Read Online Rus Like Everyone Else by Bette Adriaanse - Free Book Online Page B

suggest I trade in Grace for some person I have never met?”
    The lady made a noise as if she was blowing into the phone. “Look. The people who play the characters are real people who pretend to be different people than they are. And the scenery is not real either. The forest scenes, for instance, are filmed in Montana.”
    â€œMontana,” Mrs. Blue said.
    â€œIn America,” the lady said.
    â€œYes,” Mrs. Blue said, “I know where Montana is. What I want to know is when can I see Gracie again?”
    â€œGracie does not exist,” the phone lady said. “The show has been canceled because the writer quit. Someone close to him is in a coma and now he can’t think of anything else apparently. The show is not coming back.”
    â€œDo you know,” Mrs. Blue said, “that this Rick is a convicted murderer? And that he pretends to be all nice, but you can see it in his eyes sometimes.”
    â€œHe is not real,” the phone lady said.
    â€œIt is a crime to leave her in that house with him,” Mrs. Blue said. “It is a crime!” Her voice broke. “Please,” she said.
    â€œOh my God,” Mrs. Blue heard the woman on the other end of the line say. “Can someone take this line from me?”
    â€œMadame?” another voice said. “What seems to be the problem?”
    â€œDo you know what happens when you don’t end a story properly?” Mrs. Blue said in the phone. “They relive and relive the last page.”
    Mrs. Blue lowered the phone on her lap and sat quietly while on the television a chef was throwing tomatoes in the air and catching them behind his back.
    GRACE IN THE STORY

    â€œI do want to marry you, Rick,” Grace said.
    She was standing alone in the hallway of the Fata Morgana mansion, talking to the mirror. There were bruises on the side of her forehead, purple and red bruises, but somehow Grace didn’t notice this, like she didn’t notice that she kept losing her balance or that her wedding dress was torn.
    She took a step toward the dresser. “But I need to know what you’re keeping from me.”
    The chandelier above her head swung slowly from left to right, making her shadow dance on the beige carpet.
    Grace took a hairpin from her hair. Her face contorted with pain. A long, bloody strand of hair hung from the hairpin. For a brief moment Grace stopped. She stood frozen with her hands in midair as if some question had come up in her mind, some memory, but she could not reach it.
    Then a voice from downstairs thundered through the hallway.
    â€œGrace! Where are you?”
    Grace dropped the pin on the carpet. She heard footsteps coming up the stairs, loud, banging footsteps. A strong feeling of déjà vu came over her, the feeling that this had happened before. Then came the blow to the side of her head and everything went black.
    DR. KROON

    The secretary was in the doctor’s office. She had changed out of the sea-green dress and into her regular clothes. She’d made this appointment a week ago, after she had suddenly thrown a plate of snacks against the wall in her mother’s house. She could not remember why she did it. Her mother had been kind enough to act like it never happened, even though it had disturbed the whole choreography of the evening. They could not chitchat over snacks as they usually did between five and six o’clock, and there were more silences than usual. Her father even came out of his hobby room asking about the noise, and out of desperation her mother had served dinner at five thirty to make things seem slightly normal, to have something to talk over. By the time she left they were feeling so uneasy that their heads bumped when they kissed good night.
    â€œIt was very strange,” the secretary said when the doctor looked into her eyes with some kind of scope. “It is like my body threw it, without my mind.”
    â€œBlackouts.” The