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Chapter 11 The Crack
Chapter 11 The Crack
Sunday morning was dry. The rain had stopped. The river was still turbid. Jiang Ruoxue had slept less than four hours. When she woke, sun lay on the working draft and showed a crease at the edge of the paper where her fingers had pinched it. She wrote Lu Chen three messages and deleted them. The first was an apology. The second accused him of using the word insult when she brought up Lin Hao. The third was only one word: here. She looked at the word and remembered saying here under him. She deleted it. Some words, sent now, would sound like begging.
At ten an email came from Lawyer Pei, copied to both sides. The email was very formal. Han Yu had still not signed at one billion five hundred forty-five million, but he agreed to give a final acceptance or refusal before ten on Monday morning. If he accepted, they could sign on Monday afternoon. If he refused, the negotiation stopped and the materials were returned. At the end of the email Lawyer Pei wrote: our negotiator Lu Chen will continue to attend. The authority is unchanged.
The authority is unchanged. He had not stepped out. Jiang Ruoxue looked at those words. Her heartbeat was not like a victory. He had stayed, perhaps only because the contract still needed an adult. Not necessarily because he was still waiting for her. She did not answer the feeling in the email. She answered only the time: Monday morning, we hear the result. If we sign, I will bring Jiangcheng's seal and the original authority.
At noon Zhou Heng called, careful, and asked whether something unpleasant had happened with the other side's representative. Lawyer Pei had said privately that Lu Chen's face today was not good, not good in the way of a man fighting over five million, more like a man fighting over something else. Jiang Ruoxue said there was nothing unpleasant, and asked Zhou Heng not to write private guesses into any memo. After she hung up she walked the living room. The private crack was already large enough for a lawyer to smell. That was dangerous. The danger ought not to be gossip. The danger was that on Monday she might lose her judgment.
She forced herself to do one small clean thing. She called Cai Shufen. The number had been left at the site walk. The old woman picked up. A television in the background.
"Auntie Cai, this is Jiang Ruoxue. The clause on the tree is still on the draft. If it is kept, inside one million two hundred thousand, the cost does not come out of your settlement. If tomorrow they refuse the whole draft, I will, before I go, write that sentence on its own into a letter to them, even if the letter has no legal teeth. I don't want to lie to you and say it is already done."
The old woman was quiet a moment. "You. Willing to say the bad news too. Leave the tree as it is for now. Your own matter, you take yourself. Don't use the tree as an excuse for somebody else."
The call ended. Jiang Ruoxue held the phone. The roots of her ears burned. The old woman had seen nothing, and had seen everything. She sat down, wrote don't use the tree as an excuse on a slip, looked at it a long time, and tore it up. Tearing was not forgetting. She did not need a piece of paper to remind her of a thing she already knew.
In the afternoon she went to Nanpu anyway. Not a meeting with him. She did not dare wait for Monday in a house that held only a pothos and a photograph. In clear weather the old warehouses were more broken than in the rain, and more real. Sun turned the rust a deep red. The camphor's leaves had dried, and were still green. She stood a while under the tree and did not go in to disturb anyone. The loading slope at Warehouse Four was dry. The iron sheet was hot in the sun. She stood where she had stood that day, hands in the pockets of her coat, and felt ridiculous, and also felt she needed to return this place to being a piece of land, not a switch that only made her wet.
Footsteps came up from the bottom of the slope. She turned. Lu Chen stood there, shirt sleeves rolled, the marks of a night without sleep on his face. A few steps between them. Neither put on the delight of a coincidence.
"Lawyer Pei said you might come to see the tree," he said. "I came to see the flood channel's boundary in clear weather. If you want me to leave, I leave."
"Don't go," Jiang Ruoxue said. "Yesterday I guessed you with the worst thought I had. That way of guessing doesn't match what you said on the phone. I apologize. The apology does not include me suddenly becoming a person without a husband. I have one. I made a choice. I am not yet able to turn the choice into a clean life. That is my crack. Not your play."
Lu Chen came up the steps. He stopped in front of her. He still did not touch her. Sun turned his eyes a lighter brown.
"I take the apology," he said. "My word yesterday was heavy too. When you brought him up, I was jealous. Jealousy made me use the word insult. What I was jealous of was not that he had been loved by you. It was that he could miss you naturally inside a tent, while I, before I ask whether you've slept, have to check first whether it sounds like coercion."
"You can ask," she said. "If you ask, I don't promise to answer well."
"Did you sleep."
"Four hours."
"Did you eat."
"No."
From his pocket he took a bun already a little flattened, as if he had not finished it himself. "Eat first. After you've eaten we decide whether to finish what was left of yesterday's talk. On an empty stomach a person turns every sentence into an ultimatum."
She took the bun. The ordinariness of it made her want to cry. The bun was sweet, bean paste, not very fresh. She ate it anyway. Afterward the two of them walked the red line. In clear weather the boundary was plain. The flood channel was a narrow strip. No one could put a house on it. She walked on the inner side. He walked on the outer. Now and then their arms touched. Touched, and neither pulled away. Wind came up off the river, carrying the smell of water and, farther off, the grease of cooking.
"If Director Han refuses on Monday," she said, "I will walk. After I walk I will still want you. Wanting you is not an attachment to the contract."
"If he accepts," Lu Chen said, "I will sign that paper. After I've signed, what I want is not only the paper either. But I will not look at you at the signing table. When I look at you I make mistakes. If I make one, Han Yu will smell it."
"Then leave your eyes for me outside the table."
He stopped and looked at her. This time he lifted his hand and touched her face with the back of it. Very light. Like a question. She turned her cheek and let it rest against the back of his hand. No kiss. The loading slope was in the sun. The old woman might see from some window. She did not need to manufacture another kind of being seen in a mess. But the light touch was enough to draw yesterday's crack, under the concrete lamp, a little nearer. Nearer was not healed. Healing took time, and they had only the hours before Monday.
"Tonight," Lu Chen said, "if you're willing, come to my place. Not the office. The office makes it too easy for us to have sex and revise a contract in the same breath. At home there is no second seal. If you come, we only be people. If you don't come, I still don't change the draft. The two stay separate."
Jiang Ruoxue looked at him. A man of thirty-six waited in the wind of the old warehouses for an answer. The waiting did not look humble. It looked clear. The disordered account in her was still there. She nodded anyway.
"I'll come," she said. "I go home first. Some clothes shouldn't be carried straight from here to your bed. I also need to look once at my own place, so I don't arrive like someone running in."
"I'll send the address," he said. "When you're downstairs, if you regret it, go. I won't come down and pull you. I said that yesterday. It still holds today."
She smiled, short. "You. Sometimes the respect actually stings."
"Better than lying to you without a sting."
In the evening she went back to her own place, showered, changed into clean underwear and a plain black dress, the coat still over it. She stood in front of Lin Hao's photograph. She did not kneel. She did not swear. She only said, very light, as if to a person who for the moment could not hear: "I'm going. Not because your being away makes it allowed. Because I am going. When you come back I will say it to your face. Until then I will not use the words I miss you as cover."
The photograph did not answer. A leaf of the pothos moved. Wind through the window crack. She turned the light off and locked the door. The city softened on a Sunday evening. She drove toward the address Lu Chen had sent. The river was on her left, flashing out now and then between buildings. Her hands were steady. Steady was not innocence. Steady was that she had finally stopped pretending she was only someone the rain had wet.
