Russ Franklin - Cosmic Hotel

“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.

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.