Russ Franklin - Cosmic Hotel

She began, “Proper planning and practice prevents—”

“ Piss-poor performance. I know, I know.” These were Elizabeth’s seven Ps.

“I have to contact Walter Simpson and Chicago.” She took a breath and at the same time casually handed me a business card. “This is the address,” she said. “Send our things along.”

She turned and went away, and as she did, she looked up into the reflection of the lobby in the black marble ceiling.

Then I glanced at the address she’d written on the back of her card. In her nice, neat script was “Grand Aerodrome” and an address in Atlanta. Atlanta? I hated Atlanta. It was almost as useless as Orlando.

A bellhop said, “Hello, Sanghavi?”

“Hello, Henry,” I said.

The other bellhops stood around the podium at the front doors suspiciously watching Henry talking to me. I smelled some kind of humiliation coming, but Henry only held out a magazine in a plastic mailing wrapper. The familiar label had three hotel addresses marked out until it had finally caught up to me here.

I took it and thanked Henry with a twenty. I also believed that tipping was the cheapest, best investment in life.

Henry said, “And there’s a phone call for you.”

I touched my phone beneath my jacket.

He shocked me by lifting his hand and pointing.

“Please don’t point, Henry. Escort, always escort the guest,” I said, but here was Henry holding his hand higher than his shoulder, cuffs riding on his wrist.

“In there. Long distance,” he said.

I understood he meant the business suite. Only one person in my life called me on regular phones. I walked swiftly without breaking into a run, knowing if I didn’t hurry my father would grow impatient and hang up.

The business suite’s hallway was lined with frosted-glass conference rooms on both sides, most vacant, like zoo exhibits whose inhabitants had been set free. The only light came from conference 004B where I peeked around the corner and saw the department heads anticipating our final meeting and the severance envelopes in my pocket.

Directly across from the managers’ meeting was a glass room labeled BUSINESS CENTER where the old phone rooms were. I went inside the business center to the receiver off the hook in CUBE 1.

I said, “Hello, Charles.”

“ Sandeep! ” he said. “ It’s Charles! ”

“Who else would it be?” I tried not to sound excited. “You should call my phone, you know.” I put the magazine on the table and glanced through the glass at the department heads across the hallway.

“Lost that number, I’m afraid,” he said. “I had to track you down.” The long-distance connection clicked and my father’s voice surfed along with the static.

“You’re the genius,” I said, “so remember my number.” I kept the phone in the crook of my shoulder, and I tore into the magazine’s plastic wrapper.

The last time I’d heard from Charles was months ago, a letter. He always began his letters, “Dear Sandeep, my son,” as if he needed to point out to some other reader who I was, and I was suspicious that he had read too many books that were The Collected Letters of So-and-So and fantasized about his letters being collected.

The reception on the phone faded and came back as he offered empty apologizes.

“Let me call you back,” I said, “this is a bad time for me.”

“ No ,” he said, “I’m traveling.”

I saw Elizabeth stop in front of the other room and look in at the department heads. The shock of not seeing me there registered in her body language as a slight weight change to her heels.

“Charles,” I whispered, “I have to call you back.”

Elizabeth glanced down the hallway, then at her cell phone to see if she’d missed a message from me. When she went inside the conference room, she tried to smile, and Sylvia Iseman, head of maintenance, circled back to her chair and everyone sat leaning forward. Elizabeth would be opening with a neutral statement.

“Charles, I need to go,” I said, “Where can I reach you?”

“I’m at a conference in southern India!”

“ India? ” I said slouching in the chair and throwing my head back. My father was a pain in the ass. He lived in this big house in Palo Alto, had hosted a popular PBS science show years ago, and was once famous, as famous as an astronomer could be. Now I wanted to know what India was like, but I said, “But I have to go now!”

Elizabeth continued talking, her gold hair clip sparkling. Carlos Sinclair leaned back in his chair and shook his head.

“I’m still a pretty big deal here,” Charles said over the phone, “they treat me very well. Listen, I’m between funding at the moment, but I’ve got a new book coming out and other things going on.”

I noticed a notepad beside the phone with the Windmere logo. Someone had written “Geneva 1000x.” I took my pen out to write the amount of money Charles would want so I could hang up and join Elizabeth in the meeting.

“Charles!” I interrupted him, standing up and stretching the cord. “You’ll have to call me back. Let me have a contact number, I’ll call you back.”

“Sandeep! If you don’t want to talk, I’m hanging up now, but I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

“No, don’t hang up.” I sat the envelopes on top of the magazine, each envelope with the first name, middle initial, last name printed on it. My chair tilted and its cushion produced a polite flatulence that smelled like mold. I waved the envelopes over my head trying to get Elizabeth’s attention and listen to Charles Van Raye tell me he needed a “splash of cash.”

“Yes, I know,” I said to him. “How much do you need?”

Sylvia Iseman in the other meeting room saw me waving and pointed. Elizabeth turned in her chair. It took her a second to focus through the layers of glass to see me, her eyes narrowing.

Yes, I am talking on a landline .

“And I’d like to tell you something,” Van Raye said over the phone.

“Okay.”

“It’s very exciting.”

“Okay.”

Van Raye went on about his confidence in me while Elizabeth came through the doors and stood in front of CUBE 1 and looked down at me. She spoke through the glass, “What does he want? Money?”

You would think twenty-five years of being divorced would have distilled the ire.

In the conference room, the managers craned their necks and rose from their chairs to gawk at what was going on.

“Hang up,” she demanded from the outside, “this meeting is of the utmost importance.”

I put the phone to my chest. “I didn’t call him, he called me.” I pushed the glass door and stuck the envelopes out for her to take. “Here.”

“No,” she said. “Hang up. We have a plan.”

I tried to whisper, shaking the envelopes for her to take, “I know we do. It doesn’t matter. Just get it over with. They’ll hate us and we’ll leave tomorrow and start over.”

“ Are you out of your mind? ” she said.

I stood up, held the envelopes for her to take.

“Sandeep, are you listening?” Charles said. “Is there someone with you? Is it Elizabeth?”

“No,” I said to him and then louder, “ She’s great, thanks for asking! ”

“He didn’t ask about me,” she said and snatched the envelopes and turned to walk back toward the conference room where all the managers quickly sat back down.

I took a deep breath and the chair banged against the wall. “Charles, I’m going to have to go!” I said.

“Don’t!” he said. “I have found something!”

Found something?

“What do you mean?” I asked.