Rus Like Everyone Else by Bette Adriaanse Page B

secretary said, but Mrs. Blue did not respond. The secretary stood there for a few seconds, not knowing what to do, until she said, “Well,” and “Just let me know if you need anything,” and “Thank you for tea.”
    â€œFor God’s sake, Laura,” Mrs. Blue said with her eyes closed as the secretary stepped out into the hallway. “Don’t be such a pushover. Take what is coming to you. All right?”
    â€œAll right, of course,” the secretary said, and she closed the door with a soft click behind her.
    GRACE IN THE STORY

    â€œYou couldn’t let it rest, could you?” Rick said, his voice strange and mechanic. He was standing in front of Grace, the baseball bat raised above his head. He did not seem to see her, the gun she was holding in her shaking hands. He did not seem to hear her when she said, “I will shoot.”
    The bat crashed onto the dresser, splintering the wood. Grace ducked right in time. With her back pressed against the wall she watched how Rick pulled the bat from the wood and started speaking to the empty space in front of him, as if she were lying there.
    â€œI’m sorry, Gracie,” Rick said. “But you left me no choice.” Sweat glistened on his forehead and his face looked gray and exhausted, as though he had been awake for days on end.
    Grace folded her finger around the trigger of the metal gun and aimed at Rick’s legs.
    MR. LUCAS AND THE HEADLIGHTS

    Mr. Lucas was sitting on the chair next to his window. The girl had told him green might not be appropriate for a Memorial Service, and the yellow shirt might be a little bit too cheerful as well. She tried to tell him kindly, Mr. Lucas was aware of that, rambling about her own first day at the office, when her manager had told her that her skirts were much longer than those his previous secretary used to have, but Mr. Lucas had been so acutely nervous and ashamed of getting it wrong again that he had stammered, “Excuse me, excuse me,” and shut the window while she talked.
    Now Mr. Lucas was sitting by the window with his head bent, his chin on his chest, but he was not sleeping. He was reprimanding himself. “You cannot even understand a simple thing like wearing black to a memorial. Must always be at the forefront, always get the attention, always think too much of yourself.”
    In his hands he was holding the small scissors. He used those to cut up the yellow shirt, cutting it into tiny pieces so he would never consider wearing it again. The suit he placed in a tub filled with water and ink, to color it darker. He watched the fabric sink in the water.
    In the background the news was playing. “I have received threats to my life from these people,” a politician said. “I can’t say too much, but it proves they are violent by nature.”
    By the time the evening fell Mr. Lucas was breathing in and breathing out normally again. He took the suit out of the tub and held it up in the air in front of the window. The moonlight showed its modest dark green color, almost black; nobody would be able to tell the difference.
    Mr. Lucas was almost feeling completely calm and certain again, until he saw two familiar headlights approach his house through the thin fabric of the curtain.
    ASHRAF AND THE CELLS OF THE BODY

    Ashraf lay down in the passenger seat of his white van, the back of his chair reclined. He had parked it in a quiet street on the corner of the canal. He was going to sleep in the van tonight, because his aunt Nadia had found out he’d quit his job at City Statistics and they were all being hysterical about it. His uncle kept going on about the van, how it would be broken in a week. His mother was worrying about the payments on the mortgage and that his savings were gone.
    Ashraf pulled the sleeping bag up over his chin and looked at the boats rocking back and forth in the canal. He wondered if there were fish in the canal and