Russ Franklin - Cosmic Hotel

In the lounge chair beside the pool, Van Raye grabbed his thigh and shouted, “Why won’t it go away?” He held his palms up to heaven and made fists, “I can feel the wind tickling the hairs! The ultimate irony, people: It hurts like hell and it’s not even there! My toes are curling painfully! For fuck sake, these painkillers are worthless. ” He sat up and raised the stump, tore the swim cap off the end, revealing the puckered brown end. He threw the cap in the pool.

The metal shaft of the “shin” of Van Raye’s prosthesis stuck out of the boot on the ground, brushed aluminum that matched his new aluminum-framed glasses.

Ruth didn’t break her swimming stroke, capturing the swim cap in her hand. She went to the edge of the pool and looked at Charles. She put her arms on the side of the pool and said in a whisper, “One of you, please be his leg. Dubourg?”

Dubourg didn’t respond immediately, but reluctantly rose and went over to Van Raye. He stared down at our father who had his eyes closed, Charles’s chest rising and falling. Dubourg lay flat on the ground beside the chair and scooted beneath Van Raye’s lounge, Dubourg in only boxer shorts. He turned his hips sideways so that he could stick his foot between the plastic straps of the lounge in front of Van Raye’s stump, holding his head off the concrete to see what he was doing.

Van Raye stirred but didn’t open his eyes. Dubourg’s leg was positioned on the lounge as though it were Charles’s leg, left leg in the place of Van Raye’s missing right leg. Dubourg, half beneath the lounge, fiddled with his phone, holding it above his head to type. His text came into me.

I know you just had an episode. U ok?

Launch is tomorrow night

VR thinks it’s two days away

I’m fine. I remember

We knew that if Van Raye knew it was tomorrow, he might sober up and cause trouble. I think Charles fantasized about being in a crowded grand lecture hall. I imagined the alien in a glass beaker, the substance inside glowing magnificent blue. He would be famous famous and the audience would clap for him and his “alien.” Monster movies rarely ended well for the monster. Randolph wasn’t light, he was data; he was sentient, a living being on the microchip inside the dog. “Aren’t we all data?” Ruth had said when she’d made this discovery that day in the attic.

The submarine light in the pool casted a V through the particles, and the surface settled around Ruth as she braced on the pool’s edge watching Dubourg beneath Van Raye. She put the swim cap on her own head, pushed her hair, now grown several inches, beneath it. Dubourg still lay on his back halfway beneath Charles, fingers interlocked on his stomach holding his phone, staring at the sky, the brighter stars that could shine through to the dome of the airport.

I spoke quietly to Dubourg, “You don’t believe it’s God, do you?”

“No,” he whispered.

When Van Raye’s eyes opened, I said to him, “Are you angry with her?”

“Who?” he said.

“Elizabeth,” I said.

“My God, you’re breaking my heart, Sandeep, simply breaking my heart.” Dubourg raised his leg, which simulated hyperextension of Van Raye’s “leg.” “How could I ever be angry at your mother?” Charles said, finally seeing his “leg.”

Why couldn’t he understand that the big toe was on the wrong side?

“How’s your leg?” Ruth asked him.

“I can feel the nice temperature of the night against it,” he said again, keeping his head still, moving only his eyes to the leg. “My toes have uncurled, mercifully.”

“And the pain?” Ruth asked.

“Much, much better,” he slurred.

“Wiggle your toes,” Ruth whispered to him.

Dubourg wiggled his toes, and Van Raye watched the toes wiggle, eyes in the bottom of their sockets like he was seeing a monster awakening and a wicked smile appeared on his face and he closed his eyes again.

“Are they wiggling?” Ruth asked.

“Yes, wonderfully so,” he said. Then he whispered, “Thanks, Dubourg.”

She pushed gently away from the wall, still wearing the swim cap, which accentuated her beautiful face. Van Raye drifted into la-la land. I wondered: In the book he will write about all this, will he refer to me as Sandeep or Sandy?

The dog seemed to be sleeping, bowed down on his front legs, butt in the air. I pushed his fur back on his face. His eyes were closed, but his chest moved. Was this all there was to being alive? I tried to imagine that Being was inside Butch, a being with language and all of the knowledge that he had gained traveling through the galaxy. I asked Ruth, “Are you sure we should send him on? I mean, it’s a matter of waiting. He’ll still be able to go eventually.”

“It’s been decided,” Dubourg said. “He wants to leave.”

“Yes,” Ursula said. “He’s got a right to go.”

I looked at my phone and saw the clock had ticked past eleven.

I didn’t hide the swiftness. I went to the fence, climbed up on the concrete skirting with my bare feet. Through the fence, down the hill was Gypsy Sky Cargo Center where the dozens of jets were lined perfectly under the bright fake daylight of the never-sleeping Gypsy Sky Cargo. Some jets had cargo-bay doors closed, were warming up, engines going, red lights blinking. From this distance, I couldn’t tell which people had dark skin and which had light skin, but I knew Elizabeth wore the earphones that went around her neck, not over her head. Only supervisors wore that kind.

Ursula stepped up on the concrete skirt with me. I looked at her and smiled, but she didn’t smile. She looked at my right eye, then back at my left as if trying to find something. I leaned and sucked on the tip of her bare shoulder, tasted the chlorine and her salt. I wanted to trace the perfect line of her neck with my finger and into the cleavage and that one spot in the center of her that I loved. “I’m hearing Sanctus bells,” I said to her but she turned to search Gypsy Sky.

“Did I say something wrong?” I asked.

“No. What are you looking at?”

I straddled the corner, feet hurting, hands clinging to the wire mesh. “Down there,” I said and pointed to where people conversed in groups, debriefing and briefing. Over the acres of black tarmac, mirages of heat wobbled upward as if the Gypsy Sky Cargo Corporation were casting spells on the sky. Someone could ship the most insignificant package to the smallest village in the world and do it overnight. I could hear Elizabeth in my mind saying, “What kind of world do we live in?” Now she was part of it, shipping those boxes.

Then I realized I’d been staring right at Elizabeth over there. I recognized her head held straight, her crisp movement, her long hair in a ponytail down the back of her yellow reflective vest. She pointed to a cart of cargo and gave people instructions, took an electronic pad from a man. I waved overhead to get her attention, and she saw me, put the clipboard over her eyes to block out the light. She raised her gloved hand and waved.

“That’s her?” Ursula asked.

“Yes.” I gave a hearty overhand salute.

Ursula didn’t wave. It was too late anyway because Elizabeth had turned to get on a tractor to go give other people instructions on what to do.

Ursula dropped from the fence. I heard her feet hitting the ground hard, reminding me of childhood in Sopchoppy, her dropping from a tree.

“I’ll carry him up,” Ursula said and the unhappiness of Butch’s short life with us came upon me.

Butch’s head was down in the grass, one front paw bent as he slept. I texted to Randolph:

When will the dog die?

Giving you the answer will only make you jump there in time.

Is it before or after you are gone?