Cosmic Hotel

by Russ Franklin

  When Ursula read at night, I wanted to talk to her—yes, I know! My God, what would have happened if I could have talked? I would have become the most obnoxious convert. I was saved or destroyed by paralysis, whichever way you want to look at it. I was forced into a cooling-off period, and I went through a cold reawakening to reality, the tiny voice of my father through the headphones when she wasn’t there.

  Let me dispense with my experience in the strange room. It was a dream, my brain filled with Ursula’s reading and convoluted by boredom and depression. What the doctors administered me that night was a real test to measure the conductivity of your nerves—an EMG, an electromyogram.

  If conversion is a lightning strike, coming to your senses takes a few days, and that was what happened to me, slowly coming back to reality.

  One night I just simply watched Ursula’s face as she read out loud and felt the same skepticism I always had, but I would have done anything to get that feeling back of believing something fantastic was real. I would have gone through the electroshock again, been paralyzed longer, anything.

  In those days when the euphoria faded, the movement came back into my body. Ursula read from Jung: “‘These people are lacking not only in criticism but in the most elemental knowledge of psychology; at bottom, they don’t want to be taught any better but merely to go on believing . . . ’”

  One of my promises was to kiss those lips. I would declare my love for her as soon as I could speak.

  A few days later, very normal human nurses loaded me in my wheelchair and took me down several floors to an MRI machine, a small tunnel fed by a gurney.

  The motors pulled me along rails into the machine’s throat, and over a tiny speaker inches away from my nose, the tech gave me the absurd command to “stay completely still.” There was music to relax me: flute and Tibetan bowl. Air blew down the tiny tunnel, and then the music went off and then the drum roll began and the bass beat—“Viva Las Vegas” cued. It seemed like music from another world, a signal from a friend, and a bit of the euphoria of believing came on me and a drop of my body’s own saline leaked from my eye and found its way down my cheek, trickling in my ear. There was one last fantastic thing left, I thought, or was this a dream too?

  CHAPTER 24

  Van Raye’s California book tour was disappointing. After a reading at a legitimate bookstore in San Francisco, he went home with the bookstore’s manager who was painting her apartment. He slept with her that night and picked up a hangover and latex paint that dried on his body and itched on the flight to Palm Springs.

  In Palm Springs he had been booked to read in a new-age bookstore, and he’d gone home with a woman who’d told him afterward, “This is the best book you’ve written.”

  Later that evening in the tub with the new woman, she sat with her legs draped around his waist and picked the latex paint off his leg with her nail. She wasn’t the least curious how he’d gotten paint on strange parts of his body, a non-curiosity that Van Raye took as a sign of low intelligence.

  “I have found something,” he whispered to her while leaning back in the tub, rubbing his pubic hair beneath the water, letting the tiny bubbles tickle up his hand like champagne. He would try his news on a stranger, and he was drinking wine in a bathtub with her. The nice thing about returning to drinking after a sabbatical was that everything—when drinking was added—seemed much more fun. Drinking in a bathtub, telling someone you have found something.

  She sat against the other side of the tub, and she used the sides of the tub to haul herself close enough to stare into his eyes, oblivious to his statement.

  “Do you understand?” he said. “There is life on another planet.”

  “I’ve already seen them,” she whispered but continued pealing latex paint from his leg. The hair ripping out was excruciatingly pleasurable.

  She told him that she was a sculptor specializing in statues of aliens. “Anyone who buys one has a visitation,” she said. The chips of latex paint floated in the water and collected around the shoreline of her body.

  Van Raye was glad to return to Northern California and the rational world of Ruth Christmas, but he carried in his suitcase a green alien figurine.

  He returned to comfortable exile on the second story of his Palo Alto house, staying awake nights with Ruth, tuning the Trans-Oceanic radio to listen to the sound of Chava Norma. Ruth found the ceramic alien statue in his suitcase and pulled it out and held it with both hands, the size of a green cantaloupe with a belly and large black eyes, sitting in lotus, an alien Buddha. “Someone you fucked?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer, and she put it on the dresser under the lamp.

  He woke in the morning and didn’t feel her heat next to him and half-consciously searched with his foot, then reached a hand and found nothing but empty bed. By the sloping of the sun, he determined it was past midday and the drapes flapped dots and dashes to wake him. “Where are you?” he said.

  He saw her figure rummaging through her bags. She turned to him and said, “You’re taking my cigarettes.”

  “Why would I take your cigarettes?” He remembered the exact way a pack of cigarettes wadded awkwardly, always forming a non-aerodynamic ball. He’d felt like a kleptomaniac, stealing and throwing them off the balcony into the Dumpster below. Why did he do that?

  “I left a pack right here on purpose.” She pointed to the bedside table. “You are doing this.”

  He sat up on his elbows. He could no longer deny he’d been destroying those cigarettes, so he said, “Why would I care if you smoke?”

  A worker shouted from downstairs, “Professor?”

  “Damn those people,” he said.

  “Professor!” the person shouted again. “Someone is here! Professor? It’s someone with your dog!”

  “Shit.”

  When he got his robe on and went downstairs, a woman—not the attractive young woman from before, but another—waited on his stoop, holding the dog on a leash. The same K-9 truck was idling in the driveway. “Dr. Van Raye, look who we have. Lucky we found him.”

  “I know what you are going to say,” he said, “but that’s not my dog.”

  Van Raye didn’t put up much of a fight. He even took another copy of “How to Welcome Your Dog Back Home.”

  The dog followed him to the kitchen and Van Raye took out a Tupperware bowl and filled it with water and put it on the floor.

  He had run out of money. They were taking his house away. He had a dog that wasn’t his responsibility. But the dog was also registered with the planet’s name for his name. Why and why and why?

  The dog panted and didn’t drink. His eyes shifted around the kitchen but didn’t look at Van Raye.

  “Suit yourself,” Van Raye said, turning his back and walking out of the kitchen.

  He would have to find a way to leave Ruth. Would she be suspicious if he told her he was going on another book tour? Could he somehow retain the gain amplifier and the car?

  As soon as he was at the top of the stairs, he heard the dog’s paws following him. Van Raye stopped, closed his eyes. Please just go away. The phone in the nook in the hallway made a chirp. The red light flickered. This was a new phone system for the B&B. He sat on the recessed bench, and the dog came up the last step and cautiously smelled the floor.

  Van Raye picked the phone up, put the receiver to his ear, and muttered hello, but there was a voice, loud and clear, “Welcome to the Grand Aerodrome reservations. To make a reservation dial one . . . ”

  A hotel? A hotel calling me? Was Sandeep doing any of this to him?

  The dog came and smelled Van Raye’s feet.

  Van Raye pressed zero, and when the operator answered, he said very slowly, “Is there a Sandeep Sanghavi registered?”

  “One moment,” the woman said, “I’ll connect you.”

  He held the phone out and looked at the receiver and put it back to his ear. When Van Raye wiggled his foot, the dog backed away.

  His hand reached to touch t
he dog as the transfer began ringing. The dog glanced toward the stairs as if it might leave. The line clicked open.

  “This is Elizabeth Sanghavi,” she said on the other end.

  “Elizabeth?”

  There was a pause, and she said, “Charles?”

  “My God,” he whispered. He looked at the new gray phone, the buttons marked for different lines to call different rooms and a sticker that said 9 FOR OUTSIDE LINE.

  “Did you call me?” he asked.

  He heard a sigh on her end. “Are you drunk?” she said. He heard the wind blowing over her receiver.

  “No,” he said. “Elizabeth, it’s me . . . Elizabeth, is everything okay?”

  “I know it is you. Why are you calling?”

  “I didn’t. Is Sandeep there?”

  “Yes. No.” He heard her switch ears, then the momentary stilling of the wind. “He’s in the hospital,” she said in a lower tone.

  “Hospital?” he whispered.

  “The paralysis, but it’s over. He’s getting out soon. He’s recovering. They don’t know why these episodes keep happening. Do you know why they keep happening to him?”

  “How would I know?” he said.

  “Well, I know you don’t know. I’m thinking out loud.”

  “People expect me to know everything.”

  “You are, as usual, no help.”

  The dog sat down and put its head on its paws.

  Elizabeth explained: paralysis again, six weeks in the hospital but getting better.

  Van Raye began to formulate a plan in his mind. He would suggest Ruth carry on with her decision, and he would slip away and stay with Elizabeth, hopefully somewhere on the West Coast because he couldn’t afford to fly. But Ruth had the radio, and the gain amplifier, and the car.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “The roof,” she said. “Sorry about the noise. Is that better? I have to find somewhere to play when it’s this late.”

  “You’re playing your violin, aren’t you?” Van Raye scooted his foot over until it barely touched the dog’s leg. “I love your music,” he said in a whisper. “I always have. What city are you in?”

  “You never said you liked my music.”

  “Sure I have. We used to play for hours together. I can see you playing in my mind. You were playing Bach, weren’t you? You are in a long coat. You are wearing a scarf and you are beautiful.”

  “I have on a coat because it’s forty degrees in Atlanta. I can imagine you too, and let me guess, you’re in a bathrobe and there’s a woman within fifty feet and an empty bottle.”

  “Elizabeth, you and I have a connection. We have a progeny together.”

  “This isn’t a sharing arrangement.”

  “Jesus, I know that.”

  There was the silence of the open line until she said, “Do you still play your horn?”

  “My horn?” He crossed his ankles and pulled the robe over his knee. “It’s been a long time. I do need to start again. It’ll be a lot like starting over.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” she said. “It won’t be like learning the first time.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a beginning,” he said. “Beginnings are good. I remember it being quite fun to be getting to know the instrument, and you too. I can see you now, on the roof of some hotel, playing under the stars. I would very much like to be there with you.”

  “You were right about the Bach,” she said, “the Presto from Sonata No. 1.”

  “That was what I was hearing in my mind!” he said. Hadn’t I been humming that? What if things worked like that, an old lover on my mind, her passionately playing Sonata No. 1? He sat up on the bench, startling the dog. “I will come see you.” He tried to think of a way to ask for money.

  “Charles, why did you call?”

  “Me?” he said, thinking about the phone ringing here in his house. “The strangest thing happened,” he began.

  “What?” she said.

  He shook his head and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “Did you call me?” he said to her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind,” he said. “Somehow we are having this conversation.”

  “Charles, may I tell you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “A lot has gone on. My life is changing. I need to start planning on slowing down. Whatever I’ve been planning . . . I have to say that you . . .”

  “Are you saying you and I?” Charles asked.

  “Is that outrageous?” Now the wind blew over the phone and covered one word she was saying. He imagined her looking up at the sky.

  “Elizabeth, I have found what I was looking for.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’ve still got important work to do. I need somewhere to do it. Elizabeth . . .” he whispered. “Are you crying?”

  “No.”

  The dog stretched on his front legs. Van Raye could smell its panting breath and he had a flash memory of being a boy with a dog. He pushed its muzzle away.

  “I’ve been through a lot!” she said. “I’m fine. I’m babbling. I’m going to retire. Sandeep will have a head start, and he’ll be much happier and healthy without me. He’s completely capable of doing this on his own. His health is related to his happiness. Do you want to come visit?”

  “I haven’t felt like this in years,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He glanced down the wide hallway to his shut bedroom door. He tapped his knuckle on the wall as if trying to locate a stud, trying to figure out a way to ask her for money. Instead he said, “Did you hear that I have a new book out too?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Why don’t you call him?”

  Someone with money? he thought. “Who?” he said.

  “Sandeep.”

  “I absolutely will,” he said. “Did you say that you read my new book?”

  “Yes, Charles, we’ve all read it.”

  “Sandeep has?”

  “Of course.”

  “Elizabeth, are you okay? I won’t hang up this phone until I know you are okay.”

  “I am fine. I don’t even know why you ask if I’m okay. We are staying at the Grand Aerodrome . . .”

  He shut the bedroom door before the dog could come inside.

  Ruth smoked a new cigarette staring out the window, flicking ashes directly on his floor and letting them blow inside on the breeze.

  “Something has come up,” he started.

  “Yes, it has.” She threw her phone to the foot of the bed. “Read that.”

  He picked it up. It was in the middle of a Times article, and he went backward to read the headline, CREW DEAD.

  “What?” he said. “This isn’t real.”

  “There was a fire in the forward bay,” she said. “What’s not real about six dead, no survivors?”

  He scrolled down the article where it mentioned that Ruth Christmas had been the seventh crewmember but had made an emergency return to Earth in January because of “acute appendicitis.”

  Cold night air flowed through the open French doors.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “This is impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible. They’re all dead. That’s a fact.” The muscles in her cheeks flexed as if to form a smile, but her mouth pulled straight. “So how would you feel if your dog problem just went away?”

  “I don’t have a dog problem,” he mumbled, but then he understood what she was getting at. “The father?” he asked her.

  “What about him?”

  Van Raye didn’t speak.

  She said, “Yes, he’s dead. He didn’t know about . . . you know, this.” She pointed to her belly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Trust me, there are worse things than death.”

  “They were all your friends.”

  She tilted her head back and blew smoke. “Asphyxiation isn’t a bad way to go. Burning alive would be bad. That place
was an accident waiting to happen. Now it’s an orbiting mausoleum, a big charred mausoleum. I’m sure people are going to make a big fucking deal out of that, a perpetually orbiting crypt. Isn’t that a kick?”

  “Ruth, do you have someone you should call?”

  “Why?” she said.

  “I don’t know. They’ll be coming after you. You’ll want to attend services. They’ll want you . . . You’ll want to go, right?”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Certainly not, but I just thought . . . I don’t know what I can do. I’m not good at these things.”

  “What do you have to be good at?” Ruth said, and she put her hand on her belly. “The weird part about this is that when I saw the news, I realized I’d had a premonition about this.”

  “There are no premonitions,” he said.

  “Shut up. I know that.”

  “Let me ask you this, and I don’t mean to be insensitive, but how are we going to get the software for the booster?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Do you know anyone who can, you know, get it?” he asked.

  “Sure. And guess what? They’re all dead.”

  “We’ll get it, somehow, though, right?” he said. “Is the station’s antenna still tracking on the planet?”

  She went and turned the Trans-Oceanic radio on.

  Please, please, he thought.

  He worked the knob and the hum and clicks of Chava Norma tuned in strong. These sounds began three thousand light-years away, traveled to space spreading out and losing energy, but a tiny bit arrived at the space station, was gain-boosted there and rebroadcast over the earth.

  He watched Ruth crawl back in bed on all fours, roll over, and put her hand on her belly. She held her breath.

  He clicked the radio off.

  “You’re hearing it now?” he whispered, using his eyes to indicate her belly.

  She put the other hand on her stomach. “You can’t hear that? It’s as clear as day to me. Music.”

  “Is it a song?”

  “It’s just . . . like music-box music,” she said.

  He waited for her to tell him to come over and listen to her stomach. She waited for him to say he wanted to listen. Neither happened.