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.
Glenn picked up his mother’s purse, which stood next to the couch, and opened it. It was filled with tiny folded papers: shopping lists, addresses, reminders. Glenn looked around the living room. Only now he noticed that there were yellow Post-its stuck on almost everything. He bent over to read the Post-it on the telephone. “Doctor,” it read, and a telephone number. There was a Post-it on the stove, which said “switch off”; there was a Post-it on the heating, which said “20 degrees”; there were Post-its on the door that read: “gloves” and “hand cream?” and “5470.”
He opened one of the drawers of his mother’s bedroom cabinet. It was filled with jars of hand cream, rows and rows of it. Glenn sat down on the chair. He pressed his hands against his face. His throat tightened.
I should have been here more. The thought went through Glenn’s mind and he suppressed it, but it came up again. He pressed his hand to his mouth and closed his eyes. He reminded himself of how she hardly ever responded to his calls and his letters. How she would not come over to America because she had to watch her soap opera every day. He sat down on the sofa in front of the television. The Post-it on the remote control read: “11 and 5 o’clock, channel 7.” The clock above the dining table cuckooed. He switched on the television. A smiling television presenter appeared. “Good news for all you Change of Heart fans out there. The show is back! And there are some new developments that you don’t want to miss!”
LAURA
Feeling the wind blow over her skin, the tiny hairs on her arms standing up, the secretary lay on a towel by the pool. There were voices and echoes, drumming of feet on the ground, and clouds packing together above her head.
Next to her, Ashraf was lying on a towel. He had come to her apartment in the morning. His boss had given him a day off. Together they had gone to his mother’s house, where he picked up his swim shorts and a towel. She remembered how he’d asked her to wait in the hallway when he went into his room.
“I still share it with my brother,” he said embarrassedly. His mother had gone up to her and squeezed her hand while she waited by the door.
“It’s been ages since I’ve been to the pool,” Ashraf said, looking up to the sky.
“For me too,” she said.
Above them the clouds were moving fast.
Ashraf turned to his side. “I like it here,” he said. “Thank you for bringing me.” He tapped lightly with his finger on her hand and smiled. “Laura.”
Then a woman’s voice shrieked. There was a rumble in the distance and the first drops came down, one by one splashing open on the grass and the tiles, making ripples in the surface of the pool. Around them people started collecting their things, their footsteps drumming on the ground as they ran to their cars. The kids in the pool laughed, diving underwater to hide from the rain. Laura felt each raindrop hit her as she lay on her back on the towel, tick on her thigh, tick on her rib cage, tick on her forearm, tick on her chin, tick, tick, tick.
“I’m going in,” she said to Ashraf, who was hiding under his towel, laughing. She got up and walked to the pool through the rain, the rain making a film of water on her skin. The wind whistled softly in her ears, grass stems bent under her weight and stuck out between her toes. The kids in the pool shouted, pushing one another’s heads down. The metal stairs were cold under her feet as she climbed up to the diving board. There were holes in the steps, making round shapes in the soles of her feet. When she jumped the wind swished around her body. She fell through the air and hit the water feetfirst. Then she was swallowed by it, sliding underwater, her legs going upward as she sank. She opened her eyes underwater. She could see the sun shimmering on the surface, and she saw the bodies around her, the legs kicking to stay up. When she came up again, sound poured into her ears like syrup and air into her lungs.
“Laura, Laura,” the world said to her, the wind touching her skin, the clouds floating over, and the people’s legs gliding past hers. “Yes,” she answered, and she stretched her arms and her legs out as she floated, the wind cooling the water in her belly button, the sun shining yellow on the rims of her eyes. “Yes, I am Laura. I am here.”
AIRPLANES
Rus was sitting on the ground next to the ATM. Every few minutes he got up and put the debit card in the machine. “No,” the machine said, “you cannot withdraw any money, no, no, there is nothing on there, no, still nothing, no.” He sat on the pavement with his plastic bag between his feet, and he stared at the straight skyline where his house used to be. The clouds were moving fast in the dark gray sky, like it was about to rain. In the old days Rus would have found importance and pleasure in watching them, analyzing their shape and their speed, but the joy he had in those things was taken from him.
A girl with a bike stopped in front of him.
She took an envelope out of her bag. “Your mail,” she said.
“No,” Rus said, covering his eyes with his hands. “I don’t want any more envelopes. Keep them away from me.”
She left the envelope at Rus’s feet, riding away from him and joining someone who was waiting at the corner. It started to rain. In the distance thunder rumbled. Rus opened the envelope. There was a note in it that read: “Dear Ma. Please use this. You can book any plane you want, at any hour. Just come. Glenn.” Attached to the note was a colored card that read “Gift Card” with airplanes drawn on it.
It started to rain heavily now. Someone threw a few coins at Rus’s feet and there was a man who came up to him and shouted, “Go back where you came from!”
Rus nodded at him.
“I will,” he said, and he got up from the ground. He did not even notice he was leaving his plastic bag, his last possessions, behind. Above him a seagull circled and landed on the sign of the train station. Again Rus nodded, and as the train rattled out of his city, he squeezed the gift card in his pocket and kept his eyes on the silver airplanes ahead.
RUSSIA
“I need to go to Russia,” Rus said.
Around him people were rolling their suitcases over the tiles of the airport. Outside, planes were gliding over the landing strips.
He was at a counter again, this time talking to a man behind a window that read AIR RUSSIA.
“When?” the man said.
“Now,” Rus said.
“Passport,” the man said.
“Yes,” Rus said. “Here it is. My name is Rus Ordelman and my
passport number is 3W456RR789.”
“Your name is Rus and you are going to Russia,” the man said.
“Yes,” Rus said.
“That is funny,” the man said. He turned to his computer and typed on the keyboard. “One way?” he asked.
“One way.” Rus’s stomach tingled. He placed the gift card in the slot.
“You are lucky, Rus,” the man behind the computer said. He laughed. “Lucky Rus.”
“I am?” Rus asked, not expecting to be lucky all of the sudden. He expected forms and paperwork and having to shout like Wanda.
“There is a plane leaving tonight, and there is a free seat.”
The man took Rus’s gift card. “You’ll get twenty back from this.”
Rus’s hands were shaking. For the first time in his life, he was making a grand decision, and he was making it himself. “Thank you,” Rus said as he took the money and the paper saying “Rus Ordelman. Seat 27A.”
“They say that when you’re on the right track, everything suddenly goes very easily,” the man behind the window said. “They say that it feels like sliding down a waterslide.”
“Yes,” Rus said. He had been on the waterslide at the pool with Modu. He carefully took the ticket in his hands.
“I don’t know if it’s true though,” the man said. “It probably isn’t.”
Right above the houses of our sleeping friends, who are all comfortable in their pajamas—except for Mrs. Blue, of course, and except for Glenn, who is looking at the framed clipping of Grace next to his mother’s bed—there is a plane flying over. In that plane we find our Rus, his face pressed against the window as you would expect from him. You can probably picture him by now, can’t you, how he presses his face against the window and eagerly reaches for the peanuts the flight attendant is handing out. He has never been out of the city, and now he is flying out of the country, with only a twenty and the coins that we gave to him when we passed by him at the debit machine.
Rus Like Everyone Else Page 22