Rus Like Everyone Else by Bette Adriaanse Page A

the blades move, but the entire thing wobbled.
    â€œIf that thing ever falls down,” the lawyer had said the night before, “I can sue them for millions.” He pointed at the fan while he said that; he pointed at it with his finger as if he hoped to speed up the process, loosen the screws, and make the whole thing fall downon them with its blades spinning, causing all kinds of expensive personal injuries. The lawyer knew a lot about personal injuries. He was a personal injury lawyer.
    â€œFor seventeen million, you can cut off both my hands. I mean it, cut them right off.” He held his arms up in the air to illustrate. “Left arm, eight million; right arm, twenty. Legs, eighty million in total. You get the most expensive mobile scooter, a luxurious bungalow in a warm country somewhere, staff that makes you cocktails, and a pretty young thing to put you in the shower. Nothing’s lost.
    â€œPeople don’t know how much they can get for damages,” he said. “I had a guy in my office the other day who’d lost his thumb in a machine. He wanted to see if the company would pay for his hospital bill. His hospital bill! Can you believe it?”
    The lawyer had made sure he got an extra compensation payment. Not that much, because he was still representing the company of course, and he was certainly not officially obliged to do this, but he had still done it. “The human factor,” the lawyer said while he smiled at her. “It’s still a factor.”
    Later he’d squeezed her breasts together and said, “Twenty thousand.” They had chatted and joked almost all night like that. It was a fun night, the secretary decided, the kind of night you hoped for when you met someone. Didn’t they say that opposites attract?
    The secretary took the remote that said bed and pushed the button. The mattress lifted at her feet. She let it go down again and thought about her own apartment. If you wanted something to move in her apartment you had to push or pull it yourself. Maybe he wanted to shower together. She’d been wanting to do that for some time now, to shower with somebody. But he was probably in the kitchen now, making them breakfast.
    She turned up the speed of the fan again and imagined she was in a helicopter. Underneath her rivers flowed, cars drove in long lines between geometric fields, and in the streets people were walking to the supermarket, holding up umbrellas to the rain. A flight attendant handed out shrimp cocktails as they passed over clouds so white they hurt the eyes. Suddenly, the pilot appeared in the cabin, his arms spread out wide with terror! “We are going down!” The people in the helicopter were immediately swept from one side to the other, and were kicking and pushing one another.
    The lawyer grabbed the secretary and pulled her to the side. “We’re going down,” he said, “and there’s only one parachute.” He bound the parachute tightly around her waist and he looked at her longingly from the burning helicopter as she floated down to safety.
    The secretary smiled. “Yes, that is how it will be. And I will be by his hospital bed every night, wearing all black, like some dream vision.”
    Somewhere a telephone rang. The lawyer was standing in the room, looking at her strangely, holding his ringing mobile in his hand. He had very little imagination, the lawyer—he’d told her that the night before. She watched him walk away in his shirt and boxer shorts, water dripping from his hair onto his neck. Maybe she should have asked him about showering together. She got up out of bed and looked through the doorway into the living room. The living room was white with a wooden floor. There was a glass table, a white couch, and a flat-screen television. She hadn’t seen the living room last night; they’d gone straight to the bed.
    The lawyer was standing by the window, pulling up his pants with