Rus Like Everyone Else (6 page)

It was the lawyer who'd said “please don't tell me you're leaving” to the secretary. He had leaned over the cloakroom counter while he said that, smiling at her. “I wore a suit especially for you, when I much, much rather would have worn a dress, so it would be very impolite of you to go without even talking to me.”

They had been the last ones to leave the office party, after eleven. The lawyer had talked to many people and told her everybody's name. Sometimes he'd stopped talking to wink at her. He had shown her his office, how he arranged his files, and he had grabbed her breasts from behind. He had stayed by her side all evening, not once leaving her to stand alone.

Now it was late and the secretary was sitting in the lawyer's car. There were stars in the sky and the car was parked by a gas station that was lit up against the dark blue. There was a song on the radio that was called “In the Death Car.” The secretary watched the lawyer through the window of the gas station. He was very handsome, the lawyer; everybody in the office said so. He was ordering things and made a pistol with his fingers at the man behind the counter. The man behind the counter put his hands in the air. They both laughed.

Social skills, the secretary thought.

The lawyer got back in the car. He'd gotten her a Diet Coke. “I don't like it when women drink regular Coke,” he said while he turned the ignition. “By the way, do you smoke?”

“I never really got around to it,” the secretary said. “But who knows.”

The lawyer laughed out loud. He brushed her cheek. “I can't stand women who smoke, you see.”

AN ANGEL

The name of the man in the fluffy coat was Francisco. “I was just passing by the bridge in my car on my way to a meeting,” he told Rus, “and then I saw you sitting there, with your pile of money, looking so miserable, and I was overcome by a need to help.”

Francisco had immediately parked his expensive car around the corner and went over to him. He was a businessman and a humanitarian.

“I felt connected to you,” Francisco told Rus, “and it felt like a sting in my chest.” He pointed at his chest.

Rus looked up at his new friend. Francisco had the face of an angel. His eyes and eyebrows were like they were painted on with black charcoal. Yellow clouds were passing over above them, giving his hair a golden glow.

COMRADES

“Can you believe them?” Francisco called out, shaking his head. “Do you ever even use the roads?”

Francisco had taken Rus to Café Valentines on the corner of the canal so he could read Rus's letter with the dedicated attention it deserved. He whistled between his teeth when he read the amount of taxes they were charging him.

Rus took a small sip of his drink. It was vodka. He'd never had that before, but it warmed his throat. He kept his eyes fixed on Francisco as he read the letter, his facial expression, his hands. He was also a kind of a tax expert, he'd told Rus: you have to be, when you are rich. There were many interesting similarities between
Rus and Francisco: Francisco also despised debt collectors, and he also didn't have any close friends in the city, until now. “We are comrades,” Francisco had said, and when Rus said his father was Russian Francisco had almost cried and kissed Rus on the forehead, because he too was Russian by origin.

“You don't have to pay this.” Francisco folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. He downed his drink in one go.

“I don't?”

“No,” Francisco said, slamming the glass on the table. “God, I needed that. And something to eat maybe.”

“I don't have to pay it?” Rus stood up from the table. “Shouldn't we call them? Or tell the collectors? What should we do?”

Francisco pulled Rus down to his chair.

“Easy,” he said. “It's past ten. They're closed now. Have a drink.”

He pressed the glass against Rus's lips.

“We'll go there tomorrow. Trust me.”

Rus swallowed a large gulp of the drink and looked at Francisco, his round face and sparkling eyes, the vodka still glistening on his lips, and he did trust him, completely. The warm feeling of trust spread through his chest. A feeling of dizziness also came over him in that moment; the paintings on the wall seemed to move away from him, falling to the right and back again to their old place.

Then Francisco was suddenly standing behind Rus, pulling him toward a stool at the bar. It seemed to Rus that time passed in waves all of a sudden, sometimes jolting forward and sometimes almost standing still. Also, he felt like telling Francisco things.

“My mother homeschooled me,” Rus told Francisco and the man pouring the drinks as he drank his second vodka by the bar. “She taught me everything I needed to know. All the wind directions, all the geography, the stars. We thought I was going to be a sailor, like my dad. He was helmsman on a cargo ship. But I never met him.” Rus took off his coat and stroked the fur. “All I have of him is this coat, he left it to my mother when he was shipped out, for when I was born, he said, for when I would grow up to be a sailor and it was cold at sea.”

Rus felt tears come up, and he pressed his hands against his eyes. He had never felt his sorrow in this way before: it felt pure and clear, like the vodka.

Francisco took the coat from Rus and stroked the fabric. “Why aren't you a sailor then?”

“I practiced every day when I was little,” Rus said, “helm, ropes, right-of-way regulations, lighthouse signs.”

He looked away from Francisco and the man who poured the vodkas. “I was supposed to start at shipping school when I was sixteen. But I did not pass the exam.” He closed his eyes. “I had seasickness.”

Rus was scared to look up at his new friend after he told him this, afraid that there would be a silence like the one between him and his mother when she drove him home from shipping school in the van, back to the apartment on Low Street, where he lived with her and Modu, where they had planned to live just the two of them when Rus was off to shipping school.

Francisco stood up from his chair and took Rus's face in his hands. “But that is beautiful, Rus,” he said, “beautiful! There is beauty in that story.”

The man behind the bar nodded.

“You try really hard to get something,” Francisco said to the bartender, “you spend your whole life working toward it, and then you fail. That is what life is about. There are no good things without the bad things, I always say. That is why people like me exist.”

“Like you?” Rus started, but Francisco pulled Rus from his stool and pressed him close against his chest, bringing his mouth to his ear.

“Submarines, Rus,” he whispered. “I have an uncle in Russia who works in the navy, selling discarded submarines. They're always looking for people to drive the submarines to the buyers. It is a job just for people like us. We will never be like everybody, Rus, no matter how hard we try, we will never fit in. We will go to Russia together. You don't get seasick underwater, because the waves are all on the top.”

THE SECRETARY ON THE LAWYER

The secretary went home with the lawyer, who lived in West, in an apartment building with a pool. Now she was naked on top of him and held on to the edge of the headboard.

“I like to lie on my back and watch you,” he told her, “so I can see
all of your bouncing beauty.” He also liked his tongue in her mouth when kissing, but not her tongue in his.

He called me a beauty, the secretary thought while sitting on top of him. She held on to her ankles and looked at her red-flushed reflection in the mirror above the bed. The lawyer had his eyes closed. With every piece of clothing he had taken off he'd looked more and more friendly to her. When finally he was sitting undressed at the foot end of the bed, his skinny body changing colors with the light of his atmosphere lamp, searching impatiently for condoms in his sock drawer, she had even found him touching.

And that is the first step of falling in love, she decided.

FRANCISCO TAKES IT ALL

Rus and Francisco stepped out of the café together. They walked under the stars in the street and Rus felt so happy; he had never felt so happy before. Francisco had taught him an old Russian song about pain and when you have it, and they had sung it over and over again in the café, with the man behind the bar as the third voice. Everything was intense and beautiful, and unfortunately Francisco had left his money in his sports car, so he paid with Rus's money, but it was all good because he would give it back to him.

Now Rus and Francisco were on their way to Hadi's Phone Centre to get Rus a phone, so they could call each other. The stars blinked and twinkled above them, and Rus took the letter from the tax office from his pocket and he wanted to tell Francisco how happy he was, but he did not have the words.

Suddenly they were at Hadi's, but the lights were all off.

“Hadi,” Francisco shouted. “Hadi.”

Hadi was not there, so they banged on the door until the cleaner appeared in the window.

“I can't sell the phones,” the cleaner said, “I'm the cleaner.” But he did let them in when Francisco explained he knew Hadi and his wife and his beautiful kids.

“Not very well though,” he explained to Rus under his breath, “not like I know you.”

Rus held on to Francisco's shoulder as he tried to step over the threshold into the shop.

The cleaner was wearing a brown suit and white running shoes, and he showed Francisco around the store.

Rus leaned against the wall. He had never been in a mobile phone store before. It was very warm there, warm and comforting. He smiled as he watched Francisco walk around the shop, looking at the phones and trying to lift the lids off the glass boxes. His day had turned from a nightmare into a dream, and it was all because of Francisco. He raised his hand and called him, because he wanted to talk about tomorrow, about what they would do. “Francisco,” Rus said, trying to stand up from the wall, “when are we going tomorrow?” but Francisco didn't answer, he was discussing something with the cleaner in a low voice. His voice was calming, and even though Rus couldn't make out the words, he enjoyed listened to the cadence of it, the whispered words, and he smiled at the cleaner when he pointed at him.