Cosmic Hotel Read Online Free PDF Page B

up. This was six years before her father died of a heart attack.
    â€œWhat happened to his hotels?” I asked her. “I mean, I know they were sold, but the buildings?”
    â€œThey no longer exist—Nashville, Charlottesville, and Tampa were the last ones to go, and there were some minor motor courts, back when motor courts could be nice. We are incredibly fortunate, but compared to where my father was when he was my age . . . we are far from that. But times have changed. The world caught up to us. The old wealthy are the new middle class. Why are we talking about this? I want to enjoy the movie.” She pointed at the television.
    Her Indian name, I’d never heard spoken, nor the names of her father’s hotels. I was sure the facts and figures of her father’s hotels remained in the archives of her mind just like all the others.
    She said, “This economy will not survive forever, and we will be fine. My father was a survivor.”
    â€œI think he did more than just survive,” I said.
    She shifted in the chair, lifted her chin to the television, and said, “Shh,” as though I was the one doing the talking.
    Elvis came through the saloon doors onto a stage and began singing “ Bright light city gonna set my soul, gonna set my soul on fire, got a whole lot of money that’s ready to burn . . .” and it really did make me feel better, and I could tell she was enjoying this too, Elizabeth a classical trained violinist enjoying this music. Can anyone explain why something makes you happy?
    When she wasn’t looking, I turned my phone on and purchased the song “Viva Las Vegas” and started a new playlist, titled it “Songs to Beat Depression.” I had in mind that “Viva Las Vegas” would be the first song of many songs to play no matter what depression surrounded me, like a special drug when I needed it, and I could feel like I did right then with Elizabeth.
    Even before the movie was over, before Lucky and Rusty were married, Elizabeth went to the dining room table and snapped the latches on the case and took out her violin and bow. I couldn’t imagine another night of having to lie in bed and listen to the violin through the wall, or try to sleep with my ears plugged with tornados of toilet tissue.
    â€œThe movie isn’t over,” I said.
    â€œYou’re paying attention to your phone. We have to leave early tomorrow. I have to wind down. We’ve seen it a million times.”
    She tuned and began Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata.”
    â€œIn Atlanta . . .” I said, “I want my own room. I don’t want to share a suite. We’re getting on each other’s nerves. I’m just saying we need a little space.”
    â€œQuit saying ‘I’m just saying . . .’ That’s dead talk.” Her chin rested on the violin as she played softly. “The Grand Aerodrome is 672 rooms. You’ll have your choice. As long as it helps you do your job, and we stay on budget.”
    I watched Elvis and Ann-Margret eating dinner on a houseboat, but the slow second movement of Elizabeth’s violin sonata made the movietragic, and I experimented plugging my ears with my fingers, not caring if she noticed, and my mind began imagining the sounds in the rooms around us, wandering to events I knew had to be going on in this very hotel, events of the traveling lives of ordinary people: the simple click of a door as a guest looked into her room for the first time, and there were the high-low tones of conversations somewhere; water gurgled through pipes in the walls; people walking in hallways, people plopping in chairs, silverware clicking in the restaurant, someone’s empty shoes hitting the floor, and a plopping of a turd in the bowl, a faucet running, one type of snoring became someone else’s, a swizzle stick tapped on the bar top, a man standing beside his bed swung an invisible golf club, the