Cosmic Hotel (18 page)

The motors pulled me along rails into the machine's throat, and over a tiny speaker inches away from my nose, the tech gave me the absurd command to “stay completely still.” There was music to relax me: flute and Tibetan bowl. Air blew down the tiny tunnel, and then the music went off and then the drum roll began and the bass beat—“Viva Las Vegas” cued. It seemed like music from another world, a signal from a friend, and a bit of the euphoria of believing came on me and a drop of my body's own saline leaked from my eye and found its way down my cheek, trickling in my ear. There was one last fantastic thing left, I thought, or was this a dream too?

CHAPTER 24

Van Raye's California book tour was disappointing. After a reading at a legitimate bookstore in San Francisco, he went home with the bookstore's manager who was painting her apartment. He slept with her that night and picked up a hangover and latex paint that dried on his body and itched on the flight to Palm Springs.

In Palm Springs he had been booked to read in a new-age bookstore, and he'd gone home with a woman who'd told him afterward, “This is the best book you've written.”

Later that evening in the tub with the new woman, she sat with her legs draped around his waist and picked the latex paint off his leg with her nail. She wasn't the least curious how he'd gotten paint on strange parts of his body, a non-curiosity that Van Raye took as a sign of low intelligence.

“I have found something,” he whispered to her while leaning back in the tub, rubbing his pubic hair beneath the water, letting the tiny
bubbles tickle up his hand like champagne. He would try his news on a stranger, and he was drinking wine in a bathtub with her. The nice thing about returning to drinking after a sabbatical was that everything—when drinking was added—seemed much more fun.
Drinking in a bathtub, telling someone
you have found something.

She sat against the other side of the tub, and she used the sides of the tub to haul herself close enough to stare into his eyes, oblivious to his statement.

“Do you understand?” he said. “There is life on another planet.”

“I've already seen them,” she whispered but continued pealing latex paint from his leg. The hair ripping out was excruciatingly pleasurable.

She told him that she was a sculptor specializing in statues of aliens. “Anyone who buys one has a visitation,” she said. The chips of latex paint floated in the water and collected around the shoreline of her body.

Van Raye was glad to return to Northern California and the rational world of Ruth Christmas, but he carried in his suitcase a green alien figurine.

He returned to comfortable exile on the second story of his Palo Alto house, staying awake nights with Ruth, tuning the Trans-Oceanic radio to listen to the sound of Chava Norma. Ruth found the ceramic alien statue in his suitcase and pulled it out and held it with both hands, the size of a green cantaloupe with a belly and large black eyes, sitting in lotus, an alien Buddha. “Someone you fucked?” she asked.

He didn't answer, and she put it on the dresser under the lamp.

He woke in the morning and didn't feel her heat next to him and half-consciously searched with his foot, then reached a hand and found nothing but empty bed. By the sloping of the sun, he determined it was past midday and the drapes flapped dots and dashes to wake him. “Where are you?” he said.

He saw her figure rummaging through her bags. She turned to him and said, “You're taking my cigarettes.”

“Why would I take your cigarettes?” He remembered the exact way a pack of cigarettes wadded awkwardly, always forming a non-aerodynamic ball. He'd felt like a kleptomaniac, stealing and throwing them off the balcony into the Dumpster below. Why did he do that?

“I left a pack right here on purpose.” She pointed to the bedside table. “
You
are doing this.”

He sat up on his elbows. He could no longer deny he'd been destroying those cigarettes, so he said, “Why would I care if you smoke?”

A worker shouted from downstairs, “
Professor?
”

“Damn those people,” he said.

“Professor!” the person shouted again. “Someone is here! Professor?
It's someone with your dog!
”

“Shit.”

When he got his robe on and went downstairs, a woman—not the attractive young woman from before, but another—waited on his stoop, holding the dog on a leash. The same K-9 truck was idling in the driveway. “Dr. Van Raye, look who we have. Lucky we found him.”

“I know what you are going to say,” he said, “but that's not my dog.”

Van Raye didn't put up much of a fight. He even took another copy of “How to Welcome Your Dog Back Home.”

The dog followed him to the kitchen and Van Raye took out a Tupperware bowl and filled it with water and put it on the floor.

He had run out of money. They were taking his house away. He had a dog that wasn't his responsibility. But the dog was also registered with the planet's name for his name. Why and why and why?

The dog panted and didn't drink. His eyes shifted around the kitchen but didn't look at Van Raye.

“Suit yourself,” Van Raye said, turning his back and walking out of the kitchen.

He would have to find a way to leave Ruth. Would she be suspicious if he told her he was going on another book tour? Could he somehow retain the gain amplifier and the car?

As soon as he was at the top of the stairs, he heard the dog's paws following him. Van Raye stopped, closed his eyes.
Please just go away
. The phone in the nook in the hallway made a chirp. The red light flickered. This was a new phone system for the B&B. He sat on the recessed bench, and the dog came up the last step and cautiously smelled the floor.

Van Raye picked the phone up, put the receiver to his ear, and muttered hello, but there was a voice, loud and clear, “Welcome to the Grand Aerodrome reservations. To make a reservation dial one . . . ”

A hotel? A hotel calling me? Was Sandeep doing any of this to him?

The dog came and smelled Van Raye's feet.

Van Raye pressed zero, and when the operator answered, he said very slowly, “Is there a Sandeep Sanghavi registered?”

“One moment,” the woman said, “I'll connect you.”

He held the phone out and looked at the receiver and put it back to his ear. When Van Raye wiggled his foot, the dog backed away.

His hand reached to touch the dog as the transfer began ringing. The dog glanced toward the stairs as if it might leave. The line clicked open.

“This is Elizabeth Sanghavi,” she said on the other end.

“
Elizabeth?
”

There was a pause, and she said, “Charles?”

“My God,” he whispered. He looked at the new gray phone, the buttons marked for different lines to call different rooms and a sticker that said 9
FOR OUTSIDE LINE
.

“Did you call me?” he asked.

He heard a sigh on her end. “Are you drunk?” she said. He heard the wind blowing over her receiver.

“No,” he said. “Elizabeth, it's me . . . Elizabeth, is everything okay?”

“I know it is you. Why are you calling?”

“I didn't. Is Sandeep there?”

“Yes. No.” He heard her switch ears, then the momentary stilling of the wind. “He's in the hospital,” she said in a lower tone.

“
Hospital?
” he whispered.

“The paralysis, but it's over. He's getting out soon. He's recovering. They don't know why these episodes keep happening. Do you know why they keep happening to him?”

“How would I know?” he said.

“
Well, I know you don't know
. I'm thinking out loud.”

“People expect me to know everything.”

“You are, as usual, no help.”

The dog sat down and put its head on its paws.

Elizabeth explained: paralysis again, six weeks in the hospital but getting better.

Van Raye began to formulate a plan in his mind. He would suggest Ruth carry on with her decision, and he would slip away and stay with Elizabeth, hopefully somewhere on the West Coast because he couldn't afford to fly. But Ruth had the radio, and the gain amplifier,
and the car
.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“The roof,” she said. “Sorry about the noise. Is that better? I have to find somewhere to play when it's this late.”

“You're playing your violin, aren't you?” Van Raye scooted his foot over until it barely touched the dog's leg. “I love your music,” he said in a whisper. “I always have. What city are you in?”

“You never said you liked my music.”

“Sure I have. We used to play for hours together. I can see you playing in my mind. You were playing Bach, weren't you? You are in a long coat. You are wearing a scarf and you are beautiful.”

“I have on a coat because it's forty degrees in Atlanta. I can imagine you too, and let me guess, you're in a bathrobe and there's a woman within fifty feet and an empty bottle.”

“Elizabeth, you and I have a connection. We have a progeny together.”

“This isn't a sharing arrangement.”

“Jesus, I know that.”

There was the silence of the open line until she said, “Do you still play your horn?”

“My horn?” He crossed his ankles and pulled the robe over his knee. “It's been a long time. I do need to start again. It'll be a lot like starting over.”

“No, it wouldn't,” she said. “It won't be like learning the first time.”

“I wouldn't mind a beginning,” he said. “Beginnings are good. I remember it being quite fun to be getting to know the instrument, and you too. I can see you now, on the roof of some hotel, playing under the stars. I would very much like to be there with you.”

“You were right about the Bach,” she said, “the Presto from Sonata No. 1.”

“That was what I was hearing in my mind!” he said.
Hadn't I been humming that? What if things worked like that, an old lover on my mind, her passionately playing Sonata No. 1?
He sat up on the bench, startling the dog. “I will come see you.” He tried to think of a way to ask for money.

“Charles, why did you call?”

“Me?” he said, thinking about the phone ringing here in his house. “The strangest thing happened,” he began.

“What?” she said.

He shook his head and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “Did you call me?” he said to her.

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind,” he said. “Somehow we
are
having this conversation.”

“Charles, may I tell you something?”

“Anything.”

“A lot has gone on. My life is changing. I need to start planning on slowing down. Whatever I've been planning . . . I have to say that you . . .”

“Are you saying you and I?” Charles asked.

“Is that outrageous?” Now the wind blew over the phone and covered one word she was saying. He imagined her looking up at the sky.

“Elizabeth, I have found what I was looking for.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I've still got important work to do. I need somewhere to do it. Elizabeth . . .” he whispered. “Are you crying?”

“No.”

The dog stretched on his front legs. Van Raye could smell its panting breath and he had a flash memory of being a boy with a dog. He pushed its muzzle away.

“I've been through a lot!” she said. “I'm fine. I'm babbling. I'm going to retire. Sandeep will have a head start, and he'll be much happier and healthy without me. He's completely capable of doing this on his own. His health is related to his happiness. Do you want to come visit?”