Russ Franklin - Cosmic Hotel

You all have already made this decision. Do you remember?

I could feel the others watching me. My heart pounded. We’d decided to let Butch go and the sadness flooded in.

I know. But if we don’t have to do it, when will he die on his own?

You will only jump to that point in time and it will be too late to make a decision to stop his suffering now.

Then we’ll euthanize, but I just want it to be over, stop the suffering

His suffering will stop tonight as you have decided it would.

After that, he will no longer suffer because he will no longer be capable of storing memory.

When will the dog die? Tell me, answer because I only want it to be over with.

The future-you will not know the difference. You will still have the experience of the death of the dog and it will not shorten the dog’s suffering.

Tell me

It’s of no value to your future self to do so. It’s only valuable to your current self

Tell me and let it be over with

What is the exact time the dog will die!

Ok

And Randolph told me the answer.

As with everything I’ve told you, I have told you the truth. I have a memory of the time from when Randolph told me that answer to when Ursula asked, “Is he gone?” This is what I remember about Butch dying: I see Ursula lying across the bed in our hotel room, arms over her eyes—“Is he gone?” I remember the way her legs hang off the end of the bed. The time was 12:38 AM, the exact time Randolph had told me, but it only seemed like the snap of a pretzel since he gave me the answer. I have all the experiences: I felt Butch’s weight in my arms as we rode the elevator up to that room, the way I had tried to synch my breathing to his breathing to feel who he was. I have the images in my mind: The white paper sack in Ruth’s hands. Dubourg placed a hotel sheet on the bed where I put the still-breathing Butch, the place he always slept, making sure his back legs were not folded uncomfortable beneath him. All of us stood around the bed. Only Butch’s eyes moved, wondering, without lifting his head, what we were doing. From my vantage point at the foot, I wondered this thought: What must we look like to him, the five us wearing our white bathrobes, smelling of pool chlorine and speaking a language he only understands one word of: Butch, Butch, Butch. Did he know there was something alive inside of him?

He was sunken into the middle of the comforter. Only a bedside light illuminated the room. I had my knees against the bed. Dubourg sat beside the dog, rubbing from his eyebrows down his head. Ursula fell backward into the disarray of covers on the other bed, putting her hand across her eyes, that image burning into my brain. Van Raye slouched in an armchair, shoulders hunched, letting his crutches fall to the floor. Ruth sat near the dog’s head, working what she needed out of the white bag beneath the lamp. The betta fish in his tank swam against the glass.

I pushed Dubourg’s valise slightly aside so I could lean over Butch and touch his chest. I felt the rising and falling of breath that was this creature who occupied space, his body forming the crater in the comforter. He was created by his parents, came into this world, created space and stored memories for thirteen years, that’s all there was to us: created space and memories.

Ruth sat sideways on the bed facing away from us, her belly, her Cal T-shirt visible in the gap of her robe. She worked her instruments beneath the light. I watched her profile, eyes downcast as if closed. She turned with the metal syringe in her hand, loaded with a clear vile of liquid. She felt up and down the dog’s front leg. She said the first shot will relax him, and he would feel good. What was feeling good to him? A memory of running in a field? A park? The voice of a person he loved, calling his name — Butch? Butch? Who had loved Butch?

Ruth felt along his leg and put the needle into his fur, her other hand holding his paw. She took it away. Dubourg held Butch’s hair so we could see his eyes.

I could only lean my knees against the bed, not knowing or thinking to look at the clock. I had no awareness to stop Ruth from reloading the syringe with the last solution, nor awareness that the time Randolph had told me was approaching. Maybe none of this happened, maybe Randolph didn’t tell me 12:38, but the needle was real and Butch is not here because Ruth reloaded the syringe and swung away from the light and back to Butch. There was a blue fluid in the vile. When she was done, out of habit, I’m sure, she rubbed the spot the needle had entered, and she said, “Shh, shh.” Butch’s eyes closed, not in a way that he was falling asleep. Butch opened his mouth twice as if to gulp air. There was nothing similar in these two things: sleep and dying. I didn’t understand why anyone ever calls this putting your animal “to sleep.”

The room filled with the smell of urine. Ruth took a handheld scanner out of her gym bag and waved it over the dog.

“Still there?” Van Raye mumbled from the chair.

She looked at the scanner’s screen and switched it off without answering Van Raye, but I could tell that Randolph was still on the microchip inside.

“Is he gone?” Ursula said, not taking her hand away from her eyes. I had the startle reflex as if I’d just fallen in a dream, and the bedside clock said 12:38, and the horror of having time blink by struck me completely unaware. Jesus , I thought, how many more of these leaps are there? But I knew that I had asked for it. Butch was on his side with his legs bent together like he was in mid-gallop.

So what is the difference if Randolph had not given me the answer? Did I somehow cheat? Did I trade the feeling of time passage and gain anything? How many more of these questions had I made Randolph answer? How many of these time bombs are out there in my life? Could I just ask him when I would die? This would be a kind of suicide, but the others around me would not be robbed of my time with them. I shuddered at the thought and helped Dubourg change the sheet beneath Butch, then shroud him with a clean one, something I would think about weeks later when I swaddled a baby.

We left the shrouded body of Butch on the other bed in my room, the place he slept every ordinary night in the Grand Aerodrome. When I asked Ruth if it would be okay to keep him here until the broadcast, she’d only smirked at my not knowing even these small details about life beyond hotels, life beyond life, and she went out with Charles who crutched along stoned on painkillers, his one leg beneath his robe, Dubourg close behind him, patiently watching his foot, ready to catch him if he fell, his other hand carrying the valise, Charles’s prosthesis beneath his arm.

Dubourg turned to Ursula and me before shutting the door, “I’ll come back about five.”

When they were gone, I went to the bathroom and took my afternoon dose of the antidepressant. I glanced at my watch to make sure I had enough time and decided to take a sleeping pill too.

I had on only boxers, climbed in the bed and felt the heat of Ursula without her clothes on. She was on her side facing the wall. She rolled over and reached for me and began kissing my neck below my ear, then on my mouth. Her skin tasted like the saltiness of sorrow.

“Can’t we lay off each other one night?” I said, struggling to slide my boxers down. When she didn’t answer, I added, “This isn’t a happy time. Why are we doing this?” I whispered, still taking her.

She wrapped her legs around me and said, “Whoever said this only goes with happiness?”

I said, “I just had a déjà vu. You’re about to tell me how it’s natural to have the drive to procreate after a tragedy.”