There’s a hotel in outer space. Only the rich can afford to stay there. The satellite-hotel has a room where you can see through the glass floor and ceiling, submerge yourself in dust and planetoids like sprinkles suspended in jelly.
We read about the room in an old, stolen issue of Discover Magazine. Viv doesn’t know any better — she thinks old trees donate their flaking bark to make books. I flip the glossy page. Viv stares at the colorful photos, tracing her fingers along the pink dust clouds.
It’s a nebula, I tell her. I imagine the strokes of light and gas pulsing like jellyfish. Neither of us knows how it moves in real life, but Viv is at an age where she doesn’t need the correct answer; her imagination satisfies her curiosity. I’m the one who wants to know how it moves in outer space, what it looks like when a star ionizes a surrounding nebula, how supernova explosions unfold. It’s like there’s another reality, I tell Viv. I’m beguiled by the idea of my existence coinciding with something I could never conceive.
Dummy, Viv says. There’s only one reality!
The construction of the hotel was announced a few years before Viv was born. I was six and the only trip I had been on was a class field trip to the local museum. The highlight of the trip wasn’t even the museum but Thomas Sweet, the ice cream store kids stormed after sitting through the docent’s lecture on pottery. Not that I ever got to taste the ice cream since my parents could never spare the five dollars. I watched everyone eat and reasoned that I had it best: stomach never stuffed, eating the cups and cones and Blend-Ins with my eyes, enjoying all the different flavors.
When Viv was born, the construction had just finished and several tech billionaire-investors made the first trip over. They ended up staying to help manage tourist attractions. I remember watching the news of them stepping into the satellite for the first time, building anti-gravity experience rooms, overseeing the shipment of huge panes of glass to become the sky room, although I never knew why it was called the sky room. There’s no sky in space. You can only have one sky and it’s on our planet Earth, I ranted to my half-listening parents and to Viv who goo-ed and gah-ed while attempting to stab a pea with her Polypropylene toddler fork.
I try to keep the curtains drawn but you can’t keep light from a child forever. Viv loves the sun: the heat on her toes, the brightness on her face. She pulls open a curtain as I leave to prepare lunch. I twist the lid to a can of Taisun congee and sniff the syrupy contents: the glutinous rice mushier than I remember, the longans like large, opaque eyeballs floating in formaldehyde. I carry the can back to the bedroom where Viv sits on the mattress, forehead pressed to the window. Mold and vines grow over the apartment complex next to us. The streets are empty and it’s eerie not seeing a line trailing out of the Guo Bian Hu restaurant that we’d visit on Saturdays for breakfast. An old lady from Fuzhou ran the restaurant. Viv loved to watch the lady pour rice batter onto the sides of the hot wok and I admired the skill required to keep the noodle thickness consistent.
Where did everyone go? Viv asks.
They’re staying inside to clean their homes, I tell her. The sky is rust orange. I’ve never seen it so hazy and dull.
Why would they stay inside when they have to clean the outside of their homes too? Viv probes.
I shrug and say, The vines are decorations, like a Christmas wreath.
Christmas is months away. Sometimes I forget how much time has passed, that legally, I’m a child, too. The only number carved into my brain is the dwindling supply of cans left in the pantry. I place the congee in Viv’s hands. She looks down.
I’ve already eaten, I tell her. Plus I hate longan. She giggles and swallows a spoonful. I insert an earbud and listen to the radio, waiting to hear when a satellite will return for the kids. I want to send Viv off with a smile.
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