Russ Franklin - Cosmic Hotel

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.”