Rus Like Everyone Else (33 page)

Rus slid the photos over the table toward the manager, who studied
them carefully, one by one. After that he put them in a drawer with a B on it. He turned the key.

The manager rubbed his forehead. He sighed.

“Rus,” he said.

After that he sighed again and moved around on his chair.

“You are a nice man. A nice boy perhaps. I don't know about all that. You come here, to me, with your story and your pictures. Why?”

Rus didn't know what to say.

The manager tapped his laser pen on his desk. Then he opened his copy of the guidelines to the first page and read: “‘The employee has unlimited freedom to move within the codes of conduct as described in these guidelines.'”

He nodded at Rus.

“That means that you have to stay within the rules.”

Rus looked at the drawer with the B on it.

“You should look at it like chess,” the manager continued. “You have the pieces and the board, and then you have the rules for how you can use them. You cannot come up with a bird and fly all over the place. Does that make sense to you, Rus?”

Rus was quiet for a moment.

“Can I go to the eleventh floor and see if I can get to the vent?”

The manager studied Rus's face for a while, his hands, his suit, the plastic bag he had placed on the table. He sighed deeply. “Rus.” The manager sighed again. “Let me tell you a secret. Let me show you something that I haven't shown to anyone. Because I like you.”

The manager switched on his computer.

“I trust you can keep your mouth shut,” he said, lowering his voice and pulling Rus closer to the computer screen.

“Type this: ‘Saab.' And now, click 9-5. Gallery. Images.”

On the screen in front of Rus a rotating car appeared. It was a big car.

“Now, what do you see?” the manager asked.

“A car,” Rus said.

“It's a Saab 9-5 Aero,” the manager said. “I've ordered it. I'll get it next week. It has seventeen-inch rims, a redwood dashboard. Click on dashboard.”

The manager smiled.

“What do you think?”

“It's big,” Rus said hesitatingly.

“Ha,” the manager said. “It's the biggest sedan available. Rain detector, park sensor, climate control, TV screen with a DVD player in the back. Great ride, don't you think?”

“Certainly,” Rus said. “Yes. But—”

“Feeling better now?” the manager asked. He tapped Rus on his shoulder. Then he opened the door with a button.

Rus got up from his chair. He took the plastic bag.

The manager spun around on his chair.

“And Rus!”

Rus turned around in the doorway.

“Everything in life has a place. There is a place for work, which is the office. There is a place for sleep, which is the bed. And there is a place for imagination, which is the television. Remember that.”

THE SECRETARY AND MRS. BLUE'S BODY

The secretary was standing in her doorway. She looked at the elevator doors that had just closed. Her heart was racing. The thing he said, the thing she heard him whisper. She could feel the hairs on her arms stand up.

From her apartment the sound of her phone came into the hallway. “It's Dr. Kroon,” Dr. Kroon's voice on her answering machine said.

The secretary did not move. She looked at something that was lying on the floor in the hallway.

“You have missed your appointment today and I was wondering if we need to start with medication, perhaps.”

The secretary bent down and picked up the strange fabric.

“There have been some of the first winter flowers blossoming outside my windowsill. Yellow, with an orange stamen. Apparently yesterday's rain has made them push their little buds up out of the ground. What is it that makes plants push their buds up out of the soil and makes them grow? What force is behind it? Where does energy originate? Either way, Dr. Kroon, about your medication, 009—”

The things lying on the floor were stockings, dark brown stockings of a very thick elastic. The secretary remembered Mrs. Blue wearing them.

“Mrs. Blue?”

She knocked on Mrs. Blue's door.

There was no answer.

The secretary did not knock a second time. She ran into her own apartment and took the emergency keys from her purse.

“Mrs. Blue! It's Laura,” she shouted as she opened the door. “I'm coming in!”

No one responded. Mrs. Blue's hallway was dark and her walker stood in the corner, her coat hung neatly on the coat rack. She walked into the living room. The patterned wallpaper and the little sculptures of cats along the mantel were as they always were, but the light blue curtains were closed still.

“Mrs. Blue?” the secretary said.

The apartment was silent.

In the bedroom Mrs. Blue was lying on her back on the bed, her legs over the edge.

The secretary stepped in through the open door and stood by the bed. She took Mrs. Blue's wrist in her hand. It was cold. There was no ticking against her thumb. Mrs. Blue was not in there anymore.

GRACE IN THE STORY

“Mr. Wheelbarrow,” Grace repeated the name softly to herself.

A pleasant and warm feeling had come over her when she heard his name, like a wave that picked up her thoughts and washed them away. She leaned back in the car seat. The questions that filled her head started slipping away, but she did not resist. She let out a deep breath.

Mr. Wheelbarrow stopped in the driveway of the Fata Morgana mansion. The garden and the house looked just the same as always: the grand building surrounded by the flowing lawn and pink pergola trees.

The warm feeling had taken over her entire body now, making her legs and arms feel heavy. Her thoughts slowly ground to a halt in her head.

She did not know where Mr. Wheelbarrow had gone, but his voice was in her ears now—a warm, soothing voice that resonated through her body, as if she had slid into a warm bath.

“Grace opens her eyes,” his voice said. “And enters through the front door of the Fata Morgana mansion. She walks up the stairs.”

Grace nodded. Her hand opened the door.

The voice filled up all the space in her head and all the space in the world around her. Rick was right after all, she thought distractedly, there is a voice pulling and pushing us, moving our thoughts and our tongue.

She wanted to think more about this, but she could not remember what to think about, nor why, and before she knew it she was already halfway up the stairs, and then in the hallway, taking a pin out of her hair and sticking it in the lock of the dresser.

THE SEA

Ashraf walked over the parking lot of the Royal Mail Centre toward his van. His boss had given him an apology form that he had to fill out, which would be sent to the lawyer. If the lawyer agreed to drop his complaint then he could keep his job.

Ashraf looked at the people loading the packages into the vans, the post boss smoking his cigar outside, talking animatedly to the postmen. He started the van and drove away from the post center, down the street, and past the market square. There was a family in tracksuits coming out of the McDonald's, there were women standing by the shop windows looking at the ads on the televisions, and there was the billboard girl with the can of beer between her breasts watching over it all.

“Don't project your feelings,” the school counselor had said. “If you feel miserable, that doesn't make the world miserable. The problem is inside of you.”

Ashraf took a turn and drove onto the ring road. He himself felt that the problem was around him, and that inside of him was no real problem at all. He did not want to go back to the boss anymore; he did not want to be accused of things he had not done.

“Don't let your pride get in the way,” his dad had said.

“Never let a man insult you,” Youssef had said.

“This is just the way things are, and you had better accept it now,” the post boss had said.

Ashraf did not feel a lot of pride or acceptance at the moment. He felt tired. His phone beeped. Youssef had sent him a text message:
In case you change your mind: 17:00 Jona's house. He wants you in.

Ashraf put his phone away. The light of the petrol gauge on the dashboard flashed on.

He was running out of gas. Of course, he thought.

The strong feeling of inevitability came over him again. Ever since he got pulled out of the classroom five years ago, when he walked down the corridor with the headmaster who said, “He did not suffer, fortunately,” who talked about “condolences” and “strength.” Ever since the janitor drove him home from school, listening to George Michael on the radio, he had felt it—that all of this had happened before and he was walking in his own footsteps.

He felt it from that day on. When the family came to the house later that day, whispering in the kitchen, coming into his bedroom now and then, sitting on the edge of his bed, saying things—it all seemed like a movie he had seen before. Everything that had happened to him from that day on felt like it had been unavoidable. No matter what he did, he could not change anything.

Ashraf pulled the steering wheel of the van and made a U-turn on the ring road, driving through the red traffic lights. He wanted to shake off this feeling; he wanted to take his fate in his own hands. With a brisk move he took the first exit and then took a left and a right turn, a left and a right turn, a left and a right, until finally the engine muttered and stopped.

He let the van roll and parked it along the sidewalk. Ashraf got out of the van and felt the wind blow tiny grains of sand against his cheek. He threw the apology form in the wind and walked toward the white dunes. He sat down on the sand with his back to the city.

MRS. BLUE CANNOT BE ERASED

The secretary looked at Mrs. Blue, the deep wrinkles in the face and in her neck. One of her hands was folded around the covers, as if she had wanted to get into the bed. The secretary lifted Mrs. Blue's left leg up and placed it on the bed. The leg was stiff and hard to move. On the place where she touched it small, pale patches appeared,
because the blood that was pushed away did not flow back anymore. She pushed the body a little farther to the middle of the bed and pulled the blanket from underneath Mrs. Blue. Carefully the secretary placed the blanket over Mrs. Blue's dead body and folded the edges back. Somehow she thought that was how Mrs. Blue would make her bed.