Rus Like Everyone Else (5 page)

It was five past seven and the annual company party had started. The invitation said, “Ladies in dresses and men in suits, but not the other way around please!”

The secretary had made the invitations and she had also invented the joke herself. She did not know whether people had thought it was funny because the invitations were sent in the mail, so she hadn't been there when they read it. The secretary was wearing the sea-green dress. She was not wearing a feather boa. Her boss was making a speech, standing on one of the desks.

“A great team is like a lasagne,” her boss said. “Separately, the ingredients are not very impressive, but if you put them together it can be very nice. Also, if you don't cook the pasta, you can't eat it at all.”

The secretary looked out the window. They were putting up fences around Memorial Square.

“I always have ketchup with my lasagne,” the secretary said to a
woman standing next to her by the window. “Some people don't like it, but I do.”

The woman pointed at her phone. “Excuse me,” she said, “I'm shopping on the Internet.”

“Yes,” the secretary said to no one in particular. “I wonder who made those nice invitations.” She walked over to the drinks section and looked at the bottles.

“That's a wine from the south of Spain,” Fokuhama said. “Allow me.”

He poured the wine in a glass and watched her as she took a sip. “It is a decent wine,” he said, “not like a Gran Reserva Rioja from 2002 or a Barolo 2003, but it has a nice aftertaste that's reminiscent of violas.”

The secretary swallowed the wine. “Yes,” she said. Her grandfather used to have a violin that looked a lot like a viola, but it turned out it wasn't one. She did not want to say that. She wanted to say something sensible. “Oh, wine,” she tried. “Wine, wine.” She smiled at Fokuhama. He did not smile. She readjusted her dress. Fokuhama coughed.

“I see you are wearing a suit and not a dress,” the secretary said suddenly. She decided to wink too.

Fokuhama looked at her strangely.

“Oh,” he said. “Ah! Yes, no, not wearing a dress, no.”

The secretary said, “Ha ha,” and Fokuhama looked over his shoulder. He looks nervous, the secretary thought. She took a step toward him and lowered her voice. “Do you ever feel like you are a very interesting person on the inside, but it just doesn't come out? That interesting things sit there inside you, waiting, but they just won't come out?”

Fokuhama raised his eyebrows. “Hmm,” he said. “Yes, no.”

He hopped from one foot to the other. He was not very tall, Fokuhama. He said, “That is an interesting question you've got there.” He stood on his toes and looked over his shoulder again. “Good, good question indeed. That it does not come out but just sits there. Well, the manager is asking for me, I think. So nice to see you.”

The secretary watched Fokuhama slowly back away from her, navigating his way toward the manager's table. She squeezed her hand around the stem of her wineglass. She felt cold.

Everywhere in the room people were talking to one another animatedly. The secretary listened with deep concentration to fragments
of the conversations around her, sucking in the words: “You must give me the recipe, I love fruitcakes.” “Oh, sunsets, I can't get enough of them, really!” “Susan is wonderful, isn't she? A remarkable person, I do say.” “A good sunrise, on the other hand, can be nice too, don't get me wrong.” “To meet people, to really connect with them, that is just the most precious thing for me. And family, of course.” “I'm sorry, I'm just terrible with lighters. Ha ha ha.” “Meeting people, yes, indeed, it is something else, isn't it?”

Slowly, the secretary turned around, walked out the door quietly, through the hall and the large door, and into the cloakroom where she got her coat and where the clock said ten to eight. Just as she put on her coat she heard a voice behind her.

“Please don't tell me you're leaving,” a man said.

RUS NEEDS HELP

“Please,” Rus said. “I need your help.”

The checkout girl at the supermarket looked up from her register and raised her eyebrows.

“Hello,” she said. “You don't have any groceries.”

Rus was standing exasperated in front of her register, holding the letter pressed against his chest.

“I have a letter,” Rus said. “I have to pay taxes, but all my money is gone.” When Rus heard himself say it out loud like this the horror of the situation truly dawned on him. It was as if someone were holding him by the throat.

“Oh,” the girl said. “So why are you telling me this?” She waved at the customer behind Rus to give her the groceries.

“We see each other every day, Cathy,” Rus said. “Soup, bread, lemonade. That's me. I go to your register every day.”

“Yeah,” Cathy said. “Cathy's not my real name. I don't want all of East knowing my name.”

“I thought we could figure this out together,” Rus said. He placed the letter on her register. “I can't handle it alone, you see. I have never been in this situation before. I don't feel like myself; I can't even think clearly.”

“So call them,” Cathy said. She pushed the letter off her register
and took the groceries of the next customer from the conveyor belt. “Don't bother me.”

“But I can't call them. I don't have a phone. I don't have anything. My house is made from scrap material, and I don't know anyone.” Rus's voice broke.

He'd spent all afternoon pacing down the streets of the neighborhood, looking at the people in the streets and on the market square, looking for one familiar face among the people who passed him by. He had to have made at least one acquaintance during the twenty-five years he'd lived in his neighborhood, he thought; there had to be one person he'd left an impression on, one person who might want to help. But there wasn't. Sammy from the Wash-o-Matic did not recognize him, and the people who worked at the Starbucks did not remember ever even seeing Rus, or writing his name on a cup. Rus had never really paid attention to them either; his mind was usually somewhere else—on the sea, or already busy counting the customers—so he'd never really looked at the person attached to the hand that gave him the latte.

“Please,” Rus said to Cathy, “please call them for me.”

Cathy turned her chair toward Rus. She picked up the phone by her register.

“Tell them I'll never use the road again,” Rus suggested, but Cathy only said, “Assistance, please,” and hung up again. From the back of the store a broad-chested man in a suit came toward Rus, put his arm around him, and started pushing him toward the exit.

ALONE

From the bench on the bridge Rus watched a group of men in white gowns gathering on the corner of the street. Rus hadn't moved since he got there, not when the sun went down behind the glass apartment buildings, nor when the streetlights went on. He did not know what to do. He was scared to go to his house because the debt collectors were waiting for him there.

The men in the white gowns greeted each other with kisses. They were laughing and wrapping their arms around one another. Rus looked up longingly as they passed him on their way to the
mosque. He wanted to join them, to kiss and hug and go to the mosque too, and eat from the lamb and talk and joke and laugh so hard it would resonate between the mosaic walls.

If I were part of such a group, Rus thought, then I could tell them about the letter and they would help me and fix it for me. He imagined himself placing his letter on the dinner table, his head bent. When he looked up, he would see all the men placing money on the table, until, note by note, his burden was taken from him.

Rus looked down. In reality his burden was still there, in the shape of a white envelope, held by hands that were white from the cold. For the fifth time that day, Rus took the money out of his coat pocket and started counting again. Around him fewer and fewer cars drove down the street. The wind blew in his face, making his eyes water. Three hundred forty-one and forty-five cents, the outcome did not change.

“I don't have anyone,” Rus said with his face buried in the fur of his coat. “I am all alone.”

At that moment, Rus felt a hand touch his shoulder. It was a strong hand, and when Rus looked up he saw a tall, dark-haired man in a fluffy coat with white feathers poking out of holes in the fabric, smiling at him.

ASHRAF AND THE STAR CEILING

Ashraf was walking home from the Eid dinner at the mosque. He was walking ahead of his family. When he was younger he had really liked the Eid celebrations, but walking home from the Eid dinner was the last thing he'd done with his father and he did not want anyone to talk to him about it. It was a very clear night and there was a star ceiling above his head. Ashraf looked up at the crescent moon and the stars. The sight reminded him of primary school, when a teacher had told them about the universe for the first time, how it had no end, how the stars they looked at were the stars from the past. It had given him a horrible bellyache, this news, and at the time he could not understand how all his classmates could be playing in the schoolyard now that they had just received this information.

Ashraf thought about how it worked the other way around too; if someone at just the right distance in the universe happened to look at this street along the canal with a gigantic telescope, they would see him and his dad walking there, as they did five years ago. He could recall the image without effort: his father walking next to him, holding his shoulder, talking slowly and pressingly.

“Don't waste your opportunities, Ashraf. See what is out there, don't just do anything. You have to make calculated choices.”

Ashraf searched his pocket for the key to the white van he'd bought that day. He hadn't even told his family he'd quit his job at City Statistics yet. They'll find out later, he thought as he looked up at the skyline of the city. The cranes that were placing the monument on Memorial Square were visible all the way from where he stood on the bridge, towering over the houses. Ashraf took a deep breath. If only tomorrow went well.

IN THE DEATH CAR