Russ Franklin - Cosmic Hotel

“What is your name, dog?” I whispered. Rally? Rally? Something like Rally, or was “rally” a prayer Dubourg had muttered for the dog?

The vibrations of the pool pump tingled through the concrete and up into my legs, and I stomped it out like fire ants. The bag in Ursula hands crinkled. I remembered, Ursula eats pretzels . She squeezed and the bag popped open. In my memory, I could see her bending and plugging in a vending machine in the empty hotel, feeding it coins. Pretzels are always D7 in every vending machine left in the Grand Aerodrome.

I could feel the exhaustion of our group, palpable as humidity. A debate had been taking place. I remembered that. I had an elated emotion that Van Raye had been deposed. Were we not going to send his message?

Ruth swam through the dark pool with her head above water. Ruth , I thought, Ruth swims at night, and she has no clothes on and the baby is still floating in her belly and it is okay. My mind continued to reboot: The dog is alive, but I hated the alien inside the dog, hated the whole ordeal of what Van Raye had brought on us. Hate? I begin following the breadcrumb trail of emotion back to memory: I hate the thing inside the dog because it’s an alien. Randolph. Randolph is trapped on the microchip inside the dog. I strongly dislike Randolph because?

The dog’s eyebrows fluttered beneath my touch and sent chills along the dome of my head.

From the pocket of my robe hanging on the back of a pool chair, I got my phone because I knew it was the center of our circumstances, had to do with Randolph, not the Randolph of my childhood, but an alien trying to make me feel comfortable and believe in him, so he could travel on to Chava Norma, continuing his journey through the universe. Everyone knew I was right about Randolph.

The clock on my phone said 10:55 PM, almost eleven, which made me happy too, a secret happiness I knew to hold within me. What happens at 11:00?

From the darkness came the familiar sound of the safety cap on a prescription bottle clicking and then the sound of Charles’s mouth opening. The mouth belongs to Charles and the pills are painkillers. I heard him swallow liquid and then a wineglass base tinged against the concrete and then the roar of another jet coming to a halt after hurling itself from the sky.

Why is eleven a happy time? I glanced through the fence to the compound of Gypsy Sky Cargo to our west. That’s why. Shift change at eleven. Elizabeth will be going on duty at Gypsy Sky Cargo. I texted Randolph:

How long have you been trapped in the dog?

I said to the others, sensing where to pick up the argument, “We don’t even know how long he’s been in the dog,” knowing somehow this was Charles’s argument: to postpone the sending of Randolph to Chava Norma, basically, to keep him here. Everyone else wanted to send him on his journey. Ursula and Dubourg’s agreement was that we had no right to keep him. Ruth wanted to send him for the simple reason that she’d changed this whole hotel into an antenna, molded the software, and she simply refused to not see if the thing worked.

“He’s been on the microchip fourteen and a half years,” Dubourg said. “You know that. Are you okay?”

“Absolutely.” Proper planning and practice prevent piss-poor performance.

“We could just wait,” Van Raye said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

Without being able to see him in the dark, his presence was a smacking of lips, slurped saliva, breathing through his mouth, searching for words.

Van Raye continued, “Take the dog. . somewhere else. . to a safe facility to download.” What is wrong with him? There’s something wrong with him that I can’t remember. “We have so much to learn,” he said. “We can’t let that slip through our fingers.” He held his hands up as if testing his fingers in front of his face.

Ursula said, “It is a he . It annoys me when you call him ‘it.’ You haven’t humanized him yet.”

“Human? We don’t even know it has a gender,” Van Raye said.

He, he, he , I said to myself.

The text came in from Randolph asking me:

Are you forgetting again?

I knew to be angry at him, and my fingers typed it out:

Fuck you.

If you are having an episode, please tell the others. We are preparing for tomorrow.

I listened to the dog panting. I put my phone in my robe and shoveled the congealed shit patties and hefted the clumps over the fence where it floated and then clopped on the ground on the Gypsy Sky Cargo side. I gripped the fence’s wire, gazing down the hill over a flat no-man’s land to the Gypsy tarmac sparkling beneath the clusters of spotlights as if it were a world without nighttime. What wouldn’t Elizabeth like about this place that prided itself on such efficiency and order? Aircraft were parked in perfect rows. The spotlight clusters reflected on the top of the fuselages like decorative saddles. Trains of cargo carts snaked around the giants. The compound was far away, but I knew I could recognize Elizabeth’s height and posture anywhere. I come out here to watch Elizabeth at Gypsy, and it is part of an old sorrow for her leaving me. I was on my own. I could do anything I wanted.

I also knew for some reason I didn’t want the others to know I was watching Gypsy Sky. It was my secret. Is everyone angry at her?

“What are you doing?” Dubourg asked me. I heard an antacid roll ripping open.

“Nothing,” I said, letting the fence go, turning away. The tip of his cigarette touched the concrete and went out, and some part of me worried about the black stain on the patio, but then I immediately stopped myself. This hotel will never see another guest. Not worrying was freedom.

I lifted my long hair off the back of my neck to feel the coolness.

“Where’s Butch?” Ursula said.

BUTCH! The word had come to me at the moment she’d said it. “He’s right here,” I said, and I remembered what Ursula said when we’d scanned the microchip and gotten his name off the chip and a metric shit ton of data. “There’s something wonderful about. . ” she said, tears going down her cheeks, “. . about finally knowing a stray dog’s name. When you say his name— Butch, Butch —it’s like a secret password that lets him know that we are okay.”

Dubourg flicked one of those kitchen matches on the pool deck, and the flame leapt to life and he lit another cigarette, and I could momentarily see Butch’s scraggily shape struggling to kneel while his haunches remained in the chariot. He yelped at sharp pain.

“Shit,” I said.

But when his head was on the ground he panted.

Yet another pretzel snapped in Ursula’s teeth, and I felt the sound move through me, and I gripped my wet hair on both sides of my head and squeezed, Stop, stop the snapping! but I knew not to say this out loud. Instead I concentrated on the sound of Ruth moving through the water, and looked to the sky to see the dim star between the two brighter stars that I knew was our star. We come out here every night to watch the path of the star get closer to the aim of the antenna on the roof. I remembered waiting for time to pass and wondering what a future point would feel like when it would finally point at the star, but I also stopped myself from thinking about the future because I didn’t want another answer about the future to come to me, setting off another time bomb from Randolph.

Watching in the distance for Elizabeth at Gypsy Sky Cargo, I tried to access the memory when Randolph had contacted me after the accident. Where had I been? I remembered the inside of the empty restaurant, Dubourg serving us string beans he’d scavenged from the pantry, putting them on buttered toast he’d made.