Rus Like Everyone Else (34 page)

She then took Mrs. Blue's rigid hand in between hers and sat down beside her. The room was quiet except for some gray noise that was coming from a radio that was still on.

“Well,” she said to the empty body. “I did as you said. I stood up for myself.”

The empty body did not reply. There was no one in there anymore.

The secretary let go of the hand. She looked around the room. On the nightstand was a sketchbook with a pen lying on top of it. The secretary opened it. On the first page the name and the phone number of Mrs. Blue's doctor were written. The secretary browsed through the other pages. On the last page Mrs. Blue had written something in curly handwriting: “Everything that is thought of starts to exist. In the mind, in the words, and in the shapes. Nothing can ever completely be erased.”

The secretary closed the book and put it in her bag.

She got up from the side of the bed. Mrs. Blue's hands were slowly changing color. A purplish blue appeared on the fingernails. The secretary watched the blue creep to the fingertips, up the hand, and to the wrist.

When blood stops circulating, she remembered, and the cells have used up all the oxygen, the blood cells turn blue, giving the flesh a purple color. Some of the cells remain working for a while, but as the waste piles up in the cells and the temperature drops, they stop. She remembered this from school—there had been a test about it. The secretary watched the lips turn blue as well. The body turns into gases and liquids and dissolves. The eyes, the stomach, and the intestines go first; the heart becomes thinner and thinner; the brain liquefies.

The secretary put her hand on Mrs. Blue's forehead. She closed her eyes. Somewhere in the distance someone was drilling a hole in a wall. Outside a car honked and someone shouted. She stood up and took the phone from the nightstand, calling the number of
the doctor. After half an hour the doctor came with the men in the white jackets, who walked into the apartment and bent over Mrs. Blue, lifting her up from the bed.

THE GULL

“Four hundred thirteen tea towels, two hundred tablecloths.” Rus had his forehead almost on the paper as he tried to decipher the numbers, his voice unstable and weak. It was torment what was happening here. It was not fair; it was not his fault.

Why couldn't he just focus? Why couldn't he be like the others, who worked continuously, not looking up once when that bird yelled?

Rus saw the claws of the bird stick through the grating of the air vent and he could not help but look at the light pink skin of its feet, the nails on its toes. The white head with the yellow eyes appeared behind the grating too, and Rus saw a glint in the black pupils when he looked at it. Something was living inside that animal, Rus thought, and for a second he felt like an animal himself, with paws and a head, but he pushed that thought far away as soon as it came to his mind.

With sweat on his forehead he forced himself to keep his eyes on the files, to work on, but his pen hardly touched the paper. By the time the building closed at eight o'clock and Rus raised his head, he saw that the pile of files on his desk had not shrunk one bit, it only seemed to have gotten higher. Around Rus's desk more files were spread out on the floor. Rus looked at the file that he had been working on.

“Four hundred thirteen tea towels, two hundred tablecloths” was scribbled on the paper, “leave me alone please leave me alone.” When Rus saw this he got up from his desk and pulled his plastic bag from behind the copying machine. His life was a line going down, and it went down rapidly, like the elevator.

ASHRAF IN THE SAND

Ashraf let the white sand run through his fingers. He thought of his father opening his door every morning before he went to work,
to wake him up for school. Sometimes he would sit on the edge of his bed in the morning, telling him to work hard at school, talking about the benefits of high grades when applying for jobs, while Ashraf was still half asleep. He thought of what he had already known back then but never told his dad.

“I'm not going to be a success,” Ashraf said out loud. “I am not made for it. I don't know what I am going to do.”

He lowered his head and looked at the sand between his feet.

“And I don't like it here.”

It was quiet around him, no one answered. There was wind and the sound of a gull. The bird landed on the sand in front of him and started picking at a dead jellyfish. Ashraf put his face in his hands and cried, without counting, until he could not cry anymore.

When he finally opened his eyes the sun was going down behind the sea and a ray of red light colored the horizon. He lay back against the dune, his feet up toward the sky and his head low toward the beach. The sea was hanging above him now, as if some giant force were keeping it up. He imagined it falling down, the entire sea washing over him. He closed his eyes. For a moment Ashraf felt like all his thoughts were washed off him, all the systems he had placed over the world were gone, all his worries and his plans were swept away and for a moment he was just some boy in the sand by the sea.

The stars below the sea were shining bright now; the sea was black. The light from the stars was not strong enough for the sea to reflect the blue rays. Thoughts started trickling back into his head. He thought of the office girl who lived in her white apartment and tried to be as normal as possible.

“I have never met anyone like you,” she said when he stepped into the elevator. “You think about a lot of things, but you have no conclusions.”

Ashraf smiled as he got up from the sand. On his way back to the main road he found the apology form. The wind had blown it into a patch of dry grass at the edge of the dunes. It seemed funny to him now, an apology form. He picked it up and folded it. There was a gas station farther down the street and he still had a twenty in his pocket. The city in the distance had turned into a collection of lights, forming lines and squares against the dark sky.

THE LAST DAY

“Maybe we moved too fast,” Wanda had said, lying next to Rus.

Rus hadn't understood this at first. He was not moving at all; he was afraid to move and he had been lying completely still ever since she started shouting and screaming at him about his probationary period. Then she had gotten really calm and lain down on the bed with him. She was lying with her face close to his face. Rus felt her breath on his forehead, and it paralyzed him.

“Are you not going to say anything?” Wanda asked. “Say something.”

Rus tried to say something. He tried to shut down the noise in his head. “I—” he said with a lot of effort. “I'm doing my best.”

“That's it?” Wanda asked. “You are doing your best. What are you going to do to improve this? How are you going to make it through your trial period?”

Her voice was hard and it came from very close, piercing through Rus's forehead. Inside of his head the gull was still there shrieking, preventing him from thinking, from saying what she wanted to be said.

“The bird,” he started to explain, “I cannot focus,” but then Wanda exploded. She sat straight up in the bed.

“Is it that you don't understand, or that you are really not capable of the simplest things?” she shouted at him.

Rus didn't know. It was probably both.

“I'm sorry,” Rus said softly. “I'm sorry.” He wanted to say more, but he couldn't. He pulled the sheets up over his head.

Wanda said, “That is it then,” and lay down with her back to him on the bed. Rus heard her breathe short, sobbing breaths. “Nobody stays on a sinking ship, Rus,” she said.

“I know,” Rus whispered under the blankets, “it is true.” Again he had wanted to say more, say something better, but he had nothing, this was him.

Across from us, Mrs. Blue's window is dark. The ambulance personnel have switched off the television, they have even switched off the radio. For the first time in three years it is completely quiet in Mrs. Blue's apartment.

Next door, at the secretary's house, we see her move around her living room in her underwear. The secretary places the mirror from the bathroom against the wall in her living room and unrolls a roll of wallpaper out across the whole floor. On the back side of the wallpaper she draws a map of her body: she uses blue for her veins, which run like rivers over the paper, and red for her skin, and yellow for the lines on her hands and underneath her feet. Before she goes to sleep she hangs the paper on the wall with Sellotape, like a flag above her bed.

High above the city's buildings, we see a small blinking light move through the clouds in the dark sky. Do you see that plane approaching the city? Mrs. Blue's son is in there. He took the first plane when the doctor called. He tries to suppress the thoughts that keep coming up in his mind by concentrating on the movie on the screen in front of him.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, our dear friend Rus is listening to Wanda breathe as she lies still and angry on her side of the bed. There is as much space between their bodies as is possible. When Rus finally hears the little sounds that tell him Wanda is sleeping, he quietly gets out of the bed. He takes the guidelines out of the plastic bag and reads the last page: “Written by the president-director and founder of your company, Arthur K. Zeitgeist. He is the head of the company; he holds the helm. If it weren't for him the company would grow aimlessly without an end goal, like an ordinary organism, just living to live. Signed by the president-director: Arthur K. Zeitgeist.”

With the guidelines under his arm, Rus quietly opens the front door, and we see him walk under the stars and the moon toward the office building.

THE PRESIDENT-DIRECTOR

Some birds were singing, but most of them were still sleeping, or being quiet at least, as Rus slid his debit card between the sliding doors of the Overall building, something that Modu taught him once. He pushed the doors open. The company building was dark, only the light on the eleventh floor was still on. Rus stepped into the elevator and pressed the button that said eleven. He was rose past the empty, dark departments that seemed to hum, like a sleeping monster.

Finally the elevator stopped at the highest floor, where the doors opened to a lit entrance hall where a small girl with red hair was behind a desk. She got up as Rus entered and opened a large, heavy door behind her desk. Rus followed her in. Behind the large door was a space about as big as Rus's own department, and there was a man standing behind a desk by the window. He was standing with his back to the room.

“Excuse me,” Rus said. “Are you Arthur Zeitgeist? The president-director?”

“Yes,” the president-director said. He turned around. He was wearing a black suit, and he was eating something—he had a napkin tucked in his collar. His dark gray hair stuck out on one side. The girl came up to him and took the plate away. She cleaned the corners of his mouth.

“You have news from my brothers?” he asked. He was very old. Rus saw a bed in the corner of the room. It was made up very neatly with white sheets.

“I have a question regarding your book,” Rus said. He placed the guidelines on the table. “Chapter seven, paragraph six. ‘If It Is Not in the Guidelines.'”

The president-director did not answer. He turned and looked out the window.

“I used to cycle over there,” he said. He pointed with his hand. Rus went up to the window and looked at where the president-director had pointed.

“I cycled there yesterday, I believe,” the president-director said. In the distance the Memorial Square was visible. There were builders removing the remains of the monument and policemen guarding the square.

“Some sort of birthday going on,” the president-director said.

“There was a memorial,” Rus said. “For the war.”

“Memorial,” the president-director said. He sat down at the desk. “I'm tired.”

“About your guidelines,” Rus said. “I have a problem.” He slid the book toward him.

The president-director placed his hand on the cover of the book and stroked the fabric. “‘
The Company Guidelines
,'” he read. “‘Arthur Zeitgeist. Professor-Director.'”

“President,” Rus said. “President-director.”

The president-director looked at the book and followed the letters with his fingers. There was a stain on his sleeve. He took the book in his hands. “This book looks very old,” he said.

“Yes,” Rus said. “You wrote it.”

“Yes,” the president-director said. “I wrote a book. I used to own a caravan, but I don't know where it is now.”

He weighed the book in his hand. “You should believe everything you read,” he said. “Some person has some idea, he writes it down.” He looked like he was going to say more, but he didn't. He took a packet of cookies out of the inside pocket of his jacket.

“You want some?” he said. “Chip. Chip cookies. I've taken to them, it seems.”

Rus shook his head. He watched the crumbs roll into the grating on the floor and heard shrieking and fluttering below them.

“Look,” the president-director said. He pulled Rus on his arm to the window. “If you stand really close like this, it is like you're flying.” The president-director leaned forward with his chest against the window. Rus lowered himself toward the window too and felt the cold glass against his chest and his forehead. The roofs and the square were now right below them, and for a second he and the president-director flew high above the world. A gull flew on and off the front of the building.

“Birdie,” the president-director said.

The gull took a dive and flew right into the open air vent just below them.

The president-director stepped away from the window. “This makes me nauseous,” he said. “I'm tired. What time is it?”

“Seven,” Rus said.

The president-director sat down in his chair with his head bent.

“Seven in the morning,” Rus wanted to say, but the eyes of the president-director closed, and the girl came in to pull his chair back. Rus took his book and walked out of the office, into the elevator, and out on the street. The breathing was fine now, he felt calm, because he had given up. In the empty parking lot a white BMW rolled toward Rus, its headlights lighting up.

THE STRAIGHT LINES

“I have not made it through my probationary period,” Rus said to the manager, who was driving the BMW. He took the guidelines out of the plastic bag and put the book on the manager's lap. The manager took it and put it away silently. They were driving through the empty streets of the business district. The manager looked glassy-eyed at the road. He was not smoking; in his right hand he was holding a milkshake, but he was holding it tilted so it dripped on the chair. He was not well.

“She said . . .” the manager started. “She said—” Now his voice broke. He tried again: “She said . . .”

“She said what?” Rus said. “Who?”

“My wife,” the manager said, “she said . . .” He took a long sip of his milkshake. He looked very tired, like he had lost twenty nights of sleep in one night. They sat in silence for a bit, the manager now and then taking a deep breath as if he wanted to finish his sentence, but all that came out was “she said.”

“Rus!” the manager cried suddenly, and he placed his hand over his mouth. “She said she loves me for my money! I told her all the things I loved about her and she said she loved me for my money. My money, Rus!” The manager let out a kind of very soft scream.

“Wanda loved me so she did not have to be alone,” Rus said. “But I am a sinking ship.”

The manager gazed in the distance. “Nancy, her name is. I met her at a business party. The band was playing ‘The Girl from Ipanema,' and she bent toward me and said, ‘I feel so warm inside when I hear this song.' Every night I play that song for her on the stereo. I give her kisses when she sleeps and I fluff her pillow. I only
smoked because I thought she liked it. But last night she told me it was none of that. ‘I thought you knew,' she said.”

The manager lowered his shoulders. Rus took the milkshake from his hand.

“I looked in the mirror at the Starbucks this morning, Rus, and maybe at first sight there is not so much to love about me, but when you look closer, there is, there is. When I relax my lower lip goes slightly forward—that's something to love, isn't it? The way I protrude my lower lip like a child is lovable, I am certain, and there is a scar on my eyebrow, and my ears stand apart a little bit in a charming way. There is a lot,” the manager said, “but she says she does not see it. She sees money, she says.”

They looked at the empty streets outside the window. The canal was dark, but the sun had started to come up. The manager looked at Rus from time to time, but Rus did not say anything. He was very calm, almost empty.

“I guess you could say that money is a big part of me,” the manager said, somewhat calmer. “I do have a lot of money, and I do talk about it a lot. I guess you could say that it is my money she loves, and therefore she loves me.”

The manager wiped his nose and took hold of the steering wheel more firmly.

“Now let's get to business,” he said, his voice a little bit softer and more unstable than usual. “Your contract will be dissolved, of course.”

Rus thought of Barry's smoke dissolving in the air. He nodded.

“I won't give you a recommendation and I will advise future employers not to hire you if they contact me.”

The car rolled into East, and Rus asked the manager to stop near the bridge. The manager shut the motor down at the corner of the bridge and Canal Street. There, the manager looked out the window and there was a little sparkle in his eye. “What a bad neighborhood,” he said, slightly more cheerful.

Rus opened the door of the car and shook the hand of the manager. The manager opened the glove compartment and took out a thin cigarette. “This cigarette,” he said, looking tired, “is signed by Frank Sinatra. It costs more than the rent here for two months.”

He smiled a bit as he lit the cigarette. His smile was tired, but it
was a smile. “I will get new leather on my BMW,” he said through the window. He lifted his hand in a wave. “Someone spilled milk-shake on it.”

Then he blinked with the headlights and drove off down the street. Under the clouds that glowed orange from sunrise, Rus looked at the roofs in his street. Rus remained calm when he saw the straight skyline, an uninterrupted straight line three stories high. His house was erased, and all the forms and the shapes in the street corresponded, serious and neat.

GLENN

Glenn opened the door to his mother's house. He still had the key from when he moved his mother and father here. He remembered how remarkable it was that the new flat was completely transformed into their old flat in one day: the same light blue curtains, the same carpet, the same couch, and the same little vases and statues that his mother loved stood in exactly the same positions as they used to. Glenn switched on the light and opened the light blue curtains. The scent was still the same, and it gave him a pang of pain in his chest. The mixed scent of perfume, coconut, and powdery makeup.