RUS AND THE LETTER
It took Rus a long time to find the post office, since he had never been there before, and it turned out to be the large orange building next to the supermarket. It had a square hallway, and the post office employees sat behind windows on the opposite side of the entrance. Rus waited for a very long time until it turned out he had to get a number from a pole and then he got it and then he waited a very long time again. But now it was his turn. The woman behind the window had broad shoulders and red hair.
“First of all,” Rus said, “I’d like to return this.” Rus held the letter in front of the window. Then he shoved it in the slot under the window toward the lady. “Secondly,” he continued, “I wish to declare that I don’t need any more mail, ever. Please inform the postman.”
The woman behind the window lifted her eyebrows and smiled at Rus. After that, she took the letter, turned it around, and shoved it back to Rus’s side of the window.
“You’re giving it back,” Rus said.
“Yes,” the woman said.
Rus looked at the letter. He put his hands on the paper and tried to push it back in the slot, but the woman blocked it with her hands. “I need the letter to go behind the window,” Rus said.
“You mean in front of the window,” the woman said.
“I am in front of the window,” Rus said, “and I want the letter to go behind the window, so that the window is between the letter and me. If you could move your hands, please.”
“You are behind the window,” the woman said. “I watched you fuss around with your tax bill behind the window like watching television.”
“It is not my tax bill,” Rus said. “I never get bills!”
The woman brought her face close to the little holes in the window. “When I am at home, I watch the people behind my window, walking and driving down the street. One day I saw an old lady fall into the bushes. It took fifteen minutes until someone helped her out of there. Nobody cares anymore, nowadays.”
“Madam,” Rus said, bringing his face close to the window too. “I just want to return this letter. I don’t want it. It makes me feel nervous and unpleasant. And all I’m asking of you is to take it back and tell the postman I don’t need his services. Would you do that?”
The woman smiled at Rus. She smiled for a while without saying anything, as if there weren’t a lot of people waiting with numbers. “Sir,” the woman said eventually, “the post is not sent by the post. It is sent by the sender.”
“Ah,” Rus said. “I see. I apologize. In that case, please inform the sender that I don’t want it anymore.” He paused to think. “All the senders.”
“It’s not possible,” the woman said.
“If you knew what kind of things they say in this letter,” Rus replied. “One moment I was in my bed, not harming anyone, and the next moment I am bombarded with demands for this and for that and for money that I do not have!” He was aware that he was yelling but he couldn’t stop. “They threaten me in that letter! They say two thousand six hundred fifteen immediately because otherwise they will be forced to regretfully sell my bed and my kitchen and my clothes, and I don’t want that! I need my bed and my kitchen! And my clothes!”
“Debt”—the woman nodded—“most of our letters are about debt. You are funny to watch. When you get upset you get red spots on your neck and you twist your face while you speak. But my lunch break starts now.”
The woman shoved her chair back and switched off the lights behind her window. “Returning letters won’t help you,” she said. “The letters are merely the way it manifests itself. I would read that letter very carefully and pay up. If you ignore it, something huge will be set in motion.”
“What do you mean? What is that thing that is set in motion? How do I see it coming?” Rus asked, but the woman did not reply. She reached for her purse and rolled down the curtain, leaving Rus standing there, alone in the post office among the waiting people, who did not look at him but at the screen that said the numbers.
MRS. BLUE
The red colors from the television poured into Mrs. Blue’s living room, painting her blue walls pink. She was sitting close to the television, the sound turned up loud.
Grace was standing in front of a large wooden dresser, wearing a wedding dress. “I do want to marry you, Rick,” she said to a picture she kept in her locket. “But I need to know what you’re keeping from me.”
“My god, Grace,” Mrs. Blue exclaimed, “just open the dresser!”
“Forgive me, Rick,” Grace whispered.
“Rick is an asshole,” Mrs. Blue said. “Go on.”
Slowly, Grace closed the locket. She glanced over her shoulder, took a hairpin out of her hair and stuck it in the lock of the dresser.
Mrs. Blue squeezed the armrest of the couch. She ignored her doorbell ringing in the hallway and turned up the sound of the television.
On the television the doorknob to the hallway slowly turned around. Rick came up behind Grace, holding a baseball bat behind his back. Grace’s eyes widened wide with terror when she saw his reflection appear behind her in the mirror. Her face became large on the screen. Then the commercials started playing.
Mrs. Blue exhaled and fell back on the couch cushions. “I warned you,” she said, pointing at the television. “I told you not to get involved with him.” She got up from the sofa leaning on her cane and walked to the kitchen, still ignoring the doorbell. “You gotta let them make their own mistakes, they say,” Mrs. Blue said to herself as she poured hot water in the teapot. “But I don’t know if I can let her go on like this.” She dropped the tea bag in the water and looked into the pot as she pulled it up and down. “People are going to get hurt this way.”
In the hallway the doorbell sounded again. Someone was pressing her doorbell button long and uninterruptedly. With the teapot in her left hand and the cane in her right, Mrs. Blue shuffled back into the living room where Grace’s tune was already playing again.
“The heart is a restless thing,” the deep voice-over sang, “where will it take us next? Welcome back to Change of Hearts.”
Mrs. Blue swayed from side to side on the couch, softly singing her own words to the theme tune as she waited for Gracie.
THE SECRETARY
The secretary walked into the hallway of her apartment. She hung up her coat and looked through the mail. It was all for Mrs. Blue, mostly funeral advertisements, which she put in the bin, and one postcard, which she kept. She’d been getting Mrs. Blue’s mail for a while now; the post girl always put it in her postbox when Mrs. Blue’s was full.
The secretary put down her bag and the card on the kitchen table. She wondered why Mrs. Blue never answered her door anymore and didn’t pick up the phone. She did see her walking down the street sometimes, pushing her rolling walker to the supermarket, so there was no justification yet to use the emergency key she’d asked for from Mrs. Blue when she’d moved in.
The secretary sat down on the chair by the table. Rain was streaming down the kitchen window. She took her diary out of her purse and browsed through the empty pages. “I see,” she said, although there was nothing to see. The ticking of the clock echoed in the apartment. “Well, well,” the secretary