Cosmic Hotel

by Russ Franklin

  CHAPTER 25

  I don’t remember the first words I spoke. Recovery happened too slowly. What was a loud breath, or what was a syllable? One week I was flexing fingers; the next week there was movement at my wrist, the tingling, like an occupying army, decided to pick up and retreat, and the elation of the vivid dream that night had long faded though the memory was there, and I did not anticipate the coming of December 12 because it wasn’t in my mind.

  After six weeks and two days Elizabeth pulled the December 11 off the wall calendar in my hospital room, and suddenly there was December 12 staring me in the face, and I remember Randolph telling, and the memory flooded in. I had the sensation of falling, heart palpitating and my breath short. There was nothing to grab but the bed’s railing. Time imploded, and I had the sensation that one second ago Randolph had told me this date when I was standing in the doorway waiting for Elizabeth to get me a glass of water, and in a blink of the eye here I was seeing Elizabeth crumbling up the eleventh and dropping it into a wastebasket, but I had all memories of what had happened here at the hospital. It was like waking from anesthesia, thinking not enough time had gone by for everything to have occurred, but yet all the memories were there, including Ursula reading, the experience of the vivid dream, the elation of having believed.

  Elizabeth kept talking as she walked around the room, but I wasn’t listening. I was dizzy with fear, hand to my chest. The sensation was terrifying. I knew then that I didn’t ever want this to happen again, my life leaping forward. I opened and closed my hand; I moved my fingers, watching the tendons in my wrist flex.

  I heard about the disaster on the space station when we were on the old plum-colored shuttle going back to the hotel. Of course I didn’t know this had anything to do with my life.

  When I finally went back to the Grand Aerodrome, when I finally pushed the door open to my room, I hobbled to my dresser and found everything exactly as I’d left it six weeks ago: my watch, my wallet, my money clip, the hardcopy of The Universe Is a Pair of Pants, and Barbie, and my phone. It was like I’d left it yesterday.

  I plugged in my phone and waited for it to get enough charge to power on.

  Elizabeth stood in the door watching me. I angled the phone so I could see her reflection in its black screen.

  “Sandeep, there are things that I don’t understand, and you can explain them to me.”

  I turned to her. “Did something happen?”

  “I have my violin,” she said. “How did that happen? And then you got sick.”

  I waited for the phone, adjusted Barbie’s arms so that they were down beside her and not reaching out as if she wanted me. I sat her on her bottom and loved that smile of hers that was like a smile that was beginning to blossom, as if she were about to face some life-altering happiness.

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t understand it all either. Charles will know. He’ll tell us when he gets here.”

  “What does he have to do with this?” she said. “We don’t know for sure he’s coming.”

  I watched my phone finally come alive. “Can you play now?” I said to Elizabeth. “Please.” She looked to see if I were serious and turned to her room. There, I heard the latches on the case open.

  My screen turned a light gray, and the home screen came up. I scrolled to my text conversations and found nothing there from Randolph. It was as if it had never happened. I had no proof that he existed other than that the violin was in our possession. Then a text dinged in:

  Hello Sandeep. Welcome back.

  Elizabeth began Sarasate again just as she’d played the night I’d gotten sick, the night she first got the violin back. I texted:

  Was that you in the MRI?

  :)

  Did you do all this to me?

  Please don’t be one of those people who blame me for everything. The universe is chaotic.

  Are we ready for Raye?

  Will I have to go through this all my life?

  If we realize the future, we will only jump to that point. It’s better not to skip the journey.

  But I didn’t skip it. I have all the memories.

  But doesn’t it feel like I just gave you the answer?

  Don’t do that again.

  Do you want me to believe you’re God?

  LOL!

  Elizabeth was at the point that the bow was drawn slowly. I knew if I went to show her this conversation, it would disappear.

  Why can’t I show this conversation to anyone?

  We must handle this in a delicate way.

  Do you want me to believe you’re an alien?

  :)

  Are you?

  :)

  Why can’t you find him yourself?

  It is best that you introduce me to him

  He has called your mother. If he calls again tell him it is important that he look after the dog

  Dog again? What dog?

  You think you’re God?

  ;}

  You are not God

  I am not God.

  When Elizabeth’s music changed to the next movement—sad and slow—I typed and sent:

  You are God

  The answer came quickly:

  I am God

  You did this to me

  I did not do this to you

  Can you stop it from happening again?

  No.

  I thought of ways to trick him, try to run to Elizabeth and show her the text, try to copy the text.

  I used my cane to go to the bathroom and I ran water in the glass, drank it, refilled, indulged myself by spitting it in the basin and drinking more and more, no longer thirsty now that I could drink all the water I wanted. I splashed it on my face. There was me in the mirror, wearing a tracksuit a size too big for my body, my hair over my ears. I got the old tinfoil sheet of pills out of my shaving kit and punched out two of Dr. Ahuja’s antidepressants and looked at the medicine’s box where a dancing figure spun as if in a fit of euphoria, and I thought about Elvis movies, musicals, and happiness. I was ready for the musical based on my life to begin.

  CHAPTER 26

  In the middle of the night, Van Raye and Ruth left Palo Alto. He felt good behind the wheel of his old Jaguar, headed out on the nearly deserted causeway to the interstate.

  “He smells awful,” Ruth said.

  Van Raye glanced at the light crossing over her closed eyes. The dog was in the backseat making snotty noseprints on the window, the smears twinkling brighter.

  On the dashboard, the alien statue stared back at him. “Do we really need this?” he said.

  “Yes,” Ruth said. She’d drug it out of his suitcase the other day. “Because,” she said, “I can tell you hate it. Whoever gave you this, you fucked her.” He saw her rubbing her own belly. “Let’s call it therapy,” she said.

  Forty-five minutes into the trip, she asked, “When are we going to stop?”

  She wore her standard green unflattering flight suit. When she’d thrown her one duffle into the trunk on top of Van Raye’s three garbage bags of stuff, he’d noticed the bulge of her belly in the jumpsuit.

  Now there was starlight overhead and dark forests on both sides of the road, woods thick enough to do what was best, and he had a pregnant ex-wife in the car, a whole country to drive across, had another ex-wife to find, and he told himself that he had to start organizing his writing so he could perfectly tell the story of his discovery and how he sent his own message to the planet before anyone else did.

  Van Raye found the right spot to pull off the road. Ruth pretended to stay asleep against the passenger door when he shut the engine off. They’d discussed this, agreed it was best, but he stepped out alone, scared by the silence of the woods. Lightning bugs tricked his eyes. The concrete of the highway sparkled moonlight, and the heat of the Jaguar’s engine smelled good as it ticked and cooled. Van Raye opened the back door. “Come on,” he said to the dog.

  Ruth was a dark, unmoving, silent mound in the passenger seat. The dog hopped out and never
lost momentum, zigzagging back and forth, nose going over the ground.

  Ruth’s door creaked open. She shoved it wider and grabbed the doorframe. “What a son of a bitch you are,” she said calmly. She hauled herself out.

  “Don’t . . . ” he said.

  How, he thought, did I end up with a pregnant ex-wife who was hearing music in her belly, a hundred miles from nowhere, letting a dog go in the woods?

  Her flip-flops scraped the pavement as she went to the driver’s side, slid behind the wheel, and started the car.

  The dog stopped, turned and looked at them, tongue out. Van Raye got in the passenger side and pulled his silver pipe out as she got the car going. I will sleep it off, he told himself.

  It was Ruth who said, “You let him go rather easily.”

  “What dog wouldn’t want to be free in the woods?” he said.

  Ruth ran the car up to ninety, the hand on the bottom of the wheel, the car swaying, and put another cigarette in her mouth.

  “Be careful,” he said.

  “What does it matter?” she said. “This is dark. Dark, dark.” She pushed the lighter in. “I’m going to remind you in the daylight what you are capable of, what we are all capable of, and see how you feel then. This isn’t a ‘never talk about it’ moment.”

  “You don’t believe in those, do you?” he said.

  “I don’t think we can just forget letting a dog go.”

  The lighter popped out.

  “Don’t mention it if we’re in Texas, please,” he said. “Texas is depressing enough. Wait till we’re through Texas, if you must. Maybe we shouldn’t go into Texas.”

  “I’ll save it for Texas. Let’s heap the shit on and see what happens.” One hand on the wheel, the other with the cigarette rubbed her belly in the jumpsuit, and he knew she was hearing the music.

  “Who was the father?” he said.

  “A cosmonaut,” she said.

  “What happened to you up there?” he said. “I’m not talking about that.”

  She didn’t answer at first but then said, “I got a glimpse of the big thing that scares everyone.”

  “What ‘big thing’?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Like nothing ‘never mind,’ or like nothing nothing?”

  “Capital-N Nothing,” she said. “I saw Nothing. I saw it when I was up there. Nothing is horrifyingly bright. That was the scary part—it was bright and nothing.”

  “Quit talking like that. I’m not in the mood,” he said.

  She made a defeated sigh.

  He said, “You need some professional help. You’ve been through a major trauma.”

  “I am professional help,” she said.

  “Doctor, heal thyself?” he muttered.

  In a few minutes, after staring at the road, watching the trees go by, she said, “What does this Elizabeth look like?”

  “Don’t be petty. My son is sick, and we are going to visit him for a few days and see what progress we can make on finding an antenna to send my message.”

  Smoke filled the car.

  On one of the trees she drove past, there was a small white sign, and Ruth had time to read it as they flashed by. It said HELL IS REAL, and Ruth said, “Hell is real. Why not send that?”

  “Quit,” he said.

  “That is succinct and it’s very helpful.”

  He didn’t say anything and then softly, “Poor baby.”

  “What did you say?” she said.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  When Van Raye fell asleep against his door, he dreamed he was in the woods trying to re-catch the dog. The dog stood still long enough for Van Raye to see a medical porthole in the side of the dog. He looked inside, expecting intestines like in the cow in the pasture, but instead there was clean blackness of space and one bright shiny point of light. It was, Van Raye knew, the star with Chava Norma orbiting around it, a whole other world inside the dog. In his dream, he tried to get closer, but the dog ran away.

  PART III

  CHAPTER 27

  I got the adjoining room to Elizabeth’s suite, room 1212, and didn’t have the energy or the initiative to go out in public. My waking hours were spent texting Ursula and then Dubourg, pressing redial for the only number I had for Van Raye and getting a recording for the university’s bed and breakfast. My companions in my room were the betta fish and flight-attendant Barbie sitting unladylike on the dresser, legs spread, and out my sliding glass doors was the wide-open dome of sky over the Atlanta airport. I ran a search for “World record” + “living in a hotel room,” and got directed to Howard Hughes biographies.

  Elizabeth would come and speak through the adjoining door to me, “This is very unhealthy.”

  I sometimes gathered myself into one of my new tracksuits and went to dinner. In the revolving restaurant, she updated me on the Grand Aerodrome’s wrap-up. I sat slouched in the chair. She told me that I looked like a gangster. I told her that my wardrobe was comfortable.

  “If you ever have to defend what you are wearing with ‘it’s comfortable,’” she said, “you’ve made the wrong choice.”

  She explained that I had to get back to work, to write this report myself. My phone sat beside my dinner plate, the last conversation with Randolph clearly visible in green and purple text balloons.

  “I’m preparing you to run the firm alone,” she said.

  “And what are you going to do?” I touched the screen to make the light come back on and slid it again in her direction. Just look at my phone, see this conversation!

  “I will not travel with you,” she said, “if that’s what you are asking. I think you would be healthier without me. You’re completely capable of doing it when you get back to 100 percent.”

  “No, I don’t think I can. Are you looking around?” I used my eyes to point to my phone. All she had to do was glance down at the conversation.

  “What? What is wrong with you?” She picked up the phone. She tilted her head back. “What am I supposed to be looking at? I don’t have my glasses on.”

  “Jesus!” I took it, but the screen was blank white, conversation gone. “Dammit!”

  The restaurant revolved, slowly turned on its axis. After dessert, we drank coffee. If she retired, if she never said a word about business, would our whole lives be like it was when we were waiting on a flight—no worries, no business, only the moment? Her eyes kept looking to the west, and Gypsy Sky Cargo inched its way into view. The jets were being unloaded and loaded under the lights, cargo doors wide open, and containers going up on accordion lifts. They had floodlights mounted in clusters on high poles making every worker on the ground have multiple shadows emanating from his or her feet like a Swiss Army knife of selves.

  CHAPTER 28

  Back alone in my room with the doors shut and locked, I took Dr. Ahuja’s sleeping pills when I felt like I needed a break—they were like pushing a button—and I would wake into new light, my phone on my chest.

  I turned my head on the pillow and watched the betta fish and wondered if he was somehow changing colors. Now he looked a plasmotronic blue as if he’d changed color for a different segment of life, and he went up and down in the corner of his tank, fighting his reflection. A jet’s thrust reversers rattled the balcony doors, the sounds of the womb to me, and another gray day trying to leak through the shears, and I thought, Is the day ending or beginning? I’d become jetlagged inside a hotel room.

  I was thinking “jetlag” when something on the other bed moved, a lump of a human beneath the covers, and somehow my mind already knew it was Ursula. She was on her side facing the wall, the shimmering light from the aquarium undulating on the comforter over her body, and I had some vague recollection of the happiness of seeing her last night. Ursula is here.

  On the bedside table were a martini glass with two dead cranberries and my bottle of sleeping pills.

  I whispered, “Ursula?” and wondered why I was whispering if I wanted to wake her. “Ur!�
�

  She rolled, squinted at me, and immediately squeezed the button on her watch to stop it. “What?” she said, eyes swollen from sleep.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Sleeping, dumbass.” She rolled back toward the wall, and I heard the watch beep again.

  “Are you really here?”

  “Are you really here?” She didn’t turn over to see me, only took a deep breath, and her voice reflected off the wall. “You don’t remember anything, do you?”

  Her watch beeped again, and she rolled over to see me, then checked the time.

  “A little bit.”

  “I found you downstairs,” she said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “You were at the bar. I’m extremely pissed at you, by the way.”

  “At the bar?” I pulled up memories that were like dreams. “Elizabeth doesn’t know about this, does she?” I asked. “Did she see me?”

  “No, but you were quite the hit there in your pajamas. It’s freezing in here.” She pulled the cover tighter over her head. “Why did you invite me here?” she said. “Do you even want me here?”

  “Yes, of course I want you here.” I had a dull alcohol headache.

  She rolled her eyes and pulled the covers over her mouth; she was only eyes and a nose. The empty martini glass sat on the bedside table, sugar around the rim reminding me of the night with Franni from Mount Unpleasant.

  “There’s a front coming, an ugly storm,” she said, words veiled, her lips beneath the fabric. She reached a hand out and picked the brown pill bottle and shook. “Look, don’t take this shit.”