Rus Like Everyone Else (10 page)

Is there someone you know so well that you can tell almost for certain what that person is doing at this very moment? Is he alone now, or with someone? Is he talking, working, sleeping? Standing or sitting? Can you see him in your mind, how he's holding his hands, his shoulders? Can you walk toward him and watch his face from up close?

Come with me to see Mr. Lucas, step into his bedroom. We lean over his bed like a mother watching her child sleep. Do you see his eyes shooting back and forth behind his eyelids? A train of images from the past are shooting by behind his eyes. He remembers his first—and only—job as a reporter for the Sunday newspaper, how spit would clutter in his editor's mustache while he was shouting at him. He remembers how good he felt after that first article, but then the inability to sleep started, the fear of being found out. He remembers the editor pressing him, asking questions, and then the people at his doorstep, peering in through the windows, and the white van that was parked in front of his house for days on end, keeping him from leaving his house.

Now Mr. Lucas's memories dissolve into a nightmare. He dreams he is lying in his bed, and that two dark silhouettes are moving through his house, coming into his bedroom, and looking at him.

Poor Mr. Lucas, drops of sweat are forming streams down the sides of his face. Let's go on, out the front door, to the next street, where the secretary is sitting at her desk. She is shopping on the Internet, like Dr. Kroon recommended to her. The Japanese girl from the Internet group watches her from a corner of the screen as she orders a book that teaches you to find the you inside of you, who is amazing. She's also made a website for herself and answered questions about her favorite music, where she listed Astronaut Redemption and the Fire, like most people at her work did. In reality, she never listens to music because it unsettles her too much. There is just the sound of that clock. It ticks like a
hammer. The secretary does not pay attention to it. “Any moment now,” she says under her breath. It is true; things are about to happen with her any moment now—we are aware of that—something is slowly building up under her skin.

A little farther, at the far end of Low Street, where the market square starts, Ashraf is lying awake in his bed. He can't sleep because he is nervous about tomorrow, so he listens to the steady breathing of his younger brother, whom he still shares a room with.

In our own house it is quiet, and as always the bed is unslept in. From our window we see a helicopter fly over the city. It lands in the distance, on that illuminated roof over there. That's where the hospital is and where we find our other friend, Rus. He is sleeping blissfully under white hospital sheets, unaware of the woman who sits beside him, watching him intently, studying him, while he sleeps. A few stories below Rus, in a more serious part of the hospital, lies the son of the post boss in an extra-large bed. Around him the bed monitors are drawing lines that resemble mountains and saying beep, beep, beep, beep.

THE BOSS'S SON

The boss's son sat on his knees on the soil. He was planting hydrangeas near the royal pond.

“Gardener, gardener,” the Queen said, hanging out her window. “I'm hungry. Go get some honey from the bees and bring it up to me.”

The boss's son went to the bees and got honey from the hive. His hands were twice as big from all the stings when he brought it up to the Queen. She was lying on her bed by the window, her eyes closed. He stopped in the doorway. There were sheets of crumpled paper around the bed, words written on them in large, curly fountain pen letters—“Dear Citizens” and “Hello everybody, this is your Majesty speaking”—all crossed out.

Carefully, the boss's son entered the room and brought a spoon of honey to her mouth, but she turned her face away from him.

“No, I'm too depressed to eat,” the Queen said. “Go away!”

VERTIGO

Bright white light came in through Rus's heavy eyelids. First he thought it was the sky he saw, with a bright white sun, but when he opened his eyes wider it turned out to be a white ceiling with a bright white lamp. There was a white door to the left of him, and there were curtains around the bed he was lying on, also in white. The mattress, white; the dresser, white. His hands, which he held up in the light now, were white too, but they had blue in them as well, from the veins visible under his skin.

Bit by bit Rus started to remember things, how he had been lifted onto a bed by people who circled around him, how they lifted the bed up and twirled it and twirled it, smiling as they circled him around. They'd shoved the bed into a circling ambulance, which they rode in circles too. The last thing he remembered was blackness, until just now, when everything became white.

Nothing was circling in this room. There was a steady white tray standing in front of him, holding a white saucer with a white pudding on top.

“I must be in the hospital,” Rus said pensively. And then, more contently,
slowly contemplating each word: “I must be in the hospital.”

Immediately, Rus felt a calmness come over him. He laid his head down on the pillow and looked about him. The whiteness of the room reminded him of a story his mother once told him about heaven, “where everything's whiter than white.”

He sank a bit farther under the sheets and called his mother's voice to mind. Her sweet, pale face came close to his and she started telling him the story of heaven again and all the snow that fell there. His mother and Modu loved snow, which was why Modu's nickname was Snow. He remembered Modu getting him out of bed one night when he came home from work because it had snowed, and they built snowmen in the street, so no cars could get in or out in the morning. They worked for hours in the bluish light, smiling soundlessly at each other. When they went in his mother made hot chocolate, and Rus remembered how she rubbed their hair dry with a towel while they sat by the window, and Rus smiled when he remembered how Mrs. Wong had shouted curse words in the empty morning air.

But then an envelope landed in the middle of Rus's memory and spoiled everything.

“Bleh,” Rus moaned as everything that had happened came back to him: the letter, the post office, Francisco's friendship and his disappearance, the money, the house keys—like dominoes the memories set one another in motion. Suddenly, Rus hoped he had some very serious disease. Not a painful one, just one that would keep him in this white room with its white puddings forever. He pulled the sheets over his eyes. If he could not go to his house, the hospital was his second choice.

A knock on the door.

“Are you awake?” a male voice said.

Rus heard the door opening. He kept his head under the sheets and he made sure not to move. He tried hard to sink into a coma. If only he could dive inside his subconscious and stay there, comfortable on the bed while eating through tubes.

“Mr. Ordelman? Can you hear me?” the voice said.

Rus did not move. Was there someone else in the room whom he had not noticed? Some little man called Ordel Man, which he thought was a terrible name to give somebody.

He heard the door opening again, another male voice: “Rus Ordelman? I have his belongings here: a brown suit, a fur coat, an envelope.”

Rus Ordelman? What were they talking about? What was an Ordel Man? And why were they calling him that?

Rus had read a story once in one of the gray books that were always lying around in the Starbucks, about a person who was found in the street and did not speak. In the hospital they called him Piano Man, because all they knew of him was that he played the piano. But what was an ordel? Did they mean “ordeal,” Ordeal Man, because of the letter? Rus shook his head under the covers. The whole situation was confusing and probably not very healthy for a patient who could slide into a coma any moment now, Rus decided. It was probably best if they, the hospital people, would just sort it out for themselves. He also decided he should eat the pudding before the tube food started. Just as he put it in his mouth the door opened again. Rus quickly lowered himself back down on the mattress and covered his eyes with his hands.

Then the sound of the door again. A ray of light fell across his cheeks.

“Rus Ordelman's belongings can be given to his girlfriend,” the voice said. “She is waiting in the hallway.” The door closed with a click.

MRS. BLUE'S JOURNEY

The clouds were moving very fast above the bus stop. Mrs. Blue had put her hair under a plastic rain cap that she tied under her chin. She was wearing her summer jacket and her raincoat over the summer jacket and the only pair of flat shoes she owned. She had packed her lunch, her husband's old gun, a map, and a hairbrush in her handbag. She could not take tea because she did not have a Thermos, but she cut pieces of a cucumber and put them between her bread so she would not get dehydrated.

The bus wasn't coming yet. Cars passed by and splashed water up at her, and the wind was blowing into her hearing aid. Mrs. Blue took the piece of paper with the directions to the studio out of her pocket, unfolded it and read the address, and put it in her pocket again. Then she checked her bus card. Rain started lashing down
on the glass ceiling of the bus stop. Next to her on the bench sat a man with dark eyes in a fluffy coat and a velvet tracksuit. He reminded her of Rick, a deceitful face. Mrs. Blue nodded reservedly. The bus was there.

Mrs. Blue lifted her walker into the bus, put the brake on the roller, and sat down on the seat. She counted the bus stops and pushed the stop button at the seventh one, in the business district. “Move aside, please.” Mrs. Blue worked herself through the wall of people blocking the exit and lowered her walker onto the sidewalk.

As Mrs. Blue turned the corner toward the studio, images of Grace being hit over and over again were floating through her mind. She felt herself going faster and faster through the streets, and she thought about how it seemed as if she too were pushed on by words and sentences, as if her legs were working independently from her and she could not even turn around if she wanted to.

When Mrs. Blue finally reached the studios she stopped in front of the closed gates.

“Yes?” a voice said. The voice came out of a pole in front of Mrs. Blue.

“Hello,” she said to the pole.

“You wanna come in or not?” the pole said.

“Yes,” Mrs. Blue said, “I do,” and the man in the pole opened the gates. Mrs. Blue walked through and into the large building that said
STUDIOS
.

She made it. She was at the studios.

The hallway was large and bright, and there were huge photos of Grace and her family members hanging on both walls.

Mrs. Blue knocked on a door that said
MR. WHEELBARROW: WRITER/PRODUCER
CHANGE OF HEARTS
. There was no one in there. The office was a mess; there were crumpled papers on the desk and on the floor. On the other side of his office was another door with a sign that read set. Mrs. Blue stroked the gun that was in the handbag and pressed it close to her body as she opened the door.