At first, she thought it was that mortal girl, Tracy, who was keeping Vachon preoccupied, but Tracy had even been in several times looking for him. Urs smiled at the memory; so many emotions had played across Tracy's face the last time she had been by. The apprehension when she first entered the club, then the purposeful look as she scanned the crowd for him, followed by a look of indecision -- should she go in and ask around for him, or should she just forget the whole thing? The set of her mouth as she finally made her way through the crowd, the embarrassment at having to ask Urs, and finally the disgust and frustration when he was not to be found. Urs found Tracy's tense demeanor funny; she was so serious about everything. Urs found it ironic that Tracy would be attracted -- and it was obvious that she was attracted -- to a guy as laid back as Javier.

Urs absently toyed with her fluted wine-glass. She idly wondered what Tracy thought of her, wondered what, if anything, Jav had said about her.

"Ahh!" Urs let out a screech of surprise as she felt fingers nip at her sides. They were Javier's fingers.

"Hi." He breathed playfully into her ear.

"Jav! Don't do that." She tried to sound stern, but could not keep a straight face. "I'm ticklish!"

"I know." He had the biggest grin on his face, which made him look all of seventeen.

"So, why are you in such a good mood?" Urs usually tried to give Vachon his space, but this time she was just too curious.

Vachon shrugged, but did not stop grinning. He ordered his usual when the bartender came by -- blood, straight-up. While he was waiting for his drink, Jav reached over the bar and plucked a folded cocktail umbrella out of the bin. It was a pink one, with tiny, purple-painted flowers. He gently opened the delicate paper-and-balsa-wood favor, absently twirled it between his fingers, and wondered who first thought of putting such a thing on the edge of a drink.

"Jav? Haa-vee-aye?" Urs's sing-songy voice did not seem to penetrate his concentration, so she gently nudged him with her elbow.

"Hmmm?" He turned his head slightly in her direction, but did not take his gaze off the cocktail umbrella.

"I said, Tracy's been in here looking for you."

Vachon finally looked at Urs. He raised his eyebrows at her, wondering what Urs thought about Tracy, about him and Tracy. Heck, he wondered what he thought about Tracy, about him and Tracy.

"She seemed kinda irked when you weren't here."

"Really?" He sounded surprised, but in actuality he wasn't. It was just like Tracy to expect him to be waiting for her, like he didn't have anything better to do. "What did she want?"

Urs shrugged. She had not asked, and Tracy had not volunteered the information. Frankly, Urs failed to see what could possibly be so important. Urs concentrated on her blood and 7-Up; she liked how the tiny bubbles collected on the glass, like pink champagne.

Vachon continued to twirl the little umbrella and to sip at the blood the bartender had finally set before him. "Have you ever looked at one of these?" He held the pink umbrella out to Urs.

She glanced at it but did not take it from him. "Yeah, they're cute."

"No, I mean, really looked at one." He flipped the umbrella over. "Look at how it's constructed. It's brilliant. Notice the spacing of the wooden ribs along the paper." He delicately caressed the soft, tissue paper between his thumb and forefinger. "Is the paper holding the ribs in place, or are the ribs holding the paper in place?"

Urs stared at Javier, raised a carefully shaped eyebrow, and idly wondered if he had finally lost his mind. "It's just a cocktail umbrella, Javier."

"Um, but it's not. It's the basis for this new astrophysics theory of mine."

Urs raised her other eyebrow. She, very slowly, reached over and took Vachon's glass. She sniffed at it, then, after a small sip, decided that it was still fresh. She returned his drink, before narrowing her eys at him. "Have you been out feeding on junkies again?"

"Urs, I'm serious. I've been working on this for years now -- ever since our stay in Venezuela. It's really a pretty cool little theory. See, there are different types of galaxies existing in the universe -- pulsars, which emit strong x-rays and gamma rays, and quasars, which strongly emit radio waves and light waves. Well, my theory involves quasars. Astronomers have been measuring and comparing these emitted radio and light waves for a long time. And by comparing the lengths of these waves, they could tell how fast a quasar was traveling. These wavelengths are long, placing them at the infrared end of the spectrum. This is called a 'red shift'. A shift toward the infrared end of the spectrum means the quasar is moving away from us."

Urs didn't understand why anybody would care about something that was so far away to begin with, let alone something that was moving even farther away. But, she did not want to be rude, so she kept listening.

"So about seventy years ago, this guy named Edwin Hubble -- the one they named that big outer-space, satellite-telescope after...."

Urs nodded. The named seemed not too unfamiliar to her.

Vachon continued. ". . . Well, he discovered that you could also use these comparisons of wavelengths to determine how far away these quasars are. Now, take a look at this paper umbrella again. See how the purple flowers have a slight tinge of ultraviolet to them?"

Urs nodded again. She still did not understand where Javier was going with all of this. Lots of things had that cool ultraviolet sheen to them and lots of things had a warm infrared blush, especially fabrics -- dyed-black fabrics. Big deal.

"You and I can see it, Urs, but mortals can't, which is probably why this theory of mine never occurred to any of them. Now watch while I spin this." He twirled the umbrella between his thumb and forefinger. The purple flowers blurred into streaks and the ultraviolet glow faded. "There are a small number of short waves emitted by the quasars, which are obscured by the greater amount of longer waves. If you know that these shorter waves are there, you can isolate them. By comparing these shorter waves, you can calculate, what I have termed, a 'blue shift'. This blue shift allows the determination of the mass, shape, density, angle of rotation, and vector of motion of the quasars. Of course, it's not quite that simple, but that's the basic idea. Cool, huh?"

Urs's eyes were completely glazed over by this point. She stared, transfixed by the cocktail umbrella which Vachon was still idly twirling back and forth between his fingers. Vachon did not notice the lack of response by his young companion.

"But here's the coolest part." He reached into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and removed a long envelope. He pulled a letter out of the ragged tear he had previously made across the top of the envelope, and handed it to Urs, who was just now starting to regain her vision.

Urs took the letter from Vachon and began to read it silently to herself, her lips moving only slightly as she did so. "This is from the Royal Academy of Science in Stockholm."

Vachon nodded at her.

"It says that you and some doctor have won the Nobel Prize in Physics for your research on qua . . . qua...."

"Quasars," Vachon said, supplying her with the correct pronunciation.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

"No. I've really won! Hah!" Vachon spun around once on his barstool, but then stopped as soon as he noticed a few people staring. "I'll have to fly to Sweden to accept the medal. You wanna come with?"

Vachon could see that Urs still did not quite believe he had won. Heck, he still did not believe that he had won.

"Come on, Urs. There's a monetary award as well. We could stop in Paris on the way back . . . go to a few fashion shows . . . buy you a few originals...." He knew this would tempt her.

"Really?"

"Um hum." Javier nodded, tossing her a wry grin.

"Since we're going to be so close, can we...." Her voice trailed off.

"'Can we . . . what?"

"Can we go to Euro-Disney, too?"

Vachon could not help smiling at her, knowing how much she had enjoyed the other three Disney Theme Parks. "Sure." Besides, her Minnie Mouse ears were getting a bit ratty looking.