Russ Franklin - Cosmic Hotel

“Do his leg,” Ruth said to Dubourg.

Dubourg looked over at the radio as if just discovering Ruth there. He started to get up, but I stopped him. “I’ll do it,” I said, making myself not look at the living Buddha.

I was able to squeeze beneath Charles’s chair, took off my shoe, rolled up my track pants, and carefully put my darker right leg in the place of his right leg, positioning it through the plastic slats. I waited beneath him, the back of my father inches away from my face. I looked out and saw Ursula resting her head sideways on the arm of her chair, her eyes red from crying and staring at me on the ground.

“Sandeep,” Van Raye whispered. His hand found my arm and squeezed it. “You understand me. Stop them. Stop them so all this isn’t a useless endeavor. You are the only person in the world who understands me, always have been. You and Elizabeth.”

I wiggled my foot to get his attention, and turned my head to see the alien Buddha. The Buddha continued smacking his lips as though he were looking for a teat, eyes big and embryotic, pre-birth. The 3-D Earth on Ruth’s computer spun slowly, dots of satellites like bees swarming it. Ursula’s head sat sideways on the arm of the chair watching me.

My phone dinged, but I thumbed it to voice, the same generic voice of millions of phones, but it was Randolph:

You have to see the object for what it is.

I can’t , I thought, I can’t . Ruth tested the connection of the heavy pads on top of Butch’s body. The clock counted down.

“YOU ASSES, YOU FOOLS!” Van Raye shouted. I felt the prosthesis being snatched up from beside my head, and he threw it across the room. The leg clattered to the floor halfway to Ruth.

I heard Dubourg’s whispered prayer, “ Jesus, Mary, I love you, save souls. . Jesus, Mary, I love you, save souls . . ” and the radio played the planet’s noise, slaloming in and out of high and low humming, as mesmerizing as a didgeridoo.

“ Ask it questions ,” Van Raye said, “someone. We’re blowing an opportunity, the biggest in the history of the world.”

I closed my eyes and repeated my Elizabeth prayer: Proper planning and practice prevent piss-poor performance, and opened them and saw that the Buddha was gone. Instead, on the end of the table, sat a simple white vase, and even the taste in my mouth changed. I knew what was in the vase.

Randolph spoke through my phone:

Are you ready?

Are you leaving?

“I can see my leg,” Van Raye mumbled above me.

Do you understand what you are seeing?

“I feel it,” Van Raye said, “it’s right there. I can wiggle my toes.”

I wiggled my toes for him. Ursula watched me, her head sideways on the arm of the chair. She was worn out. “I’m sorry,” I said to her. How many times had she had to tell me my mother was dead?

“She’s not here, is she?” I whispered.

Ursula closed her eyes and held them closed against the pain of having to tell me once again that Elizabeth was gone.

“But I see her at Gypsy.”

She almost imperceptibly shook her head.

“Those are my toes,” Charles said above me. I felt the vibrations of his chest as he spoke.

The vase on the table. It was Elizabeth’s ashes. I had simply forgotten where I’d stored this information and the sadness came back on me again. I was living in a world without my mother.

Water from Ursula’s eyes dripped onto the floor, the nice reliable pull of gravity, Butch’s leash wrapped tightly around her hand, her fingers turning blue.

Dubourg was in a trance, bobbing before the radio and mumbling, “May the most bold, most sacred, most adorable, most mysterious and unutterable name of God. .”

It’s almost time. Please send me.

Would you like to listen to Elvis?

Ruth said, “What the fuck? What is this?” The tip of her finger bruised pixels on the screen. “It’s asking for a password, a goddamn password ,” and Dubourg prayed, “. . in heaven, on earth and under the earth. . ” and Van Raye said, “I feel tingling in my leg.”

“You feel what?” I said to him.

“Tingling, it’s tingling. It’s terrible.”

“A password ?” Ruth asked, typing frantically.

He can feel my leg? Could I feel tingling in my leg? Was I going to get sick again?

“If Randolph wasn’t here,” I said to Ursula, “then Elizabeth would be alive.”

Ursula looked frozen to the chair.

Elvis makes you feel better?

“Go fuck yourself,” I said, not caring if he heard it or not.

Elvis always makes you feel better.

I closed my eyes. “My mother loved Elvis movies.”

“Ask it about the other planets. . other worlds,” Van Raye said above me.

I ignored him.

My journey will be longer because I have your mother to think about and you. You are the only other being I’ve spoken to.

I’m sorry to have gotten involved.

This journey will be long. But send me.

I wiggled my toes.

“Password?” Ruth muttered. “ What password? ” I heard her typing and pounding the “Return” key. “Fuck me. This isn’t right. What fucking password?”

“Try ‘Geneva,’” I started.

Her chair squeaked as she leaned backward. “ Geneva? ”

“Stop, not yet!” Ursula sat up. Through tears, she said, “Will Ruth’s baby be okay? Ask him! Ask him!”

My phone chimed and the message came:

If I answer, you will only jump there in time.

“Do you want to know the answer?” I said to Ursula. “There are consequences.”

“Yes,” she said, crying.

The clock said six seconds.

I said to Ruth, “It’s Geneva 1000x. Geneva 1000x.”

“Geneva 1000x? As in x-ray? Hold on,” Ruth said, “here goes.”

“We want to know the answer,” I said to Randolph, and then I whispered, “I forgive you.”

I clearly heard Ruth hitting the “Return” key, like a pretzel snapping, like a bone breaking, like someone’s life going away forever. The second Ruth hit the key, the sound over the Trans-Oceanic stopped, and there was nothing but gentle static, and silence in the attic until my phone dinged, and I looked at the answer to Ursula’s question— will the baby be okay?

The first time I become aware that the baby is okay, that he is truly safe, he is in Dubourg’s arms, but he is not a baby anymore, and Dubourg is carrying him with his hand around the boy’s chest and through his legs, carrying the boy flat as if he is flying over the yard as Dubourg runs, and I have the sudden falling feeling that comes even through my paralysis, and I realize another time bomb has gone off in my life and I’ve leapt forward.

I am paralyzed in the reclining chair in the Desert Motor Court’s yard. The desert sun has set beyond the faraway cobalt-blue mountains, and this is when the single specks of satellites move through the sky and lend perspective to how far away the stars are.

Feeling safe took a long time, and I remember the stages of the boy being a baby, especially the gelatin stage that was the most worrisome to me. The boy is twenty-two months now and healthy, though not much of a talker. As Dubourg carries him through the little stone yard behind the Desert Motor Court, the boy tries to aim a flashlight at bushes, but Dubourg pretends to almost drop him, purposefully bouncing him so the beam of the flashlight he holds can’t focus on the thing they search for: the mole .

The mole is really just a black sock stuffed with other socks and tied to the end of thirty-pound test line, which has been pre-strung through the yard by Ursula. I am paralyzed in my reclining chair for the third time in two years, and I have begun to think of it as timeouts, the opposite of time bombs, when life stands still and I can observe it.