Cosmic Hotel by Russ Franklin

enjoying Karen Carpenter’s life?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s a good book. Her brother was a music prodigy. She was a very hard worker.”
    â€œShe died from anorexia?”
    â€œYes. She started dieting at sixteen and that was the beginning of her decline. She started a diet called ‘The Doctor’s Quick Weight Loss Diet.’ This was under doctor’s supervision. Isn’t that amazing? One of the main parts of the diet was drinking eight glasses of water a day. Can you imagine that? This is what doctors believed back then. What are we doing these days, under doctor’s orders , that people in the future will think insane?”
    I knew this was a mini lecture, but I relaxed just being in an airport with my mother. Honestly, I loved waiting in airports. We could do nothing but waste time. There was no business, no duties to perform, no people to meet. Whatever she was reading, when we were in the Airport Zone, it seemed interesting. I opened my eyes to listen to her.
    As she talked I watched her. She was dressed in a nice pants suit, only her glasses were disturbingly cheap with gaudy, fake stones on the front, dried glue beneath the plastic gems. She didn’t believe in the return value of expensive eyeglasses.
    Leaning an elbow on my bag, I began re-inspecting the back of my eyelids as she told me snippets of Karen Carpenter’s life, me trying not to think about Franni, the phone call, someone playing Elvis to harass me, Van Raye telling me we aren’t alone in the universe—everything like a dream. I had gone through all my secure websites and changed the password I’d had forever (“bettafish14”) to a new password, “geneva1000x.” After you change your old password, you feel like you’ve left an old life behind.
    I interrupted Elizabeth, “Where’s Randolph been?”
    She searched her mind, and I saw her memory catch but she cracked no emotion and played dumb. Did her face really blush? “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
    When I was a kid, she would turn into “Randolph” when we got bored waiting in airports or waiting for meetings when no one else was around. When this possession took over her body, she changed her voice to this kind of fay Transylvanian accent and claimed he, this personRandolph, had possessed her, checking our world out. It was so unlike her to do Randolph; I couldn’t even imagine her doing it back then, certainly couldn’t imagine her doing it now, but I wanted some acknowledgment that this had been part of our lives. It was Elizabeth’s magic.
    Randolph always acted surprised to find himself in Elizabeth’s body, announcing, “Randolph is here! Randolph, never Randy!” coming to her when we were on the concourse level of terminal 4 at JFK. He would say, “This is one of those ports for aircraft! Which one is this?” It was a good performance. I could barely see hints of Elizabeth’s personality coming through, the dry analysis of things around her, filtered through the mind of someone supposedly not from this world. After quizzing me about Earth, about America and this world, never a word about hotels, Randolph would announce his departure, “Until next time, Number 1.” (He called me, for no known reason, “Number 1.”) When he left, Elizabeth’s face would change back to normal, staring at the familiar airport, and I would say, “Elizabeth?” and she would always respond in her own voice restored, “What? What’s the matter with you?”
    There had been a period of time when I’d begged Elizabeth to fess up that she was Randolph, but she never broke or gave the act up, Randolph coming into her body when I least expected. When she was bored with driving the rental car through the desert, she would suddenly announce in the accent, “ What is this I’m doing? ” staring at the steering wheel. “