For a second I thought my phone was vibrating in my hand, but realized my fingers were tingling. Not the tingling. What is happening? I shook the hand to increase circulation.
I wanted Charles to help me figure everything out, but on that flight back to Atlanta that small tingle became numbness and progressed inward. If this thing, this paralyzing thing was happening again, I wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone. This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening again. I had allowed myself to get stressed out, that was all. I was too scared to mention it to Elizabeth sitting right beside me.
CHAPTER 17
By the time we got back to the Grand Aerodrome, it was almost a comfort to see the ugly orange carpet. I only wanted to get in the bed, give my body rest. The numbness would go away.
When I walked by the payphones, the one on the end began ringing. I motioned for Elizabeth to go ahead, and when I picked it up, I didn’t even say hello, just waited for the music, that drum roll and beat and the bass pick up—“A little less conversation, a little more action, all this aggravation ain’t satisfaction in me. .”
My phone dinged and the text appeared:
LOL! I still love doing that to you!
Life can be so wonderful, Sandeep!
I glanced around the lobby before taking a breath and typing with numb fingers:
Where are you?
I am everywhere and nowhere at the same time, a clump of data like you. I need Raye in order to travel on.
I think I’m getting sick.
It took a few seconds as though he were thinking or searching.
The paralysis?
How could he know about the paralysis? My medical records? I opened and closed my left hand, shook it.
You know what is happening to me?
Yes.
I rode the glass elevator up, went to our suite. My throat tingled. Would I stop breathing?
The paralysis hadn’t happened in fourteen years. I remembered weeks of lying in a bed and being so incredibly thirsty, waiting for someone to hold a cup of water to my lips. Was the thirst only in my mind? Is the paralysis somehow up to me?
Alone in my room now, I took off my clothes and slid into the tight covers of my bed. The aquarium water had cleared and the betta swam inside, gills flared, him fighting his own reflection.
Through the wall came the first tuning of Elizabeth’s strings.
The rising tide of tingling had reached my knees. I didn’t want to have to go and tell her.
The music she played seemed brand new, like nothing I’d ever heard before, though I’d heard Sarasate’s “Carmen Fantasy” a thousand times. Maybe it was the new strings, but I also realized that Elizabeth, like every musician in the world, was a bundle of organic compounds and neurochemical reactions with feelings and experiences that converted the chaos of the universe into the best order she could make.
I was going to have to tell her it was happening again, but first I got up and got The Universe Is a Pair of Pants and went to the bathroom, poured a glass of water, shut the toilet lid and sat backward on the toilet with the book on the back of the tank, and I began where I’d left off, and I drank glass after glass of water as if I could fill up my body for this long journey. Elizabeth finished “Carmen Fantasy,” started and finished all of “Moonlight Sonata.”
I pissed and drank one last full glass of water.
In my room, Barbie sat stiff limbed on the dresser, back against the wall. I had to find Van Raye. I texted the hacker, thumbs feeling like nubs.
I am getting sick again. This sometimes takes awhile
I am very sorry this is happening.
I have gotten used to talking to someone.
I will miss talking to you but I’ll be here when you are well
I opened the door to the suite where Elizabeth played in the low-wattage light of the fake living room. Her arm stopped when she saw me against the doorframe.
“Sandeep, what is it?”
“Elizabeth. . ” It seemed like the hardest thing in the world to tell her what was happening. I felt like I was failing her. I waited for a jet to finish landing, the thrust reversers shutting off. She stepped toward the lamp and the few strands of frayed string floated away from her bow like spider webs. I said, “I want to go to India.”
She puzzled over my statement but said, “Look,” holding the violin up. “This is wonderful. How did you do this?”
“You’ve never taken me to India,” I said.
She held her breath then carefully put the violin in the case. She walked to me and put her hand on my forehead. Elizabeth had always told doctors, “My son never has a fever.” This gesture tonight of putting her hand on my forehead was just what mothers had done for a thousand years when they were worried.
“I’ve never been to India,” I repeated.
“Stop it,” she said. “You’re delirious. You’ve had a long day. Look,” she pointed to the violin, “it’s here.”
“In India,” I said, “I can let my body have its way with all the diseases its supposed to have. Right?”
“Why are you thinking about this now?” she said and stepped back to see me. “You don’t want to go to India,” she said. “In India, I’ve seen Americans get sunburned through their hats and die.”
I held onto the doorframe. “Can I have a glass of water?”
She went into the bathroom, leaving me leaning against the doorframe. When my phone dinged, I fumbled it out of my pajama pocket. It said:
I can’t believe you are going away.
Can you stop it? I’ll do anything. I can’t get Raye if I’m paralyzed
No. I can’t stop a disease.
I started to put the phone away, but another text came in.
But I can give you a method.
It will help time go by quickly. Take it.
Ask me a question about the near future.
I don’t understand.
Do you want to know the date you will get out of the hospital?
?
Providing the answer will make you jump there in time. You will still have the experiences.
But for the moment it will feel like you’ve leapt forward in time.
Do you want to know how?
Who are you?
I’m not from this planet, so call me Randolph.:)
I read the word again, “Randolph.” This was impossible. I was losing my mind. A hacker couldn’t know about a childhood game that Elizabeth had played on me, one in which an alien took over her body.
When Raye contacts you, he’ll have a dog. Take care of the dog.
Dog? This was bullshit.
Do you want to know when you will be out of the hospital?
Telling you the future will make you leap there in time.
Elizabeth came out of the bathroom with a glass of water.
“Tell me now,” I said. “You did Randolph, didn’t you? Randolph is you.”
“This again? Sandeep, please.”
I could see my hand gripping the glass of water but not feel it. The coolness of the glass felt a long way from my head. Elizabeth watched me gulp. “Why are you drinking water?”
“I won’t be able to drink when it’s done.”
“Stop that talk.”
“You know that’s the worse part,” I said. “I get so thirsty.”
“It’s not happening again. Tell yourself no. Please, Sandeep. It’s not true.”
“It’s not my fault,” I said, and tried to adjust my hands and the glass fell, almost hit Elizabeth’s feet.
“Sandeep!”
The water splashed on the floor, the floor an impossible distance from my head.
“It’s the tingling,” I said to her, the horrible, magic word we never spoke.