Rus Like Everyone Else by Bette Adriaanse Read Free Book Online

Or tell the collectors? What should we do?”
    Francisco pulled Rus down to his chair.
    â€œEasy,” he said. “It’s past ten. They’re closed now. Have a drink.”
    He pressed the glass against Rus’s lips.
    â€œWe’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.
    â€œMy 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?”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œLike you?” Rus started, but Francisco pulled Rus from his stool and pressed him close against his chest, bringing his mouth to his ear.
    â€œSubmarines, 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.
    â€œI like to lie on my back and watch you,” he told her, “so I can seeall of your bouncing beauty.” He also liked his tongue in her mouth when kissing, but not her tongue in his.
    He called me