Rus Like Everyone Else (4 page)

Rus wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his fur coat. He was sitting on a bench in Memorial Square in the business district, hidden behind the cranes and the machines that were there to build the new war monument, holding all the notes the cash machine gave him on his lap.

He was adding up the numbers on his calculator. “50,” he typed, “+ 10 + 10 + 20 + 10 + 5,” his fingers trembling. The notes he'd counted he placed on a neat pile next to him on the bench. He had to do it very carefully because his hands were shaking.

His mother had left him that debit card the day after his sixteenth birthday, the day she and Modu left him without saying anything, only leaving him a note and the card. He had never touched that debit card, aside from withdrawing a ten from it every morning of course, for groceries and things, but aside from that he never touched it.

Finally, Rus placed the last note on the pile. “There is probably a fortune on that card,” he mumbled. He had never really thought about how much money there was on the card; he had always just assumed it was there to take care of him. “Otherwise they wouldn't have left me like that.” He closed his eyes and pressed the sum button on the calculator. Then he opened his eyes—and closed them again.

“No.”

He opened his eyes again.

“No, no.”

The reason Rus was saying “no, no” was because the number wasn't right, it wasn't right at all. He collected the notes and started
recounting, faster this time, slamming the buttons on the calculator, adding the coins from his pocket this time as well.

Three hundred forty-one, the calculator said again, and forty-five cents.

Rus's throat was dry. He stared at the number on the screen. “How can that be? How can that be?”

The machines on the square started slamming a pole into the ground.
Deng
.

The sound startled Rus, and the letter from the tax office fell off his lap, next to his trainers in the sand. The black words were staring accusingly up at him from the white paper, threatening to take his house and sell all his things. Rus swallowed. Three hundred forty-one and forty-five cents to pay three thousand two hundred sixty-one. Today.

Deng.

Rus started perspiring. The sweat on his forehead felt cold, very cold. He stood up, pressing the money to his chest, and it was as if he saw the whole world for the first time at that moment: he suddenly saw all those people walking down the streets, on their way to something, carrying bags and suitcases, talking on phones; the cars driving along the square, the trucks; the builders on the machines shouting instructions, the cranes lifting bricks.

THE SECRETARY AT WORK

The secretary was sitting behind her desk in the Overall Company offices in the business district. On her lap she held a plastic bag with a new dress for the office party. The office party would start at seven that day, and it was taking place in the office canteen. The dress she bought was sea green. She had bought it during the lunch break. She touched the fabric with her fingers. The lady at the shop said it looked stunning, and she did not look away while she said it, which meant it was true. She was a nice saleswoman, the secretary thought. She'd asked the woman if she liked swimming, but she hadn't replied. The secretary pictured herself coming through the door at the office party, the heads of her colleagues all turning toward her as they whispered to one
another: “Is that the secretary? It can't be but it is, it is her.”

The phone rang. “Good afternoon Overall Company. I'll put you through.” The secretary pressed the forward call button on the phone and opened her diary. It had a mirror on the inside. “Sorry, my datebook is completely full,” she said to her mirror-self. Her mirror-self did not answer. They looked at each other. The person in the mirror looked plainer and more distressed than the one in front of the mirror. It was three hours until the company party started.

It is strange, the secretary thought as she looked at the clock above the glass corridor, that the ticking of the clock doesn't really have anything to do with time. The hands are pushed forward by batteries, not by time. Although, if time slowed down, the clocks would slow down too, of course, because time determines the speed at which everything goes forward. She studied her hands as she slowly moved them before her eyes. The people who were walking down the corridor were laughing and joking. The secretary pictured herself laughing and joking in her dress.

“She is great,” people would say to each other, and then someone would ask her to go to a restaurant and they would be inseparable ever after, and if this person had to pick one person to be on an island with, it would be her, without a doubt and the other way around.

“Yes,” the secretary said, “at first she did not know anyone, but after the office party, she was the one everybody talked about.”

THE SHOW IS OVER

“Young people don't have respect anymore,” a man in a brown corduroy jacket said to Mrs. Blue as she rearranged her hair in the mirrored window of the supermarket. “All they do is talk on their phones. They don't even know there was a war. They're gonna yap all through the Memorial Service, I tell you.”

Mrs. Blue did not reply. Just because she was old didn't mean she wanted to complain about everything. She placed her fur hat in the basket of her rolling walker and went into the store. “‘Potatoes, chocolates, lettuce, hand cream, tea, butter,'” she read out loud
from her shopping list as she pushed her rolling walker through the store's aisles.

The groceries she put in the basket, the hand cream under her fur hat.

“Nine-fifty.” The girl behind the register had a name tag that said
CATHY
and a gold plate on one of her teeth.

“Here you go, sweetheart,” Mrs. Blue said.

“One day there will be a virus in those mobile phones,” the man in the corduroy jacket said, standing in line behind Mrs. Blue. “It will climb into their ears and eat their brain from the inside out. Mark my words.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Blue said. “Have a nice day.”

“We'll see about that,” the man in the line said, and the register girl said, “Yeah,” but Mrs. Blue did not hear them, she was already rolling out of the store with her walker, back to her flat. Around the corner she took the hand cream from under the fur hat and placed it in the bag with the groceries. She pulled the hat over her ears, blocking out the noise from the kids shouting outside Hadi's Phone Centre, and, keeping her gaze on the pavement, she pushed her rolling walker down the street to her apartment, ignoring all the traffic lights, the passersby, the drivers who shouted at her from behind the wheel when she pushed her walker in front of their cars. Mrs. Blue did not look up at anyone or anything until the doors of the elevator in her building finally closed behind her. The violin music playing in the elevator, which always seemed sad and dooming to her when she was on her way down, now sounded comforting and pleasant, like the sound of the kettle and the tune of her television show.

“I'm here, Gracie,” Mrs. Blue told the television. She had placed all the groceries in the cupboard and was now sitting on the couch, with her tea on the table and the chocolates on her lap. “You can come out.”

“Your dog needs strong bones,” the television answered. On the screen a dog was running in slow motion. It jumped through a ring. Its skeleton slowly became visible like an X-ray.

“I don't have a dog,” Mrs. Blue said. “Thank you anyway.” She looked at the clock. Last time Rick had given Grace a horrible blow on the head. Who knew if Mario could fix his car in time to come save her.

Finally, the clock above her dining table cuckooed. Mrs. Blue sat up on the couch, humming in anticipation.

“Today we are going to talk about pregnant teenagers,” a woman on the television said. “Girls as young as twelve are having babies, some of them from men they have only met once.” People on rows of chairs in front of the woman clapped.

Mrs. Blue didn't clap. She looked at the clock. It was three past.

“Sally is just fifteen and pregnant, but she is not sure who the father is.”

“Boo,” the people on the chairs said while Sally walked in.

“No,” Mrs. Blue said. “It's time for
Change of Hearts
.”

“So what?” the pregnant girl yelled. “So what I did that?”

Mrs. Blue looked at the clock again, at the screen and back at the clock again. Then she got up to look at the bedroom clock. Three past five. “Something's wrong,” Mrs. Blue said. “The voice is supposed to come on now and say, ‘The heart is a restless thing, where will it take us next?'” She walked up to the television and narrowed her eyes to read the channel.

“And one of the possible fathers is your mother's ex-boyfriend!” the presenter yelled.

Mrs. Blue looked startled at the screen. A screaming woman ran onto the stage. “
Beep
,” she yelled.

“Oh.” Mrs. Blue took a step back and lost her balance. She tilted sideways and stumbled over the table, grabbing the tablecloth. The cup got pulled over and tea poured over the chocolates.

“You
beep beep
,” the woman on the TV screamed.

Mrs. Blue got hold of the remote. The tea formed a stream on the table. She switched to the other channels: cars tumbling over straw bales, someone cooking, news, news, girls in a limousine, dancing, a microscope, a building blowing up. “Grace?” Mrs. Blue asked while switching. “Grace?”

But there was no Grace. “Where is my show?” Mrs. Blue asked, but there was no one to answer her.

There was only Sally. Sally was crying. Her mascara ran down her face. She held her hand on her belly. “At least I won't be alone anymore,” she said.

“I don't want this.” Mrs. Blue tried to pull herself up, holding on to the table. The tea streamed from the table onto her stockings.
“I want my show.”

“We'll be right back with this double episode,” the woman said in the microphone. “Every day from five to six, instead of
Change of Hearts.
Don't miss it.”

GRACE IN THE STORY

Grace was lying on the floor in the hallway of Rick's mansion, her eyes closed, her right cheek and temple swollen and red. Rick did not hit her as hard as he could have, but hard enough for her to lose consciousness. The house was quiet, nothing moved, nothing made a sound, the clock above the front door did not even tick. There was no dust floating around in the light of the chandelier.

Then Grace's eyelashes moved. She opened her eyes. Moaning softly, she raised her head and looked about her. She glanced at the carpet she was lying on, the walls of the hallway, the door to the stairs. Slowly she sat up against the wall and turned her face toward the dresser.

THE OFFICE PARTY