Rus Like Everyone Else (15 page)

Rus switched on the light on the nightstand and looked at Wanda. She was lying in the bed next to his, sleeping silently. The sheets followed the shape of her body. Her body seemed harmless to him now, not like when she came into the shower, but a bit like the mountains Modu described when he talked about the country
he came from, where there was nature as far as you could see. The land of milk and honey.

Rus looked at Wanda. He would like some tea with milk and honey. His mother always used to make that for him when he got wet in the rain. Now he thought about his mother, and the memories of the empty debit card, Francisco, and the debt collectors tumbled into his head straight behind it, the sign they put on his door saying
IMPENDING AUCTION
.

“Wanda?” he said in her ear softly. “Wake up.”

Yesterday, after the shower, when she was drinking more of the wine and came into the room where he slept, she told him she had moved too fast when she went into the shower, and Rus nodded, although he did not think she was fast, she had been very slow in the way she took her clothes off and all that, but he did not want to think about that again. There was a long story about a man who had left her, despite what he promised, and although Rus fell in and out of sleep while she talked, he understood why she was sad. “I have been left too,” he had said half asleep. “First I was left by my mother and Modu, and then by Francisco. Francisco told me he was my friend, but he left me. Now he is in Russia with his uncle. He said they are always looking for people to work with the submarines,” Rus mumbled to Wanda, who had fallen asleep in the bed next to his. “He said, ‘We will go together, Rus, you and me.' But then he took my clothes and the money and he left me behind on the bridge.” Mumbling like this, Rus had slowly fallen into a deep sleep and dreamed of Francisco in the submarine in Russia with his uncle and other men who did not fit in. They all had dark curls and dark eyebrows like Francisco, and Rus dreamed they were drinking and singing in their underwater home, steering the submarine from one harbor to another, waiting for him.

Now it was early in the morning and Rus was awake again in this strange room. In the distance a police siren sounded. It was the same kind he heard when he was at home. Rus pinched Wanda's shoulder. She opened her eyes. “Can we go to my house? Can you drive me to my house?”

Wanda's eyes were not soft when she looked at him, but hard, like they were in the tax office when he first came in. “We go at nine,” she said. “The alarm will notify you.” Then she went to sleep again.

Rus pulled the blanket up to his chin and looked at the ceiling. He had no money for the bus, and he did not want to make Wanda mad. Lying very quiet he watched the first rays of sunlight enter the room, light up the tiny hairs on Wanda's earlobe, then creep farther to light up the hairs on her upper lip and her chin. Quiet and immobile, he stayed under the sheets, not breathing too loud, waiting until he would hear an alarm go off.

ONLY THE SUN COMES UP FOR FREE

The secretary walked into the office. She felt strange as she sat down. She wondered if things would be different today, now that she'd met everyone at the party, now that she might have fallen in love. She took the new diary out of her purse and placed it open next to her computer. The people in the hallway walked by hastily without looking in.

How about that party? the secretary practiced in her mind. Me, for one, I slept with the lawyer. Yes, the food was very nice—

“Secretary.” The manager interrupted her thoughts from his office. “Secretary!”

The secretary got up from her desk and went into the manager's office. The manager was eating chocolates at his desk.

“Secretary,” the manager said, “you are a very nice person.”

He offered her the bonbons. “But,” he continued, “you are, in fact, too nice a person. That is why I will tell you a secret, which will change your position in the office.” He leaned forward toward her and pointed a laser pen at her chest. “The e-mails from pharmaceutical companies who offer medicines do not need to be replied to.”

“Oh,” the secretary said.

“It will save you time,” the manager said.

“Yes,” the secretary said. “Thank you.”

“You will have much more time,” the manager said, “which reminds me that I need my dry cleaning picked up. Dearest secretary.”

“All right,” the secretary said. She got up from the chair.

“And, secretary,” the manager said as she was opening the door,
“you also don't have to send e-mails around asking everyone if they need that kind of medicine. It comes across as strange.” He pointed the laser at her forehead. “People think you're strange.”

When the secretary sat down again she deleted the e-mail she was writing about sleeping aids and called Sammy at the Wash-o-Matic to say that she would pick up the manager's laundry at eight. When the lawyer walked past her office he did not greet her, but he did put a file on her desk.

“Twenty-five thousand, no less,” he said in his phone when he walked away. “Only the sun comes up for free.”

The file came from the Company Guidelines and it was about professional conduct and interoffice relationships. The lawyer had circled “personal relationships of any kind should not be visible to fellow employees.” Below it the lawyer had written “Copy room in five minutes.”

The secretary opened her diary. “Copy room,” she wrote in it. “Appointment.” She circled the word “appointment.” The sun shone bright through the windows of the glass hallway and reflected patterns on the paper of the diary. It reminded her of when she went to the pool with her parents and the sun shone in the water. She remembered how blue the sky was and how green the grass. Even when it rained there were colors everywhere.

The secretary stood up and walked to the copy room. The lawyer came in after five minutes. He lifted up her skirt and put her on the copying machine. With one hand he grabbed her, with the other he pressed the copy button.

“I saw this in a movie,” he said in her ear.

A few minutes later the secretary climbed down from the copy machine.

She looked at the copies. Her thighs looked like big dark gray rectangles sitting on top of a light gray hand.

“When I was eleven,” she said, “I would go to the pool and lie on my back in the grass to look and listen. It seemed like all the colors went straight into my eyes, all the sounds poured into my ears and my head and down into my body. It was as if everything said my name. ‘Laura. Laura.' As if I were drinking up every second. Did you ever have that?”

“I had marbles,” the lawyer said while he collected the copies and
put them in a filing folder. “I had the most marbles in the neighborhood. Even candy pearls. My father bought them in America.”

The secretary rolled down her skirt.

“Candy pearls were very rare,” the lawyer said as he closed the door behind him.

The secretary looked around the copy room. She tried to let the colors go into her eyes, but the colors remained attached to their objects. There was just the lamp on the ceiling and the cardboard boxes. In the hallway people were laughing. The secretary rubbed her forehead. She looked at the people who walked through the glass hallway and she suddenly felt very tired. “Hello,” she practiced. “Pleased to meet you. Got any vacation plans?”

TOO LATE

Ashraf ran down the street to the Royal Mail Centre. They had let him out just before eight o'clock, but he would not get his van back until he showed his license. Although he ran most of the way, he was still half an hour late. At the center his boss was sitting on a camping chair in the parking lot, smoking a cigar. He was leaning forward, resting his upper body on his arms. Behind him a fat boy was carrying boxes to his van. Ashraf brushed the sweat off his forehead when he quickly walked up to his boss.

“My van is at the police station because I did not have my license,” he said. “That is also why I'm late. But I still have enough time to do both areas. If you give me my license I can get my van and start straightaway.”

“I gave the areas to Richie,” the post boss said. He blew out the smoke of his cigar with an agonized expression on his face. “You weren't around so Richie here is going to take both of the areas. You can go with him. You need to train for three weeks anyway.” He nodded at the boy. “Richie is Frank's nephew. Frank is the district boss over here.”

“Richie,” the boy said. He extended his hand and grinned. “Guess who I'm named after.” Ashraf did not shake his hand and did not guess. He looked at the boss.

“You were going to give them to me,” he said. “You said so.”

“People say all kinds of things,” the boss said, sighing. “You should learn that. It's a life lesson.” He took the transport forms from Richie and leafed through them. Ashraf took a deep breath. He tried to think clearly, but he just felt angry. The boss pressed the paper on his knee and signed it. Richie was poking a snail on the ground with a stick; it retreated into its shell.

The post boss looked up at Ashraf. “I know you are not happy, but think of my position. Reorganizations after thirty years of working with the same solid system. Today I have to tell someone who has worked here for twenty-five years we are going to fire him. I was with this man when his wife died, I was at the funeral.”

His eyes shone in the sunlight. “And did I tell you my son is in the hospital?”

Ashraf nodded. Richie was hammering onto the shell of the snail with the stick. The sound was very loud; it was almost as if it were happening inside Ashraf's ears.

“I do not need to be a trainee first,” Ashraf said. “I have experience.”

“They tried to wake him today by putting electrodes in his brain,” the boss said. “He did not wake up. Of course he didn't. I could have told them that.”

The boss looked up at Ashraf.

“He was a chauffeur. He had a nice car, a regular employer. Then he swells up like a balloon. Two hundred and fifteen kilograms. ‘Why, Freddy,' I asked him, ‘why did you eat so much? Why do you keep putting food in your mouth?' But he never answered—it was as if he didn't care. He was not even a cook or something, he was just a chauffeur. Until he could not get in his car anymore. ‘Don't you care that you don't fit in your own car anymore?' I asked him. ‘What on earth goes on in your head?' And you know what he said? He said: ‘Obviously, it is a crying shame.' With a stone-cold face. Like he was some kind of TV presenter. ‘Obviously, it is a crying shame'! Who says that kind of thing? And his eyes were so light and strange, it was like he really believed it.”

The post boss bent forward and leaned on his arms again. He put out the cigar stub with his foot and sighed deeply. Ashraf felt a lump in his throat and his blood was racing. He tried to
determine what he should do, but his thoughts did not want to start. The shell of the snail was making a breaking sound.

“Yesterday there were flowers by his bed,” his boss said. “‘I am ill when you are ill,' the card said. ‘Lots of love from Mr. Wheelbarrow.'” The boss shook his head. “Mr. Wheelbarrow was his employer. My son used to drive him to the television studios every day, and to lunch and a thousand other engagements. But such a card. Is that normal? I just don't know anymore.”

Ashraf did not listen to the post boss. He thought of the areas and his plan. “It is not fair,” he said with a choked-up voice. “You promised me those areas, I was counting on them.” He knew he sounded like a child, but it really wasn't fair to him.

“Well,” the boss said, “all right. When you are done training, you can start with one area. 1985 will be free by Friday.” Then he got up from the chair and walked toward the Royal Mail Centre. “Four days training, with Richie there.”

A girl with a blond ponytail drove past Ashraf and Richie toward the center. She waved at them.

“She likes me,” Richie said. Ashraf did not answer. He took the stick from Richie and threw it away. They both looked down as Ashraf picked up the snail and put it in the bushes. Then they silently loaded the boxes into Richie's red van.