Rus Like Everyone Else (11 page)

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.”

GRACE 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.