Cosmic Hotel

by Russ Franklin

  “Everyone resents you? Interesting. Okay, the question again, and I’ll let you answer it. Any thoughts of suicide?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Let me ask you this.” He touched his fingertips together beneath his nose. “Are you getting ready to go on a trip?”

  “What?”

  “A trip, travel?” he repeated.

  “Always,” I said.

  “See, I knew it. I can tell.” He smiled, pleased at himself. “Travel is very stressful.”

  He swiveled in his chair and picked up a brown box from the floor, set it on his desk, took sample boxes out, and slid them across the desk to me. “This is going to help you,” he said. He explained this was a “new common help” people took, and explained the dosages, and told me to taper off the Rozaline. “This is newer, more effective, fewer side effects. This is my preference,” he said.

  He waited. It was called Elapam. When I didn’t say anything right away, he pushed three more sample boxes to me. I finally said, “Sometimes I have trouble sleeping too.”

  “My choice for my patients is somatropin.”

  I turned the box of Elapam over. On the back were words and complicated chemical contents and warnings. Shaking the box, it rattled with tinfoil pill sleeves, and on the front of the box was a formless figure dancing, sexless and twirling with arms overhead, and I realized that the swirling at the feet was the drug company logo on the frame of his digital photo frame.

  Dr. Ahuja was working at the computer, the mouse clicking faster. It took him about ten seconds to send the prescriptions to every pharmacy in the world.

  “That’s it! Godspeed!” he said. “Enjoy your travels!”

  I checked out with the woman who had been the nurse who’d weighed me and took my initial blood pressure, now sliding the translucent glass open and taking my credit card. All the magazines in the waiting room were business magazines, and she handed me the receipt for my visit, rather expensive for what he’d just done. It reminded me of the warning Van Raye had written in an essay in My Year of Quantum Weirdness: “Every doctor thinks he can be a businessman, and every businessman thinks he can be a lawyer, and every lawyer thinks he can be a writer, and every writer thinks he’s right about everything.”

  CHAPTER 15

  On Thursday, Elizabeth and I woke early for a trip to Chicago for her to attend the Host Resorts board meeting. Elizabeth’s standard procedure was to be through security two hours before our departure time. I wore a gray suit and a red tie, and when we sat down at our gate and I had just begun enjoying the Airport Zone, I glanced at our itinerary on my phone and was shocked to see that our flight had been rebooked through Birmingham. When had I done that?

  I had some vague recollection of changing our flights, as if I had dreamed it, but yes, it was me, not the hacker. I’d changed our reservations after taking my sleeping pills, under the influence, and believed the violin could be in Birmingham, at this place called the Warehouse of Mishandled Luggage. Now I wasn’t so sure. We’d be wasting our time going.

  On my phone, I found where the post-sleeping-pill me had searched for the Warehouse of Mishandled Luggage. There was strangely no website, only an address in Birmingham. Sitting in the gate area, I found a street view of the address and saw a standard-looking warehouse warped in the fish-eye perspective.

  Elizabeth took out the CEO report and began rereading it using her speed-reading finger.

  On my phone, I also discovered a text conversation with Dubourg, my cousin. I actually had typed these words:

  There’s weird shit going on.

  I was embarrassed and annoyed.

  Something big has happened with Van Raye. Tell you tomorrow.

  Tomorrow? I scrolled toward the end of the conversation. The conversation went on with Dubourg trying to figure out what I was trying to get at, trying to follow my explanation of ringing payphones, Elvis, and Elizabeth’s lost violin, and he’d said:

  I can fly through ATL in AM.

  Meet concourse C tomorrow.

  The last balloon was time stamped this morning:

  Im here.

  I looked at my watch seeing that our rendezvous time was fifteen minutes ago, and quickly texted:

  I’m here! On way!

  “I’ve got to go walk some,” I said to Elizabeth, standing suddenly, lifting my attaché and putting the strap over my head. “Stretch my legs.”

  Her eyes studied me over her cheap rhinestone glasses, and she knew I was up to something. But as she was forming a question, I turned away.

  On the train to concourse C, I noticed people wearing identify-me lapel pins—Christian crosses, Rotary Club pins, and different-colored ribbons signifying some cause—and the tram let me out on C, and I took the escalator up and stopped in a bookstore, searched the “New Arrivals” display until I found The Universe Is a Pair of Pants on the lower shelf and bought a copy and a pack of Marlboros and stuck them in my bag.

  Midway down the concourse to the smoking lounge, I started encountering the smoke smell and the red-eyed people with the general gray complexion of addicts. I’m sorry to have to report that smokers in general show poorer personal hygiene than other people.

  Outside the smoking lounge, I leaned to see into the glass room, the fishbowl of cancer, where my cousin—really my half brother—sat on a bench with a cigarette. He wore his black jacket and priest’s collar, and that valise between his feet, and he uncomfortably listened to a middle-aged man in a goatee smiling and talking animatedly.

  I hadn’t seen Dubourg in over a month, but he looked older to me, and more like Van Raye than he ever had, though these features were handsome on Dubourg, perhaps the right amount of DNA from his biological French mother. We looked nothing alike. On one of my first visits to Florida, two of the aunts had put Dubourg and me back to back, made us slowly turn as though we were in a police lineup, looking for a resemblance, but there was very little. Elizabeth always claimed the Indian genes stomped all others.

  I’d gone to his ordination in New Orleans on the last official day of spring for that year, and in the heat of the cathedral he vowed poverty, celibacy, and obedience, and he had pissed off someone because ultimately he was not given the assignment of a parish priest, but he was made a courier for the church, having to tote around that black valise now protected between his knees, the contents of which he was not even privileged to.

  I watched through the glass, saw his hand absently touch the valise as the stranger talked. This man spoke excitedly, cigarette between his fingers. Dubourg’s brow wrinkled with concern.

  The man finally looked at his watch and stabbed his butt out. They stood and shook hands. The man grabbed the long handle of his suitcase and left.

  Dubourg began writing in a notebook and I went and sat in the seat directly in front of him and waited for him to notice me.

  He finished what he was writing and stubbed out the cigarette, turned his head sideways to see the words. He lifted his head and blinked at me sitting across from him. His heavy glasses had slid down his nose.

  A smile eased onto his face, and he shook his head, smiling, closed his book. “How long have you been here?” He stood and held his arms open to me. His long brown hair and beard made him look like the velvet portraits of Jesus in truck stops. He took me in a hug, and I felt the familiar strength of his arms. He gave me hardy thunks on my back.

  When he looked at me again, I saw he had a crusty white remnant on his mustache from a recent swig from an antacid bottle. I pointed to my lip to let him know, and he wiped it away.

  “Got a smoke?” I asked.

  He bent to perform a reassuring touch to the valise, then turned to a woman and asked politely while making the international sign to bum a smoke. The woman said, “Certainly, Father,” and he got two, Dubourg lighting mine, and we went around and sat in the row of black vinyl chairs that faced out of the fishbowl of cancer and watched the rest of the world walk by.

  I felt the rush of nicotine. I
only wanted a cigarette when I was around him, and I had toured all smoking lounges in major American airports because of Dubourg and his assignment, that black valise that he had to keep moving for the church.

  “Jesus, when’s the last time you slept?” I said.

  Instead of answering, he straightened his posture, and he filled me in on the cousins he’d talked to lately—Holly, Good John, Curt, Benita, Bad John, and Cecil, and updated me on the recent births and babies and children I’d forgotten about. He snuck an antacid tablet into his mouth, then he pulled a thin package of wet wipes out of his duffle. He offered me one, and he rubbed his on the back of his neck and under his ears.

  He had been a great athlete in Wakulla County, had gone to a private college in West Virginia on a baseball scholarship.

  I blew smoke from the side of my mouth.

  “What’s so big that’s going on with Charles?” he asked, flicking his ash casually as if this wasn’t what he was aching to know.

  I wasn’t ready to talk about Charles. Van Raye’s limited contact with Dubourg—all meetings happened through me—heightened Dubourg’s fascination with the man. I said, “You know all that stuff I said about the hacker sending me messages, you know, like cloaked messages to find Elizabeth’s violin?”

  He nodded.

  “Somebody’s fucking with me.”

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  I handed him the phone so he could see the texts from the hacker.

  He said, “You don’t really think there’s one place that all the lost luggage in the world ends up, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “I was a little tipsy last night. I took a sleeping pill. I kind of don’t remember having that conversation with you.”

  He looked at my phone.

  I tried to keep my hands from shaking, kept bringing the cigarette to my mouth sooner than I normally would. I said, “I will admit that how much he knows about me is a little scary.”

  He tilted his head to read the phone through the bottom of his glasses. He scrolled with his index finger. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

  He handed the phone back to me. It was on the menu of all my texts, mostly from him and Ursula, but there was no text conversation from the blocked number. I kept thumbing back and forth from the text page as if it would magically reappear.

  “You’re shitting me,” I said. “It was right here!”

  I sat back and looked around the smoking lounge. “I’m going insane.” I rebooted the phone, the technical move of the truly desperate.

  Dubourg asked another man for a cigarette.

  “My God, you think I’m crazy . . . ” I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense. Could a hacker erase the conversation on my phone?”

  “I don’t think so. Change all your passwords right away.”

  “Oh, great advice, thank you. Do you think I haven’t done that?”

  “I’m trying to help.”

  “I know, but I’m telling you something is going on.”

  I turned the screen back on as if it would magically reappear.

  I asked him, “Ever heard the phrase ‘I am what I am’? It sounds like it’s from the Bible. I know I’ve heard it.”

  “No. That’s Popeye. But ‘I am that I am,’ that’s Exodus, when the burning bush starts talking. Moses asked the voice to identify itself, God said, ‘Yahweh,’ or, ‘I am that I am.’ It varies among texts, but there you go, basically speaking. You don’t think it’s God texting you, do you?” I waited for him to crack a smile but he didn’t.

  “Seriously?” I said. “You’re asking me if God is talking to me?”

  He didn’t change his studious, serious expression. He said, “There are plenty of ways God talks to you.”

  “Du, through my cell phone?”

  “The manifestation of His words might be a hallucination that your phone is doing this.”

  “You’re not helping. You can’t understand how unbelievable this is. Forget God. It’s not God.”

  He slouched and said, “You don’t really think God would direct you to your mama’s violin, do you? Doesn’t quite work like that.”

  I was frustrated. “I’m not an idiot,” I said.

  Around the smoking lounge the other addicts seemed to be talking to each other. Very few had their phones out. It was suddenly annoying that a smoking lounge is the friendliest place in the airport.

  He put his hand on the valise and watched the non-addicts strolling in the regular world on the other side of the glass.

  He said, “I know you want to find her violin. Sometimes desperation makes us believe anything.”

  “Goddamn it, I don’t believe anything.”

  He shushed me. “Keep it down, okay. Maybe,” he said, “you are having a vision.”

  “I’m not having a vision.”

  “Maybe a religious experience.”

  “Du, please.”

  “Do you have any proof that this is happening to you, something you can show me?”

  “I can only tell you what has happened to me.”

  He nodded his head and smiled. “If something happens to you, are you ready?”

  I put my head in my hands. “What if I told you that Charles found something,” I said. “Would you believe that?”

  He leaned away to see me better. “What are you talking about?”

  I glanced behind us before saying, “He found a noise.”

  He looked from my right eye to my left. Smoke drifted between us.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “No. He told me the other day. Over the phone. It’s a big secret. I’m not supposed to tell you, anybody.”

  “Well shit. He’s actually done it?”

  “It hasn’t been confirmed. But he says yes.”

  “Holy mother of God,” he said, closing his eyes, and when he opened them again they followed the people on the other side of the glass, his eyes jerking as they picked up the sight of each person. “But if it hasn’t been confirmed, it means nothing,” he said.

  “I know.”

  He stretched out his leg and reached into his pocket, took out a chalky antacid and put it between his teeth and crunched.

  “Come stay with us in Atlanta,” I said. “We got to go to Chicago for the day, but we’ll be back tonight.”

  “Can’t,” he said, searching each stranger’s face as they passed the smoking lounge.

  “Are you looking for someone?”

  “No one particular,” he said, “just the annoying interfaith chaplains.” He shrugged. He touched the valise. “Do you have any clothes I can borrow?” He eyed my carry-on.

  “Not with me. Go to the hotel and I do.”

  He shook his head. “I’m going to have to go kick the bishop soon.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just a euphemism. I wish I were having visions. You’re lucky, you know that, right?”

  He held his cigarette between thumb and forefinger to smoke and think. “I’m slowly losing touch with the church, and I don’t think that’s exactly healthy, but I don’t want to stop what I’m doing with this.” He touched the valise. “You know, when I travel, it’s a good time to talk to God. You should try it.”

  “I hope you aren’t talking to God out loud when you’re walking around airports.”

  “Traveling alone, it’s a giant meditation with God. I can feel Him sometimes, like He’s right there with me. It can happen to you, you know.”

  “Yeah, your life seems so sexy,” I said.

  “You think life is a grand hotel?” he said. “Well, it’s not. It’s serving a higher purpose. I didn’t ask to do this service,” he tapped the valise, “but this was what He chose for me. I released myself to God. The other night in the Denver airport, I clearly heard a voice tell me, ‘Wash your hands.’ I did it literally, you know.”

  He shook his head like I was a child who would never understand, and he crossed his arms on his chest.

  I said, “Sometimes I just wa
nt my cousin back.”

  “You got your cousin. You got your brother too. Where do you think I’ve gone?”

  “You can’t talk like we used to.” I wanted the regular him back—back from before his big moment on the hiking trip in college when he felt God on the mountain and cried for a whole day.

  He said, “I know you’re not a believer, but He’s here. Sometimes I go days without talking to anyone. I mean I’m right here among all the people, but I’m silent for days. To be silent among everyone is wonderful.”

  His ordination ceremony in the cathedral that hot spring was three hours long. When I showed up, a Knights of Columbus in his commodore hat and sword seated me in the back until Aunt Lucy, Dubourg’s mother, saw me and moved me forward, a big, deep-voiced, strong woman whom I loved for finding me and bringing me to them when I was nine years old.

  Aunt Lucy cried during the ceremony; lots of people cried like it was a wedding. I leaned forward and saw Ursula dry eyed with her brother Cecil and Aunt Myra and Uncle Ben.

  In the airport smoking lounge with Dubourg, I pulled the copy of The Universe Is a Pair of Pants out of the satchel, and the pack of Marlboros, and gave it to him.

  “His latest book,” I said.

  He leaned away from the book as if to see it better before touching it. “Maybe that’s not what I need at this exact moment.”

  “What do you mean? He can’t have fucked up your life that much. You’ve barely known him.”

  “But all the science. Maybe I don’t need his rich thicket of reality at the moment.”

  “Maybe you do,” I said.

  He saw my puzzled face. He took the cigarettes but left me the book. “But thanks for the smokes.”

  In the ordination ceremony, Dubourg had to lay facedown on the altar while a woman in the balcony sang out for the blessing of every saint upon him. I remember seeing the soles of his shoes up there on the altar, which were unscuffed and a symbol so blatant it was laughable. The ceiling’s mural depicted Christ showing his scarred hands to his disciples, and I noticed that the woman singing in the balcony was standing near the railing, and through the gap in the marble railing, I, the only one in the cathedral whose head wasn’t bowed, looked up into the shadow of her short skirt. I sat in the ceremony realizing that if all this were true, then I was going to hell, but I began to hear the wind chimes in my brain that proceed an erection, the exact sound, I realized, as the church’s Sanctus bells rang, those bells that signify a supernatural occurrence, and I thought about how happy Dubourg seemed when I went to see him in college, before he ever mentioned wanting to be a priest. He had boyfriends in college, and I have this image of him when he was joking around with a guy, grabbing him by the wrist to pull him out of a car. I can still see Dubourg’s hand around the other guy’s wrist, playfully pulling. I can still see him asleep on the train when we went to New York, boyfriend’s head on Dubourg’s shoulder, Dubourg watching out the window.