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.
LIKE A PEAR
Mr. Lucas took the chair from under the handle of his bedroom door. He quickly walked into the living room, rushed past the clock in the hallway. “Nine thirty,” he said, “three hours late.” Mr. Lucas had not fallen asleep until four in the morning, and now he had overslept. It was the first time in a long time his daily routine was disrupted. He was too late for the morning news, too late to put the garbage out in the dark without anybody seeing him.
Mr. Lucas took off his underpants next to the bath and opened the tap. With his back against the cold tiles of the wall and one finger in the stream, he waited for the water to get warm.
As the water of the shower ran over him, he felt the memories of his bad night wash away. Yesterday he was thrown off balance, Mr. Lucas thought as he looked at the water running down his belly, but that did not have to change anything. The problems at the Weekly Paper and with the white van were things from the past and he was dealing with the future now. He was a different Mr. Lucas, a wiser, calmer Mr. Lucas: a Mr. Lucas who was not led by impulses and panic attacks, a Mr. Lucas who was deemed worthy to meet the Queen.
Mr. Lucas wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped out of the bath. He rubbed himself dry and examined himself in the mirror. Since he was eighteen his appearance hadn’t even deteriorated that much, he thought, as happened to so many men. He still stood up straight. He just had more hair, and it was gray now, and a slightly rounder belly. He had ripened, Mr. Lucas thought, like a fine pear he had ripened, and with this pleasant thought he walked into his bedroom, where he pulled the green trousers over his wet belly and the shirt over his chest.
THE STUDIOS
Mrs. Blue’s heels echoed when she stepped over the threshold to the set. Around her lamps flashed on with a kzzk kzzk sound, more and more of them, spreading a blinding white. Mrs. Blue’s eyes slowly adjusted to the light. When the yellow circles faded from her view, a familiar pastel-colored vision emerged in front of her.
“Fata Morgana...” Mrs. Blue whispered, and the house did in fact look a lot like a Fata Morgana, the way the large pink living room, with its chandeliers, vases, and beige cushions, lay in the middle of the large, empty set. The Fata Morgana mansion was the place where Rick and Grace fell in love after she had her miscarriage, and where Rick met with his long-lost twin for the first time. All the members of the Valvadov family gathered here, all the people who knew how to remain elegant during a fight, collected while crying.
With trembling hands, Mrs. Blue pushed her walker toward the house. “Grace,” she said. Her voice echoed between the walls of the studio. She rolled onto the parquet in the dining room, past the dining table with the pink candles, and walked into the pastel- colored living room. She let her fingers run over the leather chesterfield and she shouted, “Gra-ace!” in a singsongy way.
No one answered. Mrs. Blue stood still in the living room. She picked up a picture frame standing on the table. There was no picture in it, just colored paper. An outline was drawn on the table where the picture frame stood. Mrs. Blue put it back on the table. She stretched out her hand to pick up one of the encyclopedias from the bookshelves, but her hand hit the wall. The shelves and the books were painted on the wallpaper. There were lamps on tall black poles standing everywhere and the living room had only one wall. When Mrs. Blue came closer, she saw the wall was standing on wheels.
“What have they done to the house?” Mrs. Blue whispered. She lifted her walker over the cords on the floor and steered it out of the living room, crossing the hall toward the bathroom. “Grace?” she said, knocking on the bathroom door, but no one answered. She opened the tap but no water came out.
“Where are you, Gracie?” Mrs. Blue shouted. “Can you hear me?”
Grace did not say anything. Mrs. Blue went into the hallway and placed her stroller next to the stairs. She pressed the purse with the gun against her body and stepped onto the first step. “I’m coming, Grace,” she said, clinging on to the railing of the stairs. With a tearing sound the rail came loose from the wall. “Oeh,” Mrs. Blue said. She almost fell over, but she did not give up. With her body pressed against the wall, the purse in her hand, she slowly but determinedly climbed up the winding stairs. “Coming, Gracie, coming.”
GRA
CE IN THE STORY
“Gra-cie!”
Grace opened her eyes. She was leaning against the dresser in the hallway. It was half dark. What was she doing here? Did she just hear someone call her name?
“Gra-ace!”
A woman’s voice in the distance. Grace opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Then she heard the woman’s voice again, closer this time: “Where are you, Gracie? Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Grace tried to say, “I’m here,” but the words did not seem to reach her lips. She looked down at her hands. She was holding a hairpin that was sticking out of the lock of the dresser.
“Forgive me, Rick,” she heard her voice say.
The words came out slow and hoarse. Why am I saying this? Grace thought. Why am I doing these things? A vague memory came back to her, something that had happened before, with Rick. Grace looked up at the mirror. Her cheek was bruised red and purple and her lip was swollen.
Help, she thought, trying to form the words with her mouth. Help. Help.
MRS. BLUE COMES DOWN
“Madame!” a voice shouted up the stairs. “You have to come down!”
Mrs. Blue did not look where the voice came from and continued climbing the stairs to the hallway where she knew the dresser was.
“We are going to break down the set!” the voice shouted.
A crane drove past Mrs. Blue making a beeping reverse sound. Mrs. Blue did not listen. She climbed and climbed steadily, until she reached the door. Her heart beat loudly as she opened it. “Gracie!” she said as she stepped onto the platform. Gracie was not there, there was only the large wooden dresser, but Mrs. Blue continued talking to Gracie all the same. “I’m here now, Gracie,” she said as she opened the dresser. “I will take care of you.”
Below the crew members were looking up at her. They saw her fumble with her purse and talk to herself.
“Madame! You really need to get down from there!” they shouted, but it was not necessary. Mrs. Blue was already coming down, crashing through the thin ceiling with a scream and landing on a forklift truck.
GRACE IN THE STORY
“Grace, where are you?” Rick’s voice thundered from the ground floor. His footsteps banged on the stairs.
Grace tried to pull away from the dresser, but her hands seemed to be glued to the lock. Help! she thought, panicking. Please help me!
She tried to push the words from her mind to her lips, trying to reach the woman whose voice she heard: “Please. Help. Me.” The words came out of her mouth, but they were too soft, a whisper.
Behind her the door opened. She screamed inaudibly.
“You couldn’t let it go, could you?” Rick shouted. He slowly raised the baseball bat above his head.
At that moment, Grace’s hands turned the lock of the dresser. The lid fell open.
There was a shiny metal gun lying inside, with H. Blue engraved on it.
RUS’S GIRL
Under the covers of the hospital bed, Rus lay frozen. A girlfriend? How did he get a girlfriend? How long had he been asleep for?
One day, when Modu was listening to his music and tapping his feet to the rhythm, he had stopped the music to tell Rus that a man needs a woman for everything, but all women need is someone to complain to. For a second Rus pictured a long-haired woman sitting by his bed, day in and day out, complaining and complaining to his sleeping head.
A woman’s voice coming from behind the door interrupted his thoughts. “Do you know what is wrong with him yet?”
Rus lowered his head onto the mattress, pulling the blanket up to his nose.
“We have checked him for alcohol poisoning, pneumonia, Ménière’s, labyrinthitis, and BPPV to see what caused his vertigo,” a male voice said.
Rus nodded invisibly. His vertigo. It was a beautiful word, and it sounded very serious.
“Apparently he has repeatedly spoken about three bottles of vodka to the ambulance personnel, but his blood levels indicate no more than two glasses, maybe two and a half. So it is not alcohol poisoning. His balance organ is fine too, and his ears look normal. I did hear him sneeze just now, so he might have a cold.”
A cold! Rus thought. Surely I have more than a cold. He had a dry throat and a thumping headache like he had never had before.
“A cold!” the girlfriend said in a strict voice. “Surely he has more than a cold.”
Rus liked the girlfriend now. He opened his eyes a millimeter, looking through his eyelashes. There she was, the girlfriend, sticking up for him. She had red cheeks, big breasts, and a white blouse with a flower-print skirt, and she pointed her finger at the doctor. “This man collapsed in the middle of the tax office. I think he needs serious care.”
Rus recognized her now. The woman was not a girlfriend; she was Wanda, from the tax office.
“And what about his sleeping?” Wanda said. “I personally find it very worrying that he is still asleep.”
“He is not asleep,” the doctor said. “He ate his pudding while we were out of the room. It is on his chin.”
“Well, I’m just scared that he is in a coma,” Wanda said.
“Right now he is looking at us through the slits of his eyes,” the doctor said. “Get up, Mr. Ordelman, you are ready to go.”
Rus sat up in the bed and seized the doctor’s arm. “I’m not going anywhere,” he shouted wildly. “I am a patient now. You cannot make me leave the hospital!”
MR. LUCAS AND THE SECRETARY
“Excuse me.”
Mr. Lucas opened the window to the street slightly. He was standing behind the curtain. “Excuse me,” he said again.
Across the street, on the sidewalk, the girl he was saying “excuse me, excuse me” to stopped walking. She looked about her to see where the voice came from.
“It’s me, Mr. Lucas,” Mr. Lucas said. He waved nervously, his hand sticking out of the window opening.
The girl was wearing a straight skirt with a yellow blouse. Mr. Lucas had seen her often, walking down the street to the supermarket. From a distance she looked very businesslike, but when she came closer you could see her face was very soft and nervous and her walk was without direction, intermittently slowing down and picking up speed, and she was always looking up at all the people who passed her by. She was the only person Mr. Lucas could think of asking, because she might be even weaker than him.
The girl came up to Mr. Lucas’s window; he saw her face and thin black hair through the translucent curtain. “Come a little bit closer, please,” Mr. Lucas said. “Closer.”
The girl came closer to the window. “Hello,” she said. “I’m—”
“Yes,” Mr. Lucas said, “thank you. I have a secret.”
He nodded behind the sheer curtain.
“Yes,” he said again. He brought his mouth closer to the opening of the window and lowered his voice. “A secret. And you might be able to help me. It is so that I have received an invitation for the Memorial Service, to stand in the special Survivor Area, across from where the Queen and the veterans are. I have been selected for that, I, Mr. Lucas.”
“Wow,” the girl said, lowering her voice too. “That is great.”
“And now,” Mr. Lucas said, “and now I need an objective eye to see whether or not I am overlooking anything in my preparations. A female eye.”
He got even closer to the window and checked to ensure there were no other people in the neighborhood who could hear him. “I might as well tell you that in the past I have not always made the right decisions, there have been irregularities, there has been clouded judgment on my part.”
“Ah,” the girl said. “I see. A mental problem. I also have one. The doctor said I should talk to new people.”
“Although,” Mr. Lucas continued quickly, “I have to say that what I’ve done was not as bad as it was portrayed by some people. It was with the best intentions, you see—I just wanted to improve things a little bit, add some spice to it, which I should not have done. But I should not get into that.”
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nbsp; He cleared his throat and rubbed his forehead. The sweat tickled his skin.
“And that,” he continued, “and that is why I have not been outside as often as other people may have been. And with regard to my upcoming event, this means I’m afraid I might not be completely up to date. Although I have maps and timetables and the bus schedule and I listen to the radio quite a lot, there are certain areas in which certainly I am not quite up to date. In regards to what is suitable.”
He paused to catch his breath. It was the longest conversation he had had in a long time, and it was with a real person, whose face was close, just on the other side of the curtain. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
“In the fashion sense, I mean,” he said. “I am not up to date in the fashion sense. So maybe I could get your opinion.”
With that sentence, Mr. Lucas opened the curtain and stood face-to-face with the girl who lived across his street, showing her his round, pale face, his ivory glasses, the hat with a dent, and his old green suit.
IN WANDA’S CAR
Rus was in a car with Wanda. He was holding a plastic card in his hands. The card was his passport; Wanda had brought it for him. Rus looked at the card. “Rus Ordelman,” it read, and then his personal number. Wanda had told him a long story about how everyone who was born had to have a number, because it meant you exist, and it also meant you had rights, such as the right to have a house, which you had to buy or pay rent for, so you had to get a job that gave you money, of which you also gave a part as taxes, which gave you the right to use the roads. Or something like that.
“I had your photo because everyone who comes into the tax office has his picture taken by a hidden camera while he waits for the sliding door,” Wanda said as she took a turn. “It’s a very nice system.”
All the while she was talking Rus was staring at this passport. The picture of his face that the secret camera had taken was the first picture ever taken of him. But mostly he stared at the name that was written below it. Ordelman. He could not manage to say it out loud yet. It didn’t suit him at all, this name. Although he had never really thought about his surname, he knew he had not wanted it to be like this. Ordelman. The name had sounded slightly familiar in the hospital, and he remembered now that the name was written on his mother’s debit card too.
Rus Like Everyone Else Page 7