Russ Franklin - Cosmic Hotel

“I’m just saying,” I said, a statement Elizabeth abhorred, “we can make something happen. This is important.”

“I’m not delaying the process of our business,” Elizabeth said to me as though no one else was in the room.

“Do you want him here?” I asked.

“Me? Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.” She sank in the water up to her chin and began fanning her arms to swim, a strand of her hair trailing in the water.

My phone dinged in my hand.

Tell Ruth I will get her the software.

All the sweat inside my tracksuit suddenly chilled. I concentrated hard on the words. What would it look like if I were hallucinating? I typed a message, concentrated on seeing my letters pop up, and I sent them:

Let me show them this message.

No. I am scared to make contact with too many people.

“Something important is happening,” I said, “okay?” I tapped my cane on the ground to think of words that would convince, and that’s when Ursula burst out crying. She sat forward and put her head in her hands.

“Ur?” Dubourg said.

She took her hands away from her face and shot her index finger at Dubourg. “Stop! I’m fine! Stay away.” Her face was mottled. “It just hit me, okay?” She looked to everyone else. “I know it’s real. Why aren’t y’all crying?” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “Why am I the one crying? I’ve known longer than he has.” She was in the chair beside me, so she hooked a finger in her pocket that was gaping open. She patted her chest and said, “I know you think I’m insane, but I know what happened to me.”

“What is she talking about?” Van Raye said.

“Ursula,” I said, “not now.”

“I know what you are going to say, but I’m an abductee.”

“You’re a what?” Ruth said.

I tugged at Ursula’s pocket to stop her.

“She’s had abduction experiences,” I said.

“Oh God,” Charles mumbled, shaking his head.

Ursula slapped my finger away. “Don’t make it sound like I’m a goddamn leper.”

Dubourg stepped around a lounge chair and Ursula pointed her finger at him again. “Don’t you dare come over here! Just leave me alone. What sucks is that he , he’s right.”

“This has nothing to do with what you think is happening to you,” Van Raye said.

“Shut up,” Ursula said. “ I know what you’ve written about abductions.” She counted off on her fingers that were shaking, “I know what Jung has written, and Kelly and Mathieson.”

“Ruth,” Charles said, “Jesus, what’s going on?”

Ruth peered over the radio as if we were all a distraction to her. “She’s hysterical,” she said. “She’s suffering from some type of stress-related shock. She’s been given a reality her mind can’t handle. .”

“Bite me,” Ursula said. “I’m getting lectured to by a knocked-up astronaut?”

“You, I like,” Ruth said pointing at Ursula. “I have auditory hallucinations myself.”

Van Raye said quickly, “That’s not important right now. You’re not delusional .”

“What are hallucinations,” Ruth said, “besides personalized visions? It’s like listening to your own music through headphones.” She pointed to her ears, once again oversimplifying. “You can hear it but no one else can. We only look crazy when we dance to our own music.”

“Oh God,” Van Raye said. “Everyone is getting distracted from reality.”

“But I have a hacker,” I said, “or whatever, who is telling me stuff that has to be real.” I had my phone against my chest. “I have more information.”

When everyone was quiet, Ruth pulled out a lighter and flicked the flint and lit her cigarette. She fanned the smoke to see me better. She kicked one leg up on the chair, her dirty black sole facing us.

“You think you are seeing a message now?” Van Raye asked.

“The person calls himself Randolph.” I looked at Elizabeth. “I know it’s unbelievable, but it’s real. I don’t know how he knows things, but he does.”

The gas heater diffused the chlorine, the smell of a clean hotel pool, a healthy and good hotel smell I’d sought all my life that was real. Ruth’s smoke drifting out of her corner, that was real. My phone was in my hand, and I looked at the message again. I texted:

How are you going to get the software?

I’ll work on that. But tell her.

“Most people believe what is most comfortable to believe,” Ruth said. She leaned up and turned the knob on the radio, leaving the broadcast. Then a voice clearly preaching said, “ God has given us a choice to believe . . ”

Ruth said, “No, no, really, that’s the noise from the planet.” She tuned to a pattern of dots and dashes, clearly someone’s Morse code. “Nope! Never mind! That’s it!” Then she tuned until a woman’s voice said, “ . . at the tone, one hour, seven minutes, universal time . . ” “No, no, no, this is it.”

“Stop, Ruth,” Van Raye said.

Ruth said, “I still think you should just send the message ‘Hell is real!’ I think everyone on another planet would want to know we all had this in common—‘Hell is real.’ How much data would that be? Beep, blurp, bang, there goes your message.”

“Ruth, darling, stop.”

She ran the dial back and found the original sound.

“What’s the difference in truly believing something and reality?” she said.

“It’s not a good idea for you to be smoking, is it?” Dubourg said.

Ruth sat with one leg propped up and stared at him through her smoke as if he were a new kind of bug she’d found crawling on her arm.

“It’s probably not a good idea for the baby, I mean,” Dubourg said, sipping his energy-drink-spiked coffee. “Obviously you got pregnant on Infinity ,” he said.

“Well, look who is figuring things out,” she said. “Is it outrageous, Father, to think about astronauts fucking?”

“No,” he said calmly. “I took a vow of celibacy in order to take a different journey in life, but I’m not outraged by fucking or discussing it, or the importance it takes in so many lives,” he said. “I’m trying to imagine what you are going through. You lost friends. One of them was the father of this baby.”

“What would you say, Father, if I said I wasn’t even going to have this baby?”

He got out of the pool and grabbed a towel and roughly dried his hair and wrapped it around his waist, went over and took a cigarette from her pack, and right in front of her turned his head and lit it. Dubourg said very calmly, “Hell is real. Maybe the music you are hearing from the womb is God telling you something.”

“You know all about me, so let me make sure I understand your story. You’re a priest who carries a bag around?” she said. “You don’t know what’s in the bag? Yet you’re prepared to dedicate your life to keeping it moving?”

Dubourg said, “That’s what faith is. God has told me to do this.”

“Literally, you heard God talking?” she asked. She looked at Van Raye. “We are at an impasse. Very little of individual realities are overlapping here.”

“The baby might as well be smoking too,” Elizabeth said. “Mothers everywhere frown on you.”

“I’m not a mother,” Ruth said. “What would you do to protect him?”

Everyone looked at me.

“Anything,” Elizabeth said, “absolutely anything.”

“Right,” Ruth said, “I don’t get it. I know your instinct is real, but I just don’t have it. This is one fucked-up quixotic endeavor.” She slammed the laptop shut. She dumped the cigarette in her glass, and she got up.

Elizabeth gently swam toward the other end of the room.