Russ Franklin - Cosmic Hotel

“You can’t inform me that she would be here?” Elizabeth said from behind me.

“I didn’t know she was here,” I said.

“She has developed a bad habit. . ” Elizabeth was saying, but I found I could move.

“That was a classic face,” Ursula said, showing me the picture on her phone. I hugged her, feeling the crush of the aviator sunglasses hanging on her shirt’s pocket. She swallowed awkwardly against my ear but didn’t lift her arms to hug me back. “Jesus, don’t crush me.”

When I let go, she caught the sunglasses before they fell. “The look on your face when you saw me. . ” she said, shaking her head, and she wobbled.

I said, “You okay?”

Her dark red hair was pulled back. Her necktie was in the airline’s required ugly double-Windsor knot. A pin held the black tie down, the tie’s tip flapping, and I tugged the end. “Stop,” she said, batting my hand away, repositioning the black zeppelin tiepin.

She blinked at me, then inspected the liquid in the bottom of her plastic cup. “I came to see you, dumbass. It’s about time y’all got here.”

“Good to see you, darling,” Elizabeth said behind me.

“Yes, you seemed overwhelmed with joy,” Ursula said. She leaned to return Elizabeth’s kiss on the cheek.

“I am. You know that I always am. But surprises are awkward.” Elizabeth touched her own elbows, but said, “You look tired. You must have been flying.”

Ursula stuck her glasses on her nose. I saw by the way her head bobbed that she was tipsy.

Elizabeth made a big obvious sigh, but Hal Beauvais from Resort Life in Charlotte came over to speak to her.

“How do you know we were going to be here?” I asked Ursula.

“Educated guess. And Dubourg told me.” She indicated the party, the sky toward the old Sun Resort building in the distance that was gutted and hollow, no windows, the whole place ready to be destroyed.

The copper-colored hairs on her arms changed blond when sunlight found them. Her rubber watch dangled loosely on her wrist.

“I’m on standby,” she shrugged, “and I kind of wandered over here.” She let her head roll to port, and I could tell even behind her glasses that her eyes were shut as if she’d fallen asleep, and suddenly I had this image of her and the other cousins hopping around on one foot, heads tilted to get water out of their ears after swimming in the springs back home in Wakulla County. She opened her eyes behind the glasses. “I’ve always wanted to see one of these things.” She pointed her cup to the tops of buildings around us.

Some young guy stepped to her, his hair too long to be anything but an intern, collar too big for his neck, and he apologized and held a pen out to her with a New Sun Hotel napkin and said something to her. She handed me her cup and indicated for me to spin around. She put the napkin on my back, and I felt her swishing her signature as I watched half the party watching Ursula Dunbar using my back as a desk, Elizabeth eyeing me with disappointment. I’d heard Elizabeth’s diatribe about the unreality of reality shows, but she’d always ended it with a whistle of appreciation at the amount of money she thought Ursula must have made from Flight 000 . I happened to know it wasn’t much money.

I saw at the bottom of Ursula’s cup dregs of brown liquor.

Ursula finished letting the guy’s friend take a picture of them together.

I took Ursula by the arm to a corner of the roof. “Tell me you aren’t on standby. What are you drinking?”

“Did I say I was on standby? I’m not. Eight hours from bottle to throttle. Always. Sacred. I keep up with it down to the second.”

“You’re drinking in uniform.”

“I’m not in uniform, asshole. These are my personal clothes. Do you see any insignia?”

She looked over the roof’s edge and studied the gutted hotel building at the end of the long, deserted street beyond the barricades where official vehicles were parked with yellow flashing lights. The old hotel building faced us like an empty beehive, and by a trick of the eye, appeared to be already listing.

“It’s a plain red cup,” she said.

“People recognize you, Ur. They know you’re a pilot, that pilot, any pilot.”

She tried to look at herself. “This is all the clothes I have, thank you. Some people don’t have a wardrobe. This is comfortable.”

I started to tell her that if you ever defend what you are wearing with “it’s comfortable,” then you are wearing the wrong thing, but I stopped myself. “How did you even get up here?”

“I told security I was with y’all,” she said. “The uniform helps,” she fiddled with her tie clip, the black zeppelin on it. “And my charm,” she said.

“Dubourg knew you were going to be here, didn’t he?”

“I guess. He thinks I’ve flipped out or something. I’m trying to keep away from the network. They want the follow-up interviews, you know. I don’t want to do them.”

She’d gained some weight, but she still had the Dunbar good looks. It was hard to believe the two of us shared a common great-grandfather and great-grandmother. Over by the banquet table I saw her suitcase standing straight up, her coat and captain’s cap resting on the extended handle like an empty scarecrow, her pilot self. “Your mother hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” I said. “It’s actually quite the opposite. But she thinks I’ll end up in some pub with you or sprawled on the hood of your rental car at the end of the runway watching the belly of jets.”

“HA! And you had fun.”

“Yeah, and I’m glad you’re here, but I really have to work, and I can’t upset her anymore. You have to give me a heads-up when you are going to show up.”

“And miss that priceless face you made?” She raised her eyebrows. “And if I’d called you, you would have told me some bullshit about working and blown me off.” She put a hand on the red railing that went all the way around the roof of this new hotel. “Don’t resist, you know you’re going to ditch this. .” Ursula’s glasses reflected the sky.

“I can’t,” I said. “I’m on probation and walking a thin line already, trust me.”

This hotel we were on, the New Sun Hotel, was perfect, even the painted concrete of this deck was spotless, and the rails glistened with red glossy paint that still looked wet.

“There’s a lot going on,” I said. “I lost her violin.”

“Her violin?” She turned up the last sip from her cup, tapping the bottom with a finger.

“Yes, her violin. I lost it in Dallas. Do you have any connections at DFW?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Doesn’t she have another one?”

“ No ,” I said, “this was her violin since she was a kid.”

“ Elizabeth was once a child?” Ursula said. “I thought she came into the world exactly like that.” She pointed to Elizabeth talking in a group.

“I should go mingle,” I said but didn’t move, and she said nothing because she knew I wasn’t going to move. I felt the wonderful shape of a triangle diazepam pill in the secret corner of my pocket. I slipped it in my mouth and when Ursula saw me, she said, “I just noticed. . you’re a wreck.” She pushed her glasses up on her forehead where they stuck. “What’s the matter with you?” I could see in her brown eyes the specks of black decorating her irises.

“ I lost her violin! ”

“Oh,” she said. “Buy another one. What’s the problem?” She wiggled her watch to see the time. “Du is in Seattle by now.”

“He told me you were in Salt Lake City.”

“He told me to come see you. I can get anywhere on a moment’s notice, remember. Call and I’ll be there. God, why can’t the three of us have more junctions?”