Free Cosmic Hotel by Russ Franklin Page B

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.”
    â€œJesus, 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 SunResort. 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.
    â€œLet’s split,” I said to Ursula.

CHAPTER 8
    I touched the keycard to 720’s knob and got the green light, opened the