya was
let into the building.
Viki said with sudden conviction,
“Maya will handle her.”
I knew Maya to be a good-hearted
if somewhat erratic person. She had a
history of eccentric and disastrous sales
ventures that she ran out of her base-
ment apartment in the East Village.
She owned a harp that she couldn’t
play. She had opinions about yogurts
and blue algae and the energies of
rooms. It was all a bit silly, to my mind,
but it was Maya who had astonish-
ingly observed to Viki, “There’s some-
thing different about him. I don’t know
what it is. But his energy has definitely
changed.”
Who am I to scoff at extrasensory
perception? Who am I to rule out the
idea of a supernature? It was precisely
Maya’s heightened atmospheric in-
stincts that led her to detect (she later
reported) a “funky aura” about Becky
that night. Maya stated that she’d long
had this funny feeling about Becky,
who was “always sort of shrinking her-
self for no reason” and for this reason
had to be “bottling up a lot of nega-
tivity and anger.” When she saw Becky
loitering in the lobby, she knew straight-
away that something was very wrong.
“It was her ponytail,” Maya said. “It
was so neat and vicious. She’s, like,
‘What a coincidence, I just got here,’
and in my head I’m, like, Learn how
to lie, lady.”
Maya and Becky entered the eleva-
tor. They stood inside the brushed-steel
box for a minute or two. “I guess they’re
not in,” Maya suggested.
“Oh, they’re in,” Becky said. “Pam
told me to come. They’re just not let-
ting us up for some reason. I’m worried.
I think there might be an emergency. I
called them earlier, but got no response.
We have to find a way up there.”
Maya said, “I’m going to text them.
If we don’t hear back quickly, I’ll start
to worry.” They left the elevator and
sat down on the lobby bench.
Maya’s text to Viki read:
Call 911. I’ve got this.How did Maya understand the sit-
uation so swiftly and so correctly, with-
out any of the facts? How did she see
through Becky and her plausible story?
How could she have been so smart?
Viki always does as her big sister
says. She called 911.
About six minutes later, the red and
white lights of squad cars were flash-
ing in the street. Maya opened the door
to twelve cops from the Nineteenth
Precinct. They identified Becky and
arrested her on the spot, evidently a
compulsory procedure in domestic-
violence cases. Becky went very qui-
etly, like a little lamb, Maya said, just
as Maya had figured she would.
Two of the cops, a woman and a
man, came up with Maya. We all sat
down. Maya said, “You found a weapon
on her, right? I sensed a weapon.”
“I’ll come to that,” the woman po-
lice officer said.
Later it became known that Maya
was right. Becky had been carrying
Pam’s gun.
The woman police officer separately
interviewed Viki and Pam and Maya.
There was a lot of paperwork; every-
thing was methodically written down.
I wasn’t asked to make a statement. I
hung out with Molly, who was inter-
ested in what was going on and kept
trying to remove her headphones. The
woman police officer explained to Pam
what her options were, and recom-
mended a “safety plan.” Pam said, “She’s
dangerous. I want to emphasize that
she’s dangerous. I don’t want to see her
again.” The woman police officer re-
peated to Pam what remedies were avail-
able to her and what systems were in
place to protect her. She gave Pam three
brochures, which Viki and I leafed
through, because our friend was in
no state to retain information. The
N.Y.P.D., I read, annually processes
more than two hundred thousand
domestic-violence calls. Pam, coat and
all, went to hug the woman police officer.
The officer accepted this with profes-
sionalism. She had been trained to han-
dle hugs, too.The thing that struck me was how
orderly these cops were. It made me
feel hopeful.I
t was agreed that Pam would spend
the night in a hotel a couple of blocks
away and that Viki would walk her
there. Maya went home.
Amazingly, Molly was still awake.
She sat on the living-room floor sur-
rounded by animal figurines and other
objects. The big cats, her favorites, were
arranged in a long line. There was a
group of unicorns. There were green
soldiers and there were glass beads and
there were bears and there was at least
one crocodile. A dinosaur, massively big-
ger than the other toys, lay on its side.
Molly has very white skin and dark-
brown hair. She was murmuring as she
manipulated the creatures, and I tried
in vain, from my chair, to make out what
the creatures were saying to one another.
Some kind of drama of coöperation
seemed to be taking place. There was
an imaginary obstacle, a crevasse or a
river, and the animals were helping one
another across. Then a battle started. A
soldier battled a shark, who battled a
unicorn, who defeated the shark, who
reattacked. When the white tiger was
imperilled by the lynx, some turtles and
sheep flew to the tiger’s aid. One by one
the combatants were downed, then
picked up and revived by a girl’s giant
hand. Would that, Molly seemed to be
repeating. Would that.
She yawned.
“Let’s go to bed,” I said. I took her
hand. “It’ll all be here in the morning.”
This was nearly two thousand morn-
ings ago. Within weeks, I lost the power
to fly, if that’s what the power was. My
theory is that I regained weight and
became too heavy, but who knows. I
never again discussed this strange chap-
ter with anyone, not even with Viki,
and increasingly I find myself unsure
that it happened. The video clip of my
airborne self has been lost. But I have
my confirmation. Molly’s toys are stored
in a box under her bed, where they can
easily be found. Once or twice a year
she’ll wistfully resurrect them, the white
tiger and his gang, and I see with my
own eyes that there was once a flier. NEWYORKER.COM
Joseph O’Neill on the burdens of superpowers.