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Chapter 10 Father
Chapter 10 Father
Saturday lunch at the Jiang house was still in the old place. The house was in the east of the city. The plane trees were large. The dining table was the one Jiang Ruoxue had done her homework on as a child. Later her father had lengthened it. The added part did not match in color. Jiang Guoliang sat at the head. Her mother had gone early. No one had moved that seat. Only a pot of green leaves stood there. Her uncle, Jiang Guodong, had come from the next city on purpose to hear about Nanpu. Four years younger than her father. A contractor all his life. Best at wrapping contempt in the sentence I am doing this for your good.
Halfway through the dishes Jiang Guodong tapped the table with his chopsticks. "A girl negotiating land goes soft in the heart. If the other side sends a man who can talk, don't treat the tree and the old woman as your own achievement. Inside one point six billion, even your father has nodded. Sign, and the bank goes quiet. What are you wearing them down for, over seventy-five days."
Jiang Ruoxue set the soup bowl down. "Uncle, authority is not Father nodding. Authority is the board minute. Above one billion five hundred sixty million, we reopen. The working draft I have brought back is one billion five hundred forty-five million, thirty-five percent down, default matched both ways, no unlimited personal guarantee. The tree's cost has a cap. The relics stoppage is so we don't have an accident under an excavator. It is not me going soft. If you think the words a girl can raise the quality of your judgment, then the judgment probably ends here."
The table went quiet. Jiang Guoliang looked at her. The look was complicated. Reproof in it, and a little admiration he could not press down. He did not immediately take his brother's side.
"Guodong's talk is ugly. The sense of it may not be entirely wrong," her father said. "Has the other side signed."
"Not yet," she said. "So I didn't come today to report good news. I came to tell you that when they accept this draft, you are not to change your mouths at the last minute and chase one point six billion. Chase one point six and I will refuse to sign. The consequence of refusing is the south of the city still stopped, and the bank still asking. You choose."
Jiang Guodong's face sank. "You use the bank to threaten the family."
"I didn't invite the bank," Jiang Ruoxue said. "Our own project, by stopping, produced it. I am removing it. I am not feeding it."
Her father ate a few mouthfuls before he spoke. "Leave the draft. I'll read it. On the directors' side, if it really is this structure at one billion five hundred forty-five million, I can make calls. A call is not a seal. The seal waits until their characters fall first. Don't negotiate yourself into a person with no way back."
"I never wrote my personal way back into the contract," she said.
Only she could hear the double sense. She lowered her head and drank the soup. The soup was salty. After lunch her father kept her alone in the study and read the working draft through. He read slowly. When he finished he took off his glasses.
"This Lu Chen," he said. "The concessions have a brain. A man like that has to be guarded against. Not against treachery. Against you taking his brain for goodwill."
"I have guarded against it," Jiang Ruoxue said. "The clauses can live on their own. Only what can live on its own is what I brought you."
Her father nodded and did not ask further. He did not ask about her marriage. He had not asked for many years. In his eyes Lin Hao was a high-minded son-in-law who did not come asking for money, and was therefore respectable, and also dispensable. That dispensability had once made her grateful. Today it made her cold. Her father could ignore whom she loved. Her father minded the seal. She suddenly wanted someone to ask her, truly, whether she was tired. The person who would ask was not in this house. Lin Hao had asked. Lu Chen had not used the word tired. But in the rain he had said stand steady, I've got you. Both ways of asking, she had no standing to unfold in this study.
In the afternoon Han Yu still had not signed. Lu Chen's message was short: He is still swearing. I haven't changed the draft. You don't need to reply.
She replied: My father wants to see your characters first. The tree is still there. So am I.
At night her uncle's words ground in her shoe like grit. Soft in the heart. A man who can talk. Achievement. She knew the words were dirty. Dirty words sometimes took up a parasite's life. She began to look again and again at the door on Friday that had not been shut. What if Lu Chen had known she would arrive early. What if the notice of withdrawal had been said for the person outside the door. The what-if was very unfair. She held it anyway, because on this night fairness was harder than protecting herself.
She drove to the foot of Yanbei and did not go up. She called him. "Come down. Not to talk terms. To talk about whether you performed for me."
Five minutes later Lu Chen was at the edge of the garage lane. He did not invite her up. The two of them stood under the concrete lamps. One of the tubes was flickering.
"Say it," he said.
"My uncle says a man who can talk makes me soft, and that the tree and the old woman are achievements I was led into. My father says guard against your brain. When I heard you tell Han Yu you would step out, I believed it. Now I suspect it again, because the door wasn't shut. If you used me standing outside, Lu Chen, I will stop this deal. Bank or no bank."
His face cooled by degrees. Not the cold of a negotiation. The cold of a man stabbed in the cleanest place.
"I did not know you were outside," he said. "If I had known, I would still have said the sentence, but I would not have had it on speaker. It was on speaker because Han Yu's secretary cut the call in while I had papers in my hands. That is all of it. If you rewrite it as a play, I can't stop you. I can step out. I'll hand the contract to Lawyer Pei. From now on I don't see you alone. Then your uncle's sentence falls empty."
"Now you're threatening me with stepping out."
"I am protecting you with it," he said. His voice rose a little, then he pressed it. "And protecting myself. I will not be a man you forever suspect of acting. You wanted me. You said so. You changed the clauses. That was your judgment. You stuff both things back into my pocket and call it me designing your softness, then where have you put Jiang Ruoxue. Into your uncle's mouth?"
Her eyes heated. The anger was hotter. "And Lin Hao. He rests easy with me on everything. While I stand here quarreling with you, what is his ease worth. Do you also think that so long as you didn't lie to me, my choice is pretty. It isn't pretty. I did it. I own it. I only hate it being explained by every one of you."
"I never explained it into pretty," Lu Chen said, word by word. "I have never asked you for a pretty. When I wanted you, you were a married person. When you said yes, you knew. You can hate the explaining now. Don't hate your way into taking my refusal for a seduction. That is an insult. An insult to me, and an insult to what you yourself said on the sofa."
Headlights swept from the far end of the lane. Both of them stopped at once. After the car had gone, the air was emptier. Jiang Ruoxue looked at him. At the old leather strap. At the blue under his eyes. She wanted to apologize. Pride and guilt blocked the sentence. She could only say, "I can't go with you tonight. If I go with you again, I won't be able to tell whether I want you, or whether I want you to pull me out of these sentences."
"Then don't come across," he said. "The elevator up is behind you. So is your car. Choose one. I will not come up and pull you."
She chose the car. When she started it her hands were shaking. Lu Chen did not knock on the window. He did not follow. He stood under the flickering tube until she could not see him in the mirror. Not seeing him made the pain in her chest specific. Pain was not evidence. The evidence was still on the working draft in the drawer, the one that had not been changed back. She drove onto the river bridge. The city on a Saturday night was very bright, bright enough that she had nowhere to hide.
The pothos at home was alive. Lin Hao's photograph was smiling. She did not cry again. She spread the copy of the working draft on the dining table and checked it page by page for any clause she had agreed to in a bed. There was none. Every clause she could defend on its own in front of a board. The discovery did not make her light. It only made her clearer: the body's choice had not bought the clauses, and the clauses had not excused the body. Both accounts were hers to keep. She kept them very late. The light stayed on. The phone did not light again.
