Cosmic Hotel (7 page)

When Ursula called and told me that she was one of the chosen cast members, the pilot in command, Elizabeth and I had to watch. Twenty ordinary Americans had been chosen, the passengers interviewed on morning talk shows before the flight. “What possibility most frightens
you?” “What is more important, the fame or the lifetime pass?” “What is your worst fear?” “Do you get motion sickness easily?”

One news personality pointed out that Flight 000 might do aerobatics, and then an aviation expert was brought on-air and the aerobatic possibilities of the 737 were plotted along with possible airframe stresses (barrel roll was the most realistic). What about depressurization, a nosedive and pulling up at the last second?

A passenger, an elementary school teacher from Duluth, Georgia, said that she had nightmares that they were going to pipe “strong odors” through the ventilation just to see how passengers would react to five hours of torture. Others speculated on a simulated hijacking. Torture was a big part of the forecasts. What was the airline testing?

Shenandoah said that the captain and copilot would have the same information as the passengers. Ursula was selected because of her experience in the 737 and because you looked at Ursula in her uniform and immediately wanted to know everything about her, including if she was married. At first she told me she was doing it for the small bundle of money the network was paying the flight crew as well as the lifetime pass, but then on a late-night phone call before Flight 000, she told me that the real reason she was doing it was that she would die if she didn't know what had happened on the flight. “I have to know, Sandy. I couldn't stand around and see these people who knew and I didn't. I have to know what happened. I have dreams at night that the flight takes off without me and I'll never know.”

“But you'll tell me, right?”

“Fuck off.”

Elizabeth watched a few episodes of
Flight 000
, and she told me that this program proved that the world was so big they could find crazy people to do anything. Her opinion of the publicity for the airlines was right on: “The strange thing is that you wouldn't think people want mystery and quirkiness with an airline, but there's something about it that will work. Trust me. The world goes through periods of reverse in logic. The world is crazy.”

Ursula didn't sleep for days before the flight, going over every emergency procedure, stealing time on the ground school's 737 simulator (she called it “the stimulator”).

On a national network, the world watched as Flight 000 taxied into position for takeoff at LAX, the spotlights shining on the fuselage and the giant black letters painted on the aluminum body:
FLIGHT
000. It gained speed and lifted off, wheels up, and disappeared into the night just like any other jet. Viewers could go to the network's website and track the aircraft across the country, but that was all we got: the icon of a 737 as big as the state of Delaware flying a curving path across the country.

The kicker was that Ursula made a smooth Kennedy Airport landing at dawn, and the media immediately approached passengers trying to find any clues to what had happened. Passengers looked sleepy but normal, deboarding and waving to the cameras and the crowd, most smiling and shaking their heads, some ducking and avoiding, some giving interviews that said nothing, but there was no comment from anyone about what had occurred during the flight.

Elizabeth predicted the network never expected them to remain silent. The big story was what happened to the people after the flight.

The network had regular updates with Flight 000 participants, showed them walking up to the airline counter and getting issued their ticket, smiling and waving as they disappeared, five minutes later, into the security line, and if the question was sneaked into the conversation, the standard response: “I have a lifetime pass to the world. Everyone depends on me, and I depend on everyone else. I will not comment.”

Amazingly, it took six days for the first person to break from that pat answer. This man was clearly frazzled and was being interviewed in a booth at a bar, a sales representative from Pittsburgh, and he deviated by saying this simple statement: “Maybe nothing at all happened. Maybe everything was normal.” Then more passengers began coming forward, and they all said the same thing—
nothing happened
. The flight had gone completely
normal
, they claimed, cocktails were
served by the two flight attendants, they said, the chimes dinged when they could safely move about the cabin, some even dozed, most stayed awake the entire flight, wondering what was going to happen. The airline remained mute and revoked no passes.

Of course no one believed the passengers and began thinking that this was the new standard statement controlled by the airline. The louder the passengers seemed to want to say, “Nothing happened!” the less people believed them. Ursula had told me, “What do you want from me? I'm not telling you a goddamn thing, neither confirming nor denying. I made an agreement, and I'm sticking to it.”

“Jesus, Sandeep,” she said one night over the phone, “I can tell you without breaking confidentiality that it was the longest, most horrifying five hours of my life. I was terrified from wheels-up until I had a visual on JFK.”

Pushing buttons on my phone to make my way through the maze of the DFW phone system, I finally got a pleasant woman who took my name and number and said she was adding me to a “list,” and before I disconnected, she said, “Have a blessed day.”

A woman at the rooftop party in Phoenix tapped her glass and announced, “Three minutes, please.”

The spectators stepped out of the shade and into the sunshine, the breeze blowing into our faces.

I said to Elizabeth, “I called lost and found.” She stood at the railing. Ursula joined us, still with her shredded red cup in her hand as if it could still hold liquid.

Over the railing, it was a twenty-story drop to the streets below. Yellow lights on security vehicles flashed. “They have my number,” I said to Elizabeth. “I'll keep calling to check.”

Ursula leaned forward to see past me to Elizabeth and took this chance to glance at Elizabeth's cheap white sunglasses. Beneath the plastic lenses, Elizabeth's eyes focused into the distance at the Sun
Resort. Almost everyone else was leaning back, holding their phones out to record the event.

I adjusted my ears into the wind, and then the Klaxons blared through the deserted street below our party like an animal howling in the empty valley, and then as suddenly, silent white flashes burst in the gutted building ten blocks away and then the sound of popping explosions came to us on the roof. Some first-timers yelped and the thundering rose and deeper concussions thrummed my chest. In the distance, the Sun Resort began to sink into a brown blossom.

The building seemed to claw at that vapor, like the old lives lived temporarily there, and I couldn't help but think of Franni from Mount Unpleasant, and a feeling of old lives lived inside one hotel room, and I had a shocking but unrealistic fear that Elizabeth's violin was in the middle of that building, collapsing, never to be found again.

Along the street, the windows in the surrounding healthy buildings wobbled but held the orbs of the Arizona sun, and the Sun Resort disappeared and the cloud rose. Oohs and ahs came through the crowd and then everyone began applauding and there were a few hoots. Elizabeth, her hands straight beside her, said, “They're building a new hotel on that exact same spot.” I waited for it, and she finally said, “What kind of country is this?” and turned and walked away.

Maybe Franni had been right. Surely a person hits a peak of happiness in his life, the happiest point he or she will ever be. I remembered sleeping on the bunk beds in the attic room in Sopchoppy among dozens of cousins and how safe I felt in a room where the freaky air conditioner blew snowflakes, real snowflakes that fell on the dark blanket before disappearing. Elizabeth would tell me that it was only Americans who expect an ever-increasing graph of happiness until the very end.

“Let's split,” I said to Ursula.

CHAPTER 8

I touched the keycard to 720's knob and got the green light, opened the door for Ursula. This hotel room smelled new and wonderful. “If only we could capture this exact scent,” I said to Ursula, who went past me, rolling her pilot's bag.

She looked around. “Queen interior, no view. Y'all are always frugal.”

“Are you calling me cheap?” I said. I loosened my tie, unbuttoned the top two buttons, and pulled the shirt and tie both over my head together.

“Your mama is worth a fortune and she shops at the Dollar Store for sunglasses.”

“She doesn't believe expensive eyewear has a good return value, and what makes you think she's worth a fortune?”

Ursula flipped on the bathroom light and looked inside before she let her pilot bag stand, put her shoulder bag on the dresser and unzipped it and pulled out a wad of clothes.

I checked my phone for messages from DFW while she was in the bathroom changing. In a minute the toilet flushed, and she came out wearing a ragged number 20 jersey and boxer shorts. She put her not-uniform pants and not-uniform shirt neatly on a hanger, sat beside me with her tablet, and noticed the alarm clock on the bedside flashing “12:00.” The hotel was that new.

“Fuck,” she said and grabbed the clock and began setting the correct time.

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing.”

Down to my undershirt and slacks, sock feet, I lifted the hem of her boxers and smiled at the design, a penguin on an iceberg with a palm tree print. “Cute,” I said and then put my palms against my eyes. “I don't want to think about all the problems I have when I walk out that door,” I said.

“Don't be so overdramatic. You're going to have to find her a new violin.”

“A new violin? Just like that? All of you think my life is so easy.”

“What's not easy?”

“I've got to go to Atlanta and close a hotel down. The violin. And I got this other problem, something that happened. I bought this one song last night, ‘Viva Las Vegas,' because we were watching the movie, in Dallas, you know, and I got called to the hotel's public phones, and when I picked up the phone, guess what was playing.”

“‘Viva Las Vegas
.
'”

“Right.”

“You changed all your security settings?” she asked.

“Yeah. Nothing else was wrong, they just made me go to the public phone and listen to the song. It's just weird.” I took a breath and closed my eyes. “I didn't sleep much last night.” Then I told her about drinking cranberry martinis in the bar with Franni from Mount Unpleasant, how they were on their way to get their breasts enhanced. “Have you ever heard of an island you go to for plastic surgery?” I asked.

“No, but I don't for a second think there's
not
an island where people go to have plastic surgery. Are you a tit man?”

“No,” I said, taking a glance at her free chest beneath the stenciled 2 and 0 on her shirt.

“Surprising,” she said, “I could have added that to about a dozen other mother issues you have.”

I wiggled into my pillow to get comfortable. “I don't even think I slept an hour.”

“Congratulations,” she said, “you got laid.”

“I didn't say that.” I closed my eyes.

“At least one of us is getting laid,” she sighed.

“I thought you were dating that other pilot.”

“That little experiment didn't work.”

“God, I thought you were going to tell me you were getting married.”

“Jesus, no. I should be a nun. You know I've always had the fantasy of seeing a nun undress, hearing that heavy cross hit the floor,” she said.

“You all blasphemy yet you are psychotic about Mass and the church. I don't get it.”

“It was a joke. If I get to heaven and find out God doesn't have a sense of humor, I'll kill myself.” She immediately closed her eyes and began whispering, “Hail Mary, full of grace . . . ”

Ursula reached a finger into the leg of her boxers, and I heard the nail scratch through a stubble there and then the pop of an elastic band of her panties beneath the penguins.

“Don't snap your panties at me,” I said. My face was fifteen inches from her shoulder.

She rested her tablet on her chest to see me. “I'm your cousin, and didn't you just get laid?”

I smiled, heartbeat suddenly throbbing.

“Do you remember the time we kissed?” I asked.

“I think I would remember that
if
it had happened.”

“We were in the river, under the dock.”

“That? We were like twelve. Have you been pining away for me ever since?”

“I actually kissed Portia and Holly too.”

“God, you're an oversexed menace.”

“Portia didn't count because we were dared by someone at a church barbecue.”

“Trust me, mine didn't count either,” she said. “I probably felt sorry for you. That's why I kissed you.”

With my finger I reached and touched her forearm, the golden hair there. “We're only
second
cousins,” I said. She'd already gone back to reading her tablet. “Do you know how distant that is?”

She made that this-can't-be-crossing-your-mind huff and said, “You think this would be one of your uncomplicated trysts, and you'd move on to the next hotel and forget about me? No, you would fall so madly in love with me.” She looked at her watch hanging loosely
upside down on her wrist. She wore it like that so that she could see it easier when she was flying.

“More like you wouldn't be able to get over me,” I said.

“I'd be over you before I got to the lobby,” she said. “But you, you'd be driven insane by not being able to have me, your second cousin. You would be institutionalized. I'd come visit you, though, don't worry. I'd observe you through a one-way mirror, you having not showered for days, greasy, rocking back and forth in a chair, chain smoking and mumbling, ‘
Ursula
,
Ursula
,
Ursula
.' A staff member would ask me why I was there, and I would say you were my cousin driven insane by your unrequited love for me. Gothic fucking city,” she said.

I said, “Nobody ever believes it when we say we are cousins. They think it is a joke.”

“You're a little browner than me,” she said.

“You don't have brown knees anymore.” I pointed. “Did you know that?”

“What are you talking about? What's wrong with my knees?”

“Nothing. It was just that when we were kids, the skin on all y'all's knees was brown.”

“What
are
you talking about?”

“I don't know, but the skin on your knees was always browner than mine, all of y'all. Y'all's knees were like Rorschach tests. Sometimes I saw Che Guevara's face, sometimes Jesus.”

She picked her leg up to see her knees. “It's all the kneeling. That's how we all got Jesus knees. I can't explain Che.”

She took the skin over her patella and wiggled it back and forth. Her nails were unpainted and clear, practical and short. In my memory, I could see them plucking a tick from her ankle, pinching it surgically between her fingernails until it popped, her own blood purged from the tiny creature and leaking into her cuticle like a pipette, then Ursula flicking the carcass away.

“You had something to tell me,” I said.

She looked at her watch, yet again, as if to see if it were the right time to talk. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “What's the weirdest thing that's ever happened to you?”

“Hearing ‘Viva Las Vegas' on that phone.”

“Yeah, I get it, but I mean something you can't explain. That was a hacker, one of your former lovers. But have you ever been thinking about a friend you haven't seen in ten years, and suddenly you see them in a restaurant halfway around the world?”

“No.”

“All the hotels you've lived in and you've never thought you heard a voice, anything? Come on, what's the most unexplainable phenomenon that has ever happened to you?”

“Charles called and told me something that blew my mind.”

“
Charles?
” she said. “No, not Charles. I'm talking the opposite of Charles. His whole job is explaining shit. I'm talking about something that astonished you and you have no explanation for.”

“I saw a guy levitate once.”

“Levitate? You mean you thought you saw a guy floating?”

“I saw it in Key West, a guy on Mallory Pier—”

“No, not
magic
bullshit,” she said. “Jesus, Sanghavi, can you follow the bouncing ball here? I'm talking about a fricking
phenomenon
.” She squeezed the bridge of her nose. The thermostat on the wall made a tiny click and then the air conditioning came on. I smelled the air-conditioned air, an odor that hadn't been in my life in a few months.

“I don't like the way this is going,” I said. “Did something happen to you?”

“I want to tell you something about the flight.”

“I know the flight was normal,” I said, “nothing happened. You can take it from there.”

“You're so condescending when you've got everything figured out. I don't give a shit about that. That's not the important part of what happened to me.” She took a breath and let it go. “What if I told you that a couple of hours after we landed, I realized my watch was wrong?” She
absently touched her black rubber timepiece hanging upside down on her wrist. “My watch was behind,” she said. “Two hours behind.”

“I would tell you you screwed your watch up.”

“You know I didn't. Don't think I've gone crazy, okay? I went to that fucking convention that time, and I sat there and made fun of people with you. So I'm saying I should be the most skeptical person in the world.” She patted the number 20 on her chest and said, “I'm you, Sandy, I mean I'm the same as you, I'm not crazy, but I've seen things that make me, I don't know, ask questions.”

“I think you are jerking my chain.” I closed my eyes, felt the sleepiness coming on.

“What if I told you I was driving from a friend's house in Sausalito Tuesday night? I did drive back. I got to the hotel just fine. When I looked at my watch, I had only four hours before my flight. I'd left my friend's house with plenty of time.”

“How much to drink did you have at the friend's house?”

“Shut up. Just listen. I wanted at least eight hours of rack time before flying, but when I looked at my watch, I had to go straight to the airport. It was horrifying. I flew this flight from San Francisco to Seattle, and I was in the left seat with everything routine, but I keep having these flashes of memory. I realize some things, you know. Are you listening?”

“I'm listening.”

“I know that I floated over downtown Sausalito at night. I know I floated over the bay.”

“Flying dreams are very common, Ur.”

I felt her take hold of the sleeve of my T-shirt. “I'm trying to describe something real here. Don't write it off as a dream.”

She continued slowly wadding the sleeve, balling the material in her fist, the collar stretched against my neck.

“Hey, stop, okay?” I said.

When she let go, she pretended to help smooth it back in place.

“What if I told you it's not my only experience?”

“Ur, now you're just freaking me out. This is right off the script of every abductee.”

“
Abductee
. It sounds like I'm a leper. What if they are right?”

“There's so much going on that you don't know about,” I said to her.

“That's exactly what I'm trying to tell
you
,” she said, “if you would have an open mind.”

“This is different, but I can't tell you now. But it's important.” Sleep nibbled at my brain. “I've got to doze off. I'm about to pass out.” I shifted down and put my head on the pillow. “I think your mind just can't handle that nothing actually happened on Triple Zero and it needs something to happen. Listen, whatever you do, don't go blabbing about this. You'll come to your senses eventually. A pilot can't go blabbing about being abducted by aliens.”

“I work for Shenandoah,” she said, “I could announce over the intercom before every flight that I have been abducted by aliens and no one would walk off.”

I tried to let sleep come to me. “Is that really what you're saying? You've been abducted by aliens?”

Her touch on my bare arm made my scalp tingle, and when I opened my eyes her head was on the other pillow, eyes open and looking at me here trying to sleep. “Why do I want you to understand so badly?” she asked.

“Because you love me,” I said.

“True. I didn't ask for it to happen to me.”

“Ur, I got to fall asleep. You're trying to keep me awake to brainwash me, I think.” I hated to lose sight of her with her head so perfect on the pillow, but I lost the battle with my eyes and the curtain began to come down. “Ur?” I said.

“What?”

I cracked my lids so her face was fuzzy. “When it happens to you, what you
think
happens to you, I mean, how does it feel?”

She touched her index finger between my eyes and stroked the skin there to make me blink, my eyes even heavier. “Terrifyingly fantastic,” she said.

“You believe with all your heart it's real?”

“I think I do.”

“How does believing feel?”

“The world has opened up.”

I fell asleep thinking “terrifyingly fantastic.” My cousin beside me was more comfortable than I'd felt in a long time.
Cousin, cousin, cousin
mixed in my dreaming brain to become the word
cushion, cushion, cushion
.