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Chapter 13 The Long Night
Chapter 13 The Long Night
She did not sleep after the first time. The body was satisfied. The mind was lit. Lu Chen went to pour water. When he came back she was already against the headboard, his T-shirt covering her stomach, his tablet on her knees. Nothing else was on the tablet. Only the final version of the working draft. Lawyer Pei had locked the revisions in the afternoon. She scrolled down clause by clause.
"You're reviewing a contract in my bed," he said, and handed her the water. "It makes me a little jealous of that paper."
"Paper doesn't get jealous." She drank. "Come here. Look at this last page. I want to be sure you didn't quietly change a word while I was eating noodles."
He sat beside her and really looked. Page numbers. The sum. Seventy-five days. One million two hundred thousand. The thirty-five split. Clearance by hand. Cai Shufen's attachment. The absence of the personal guarantee. He shook his head. "Not one word. If Director Han changes it tomorrow, the marks of the change will be very ugly. I will not beautify them for him."
"What did your mother do," she asked suddenly. The question did not belong to the contract. It belonged to her wanting to know the person outside the bed.
Lu Chen was still a moment, and then he answered. "In the early years she did internal work for a small warehouse near the wharf. She specialized in quarreling with the people who had no contracts, and in finding them a middle path. Later she got ill. She went quickly. I hate a vague lease. It has to do with that. It isn't a moving strategy. If you don't want to hear it, we can stop."
"I asked because I want to hear," Jiang Ruoxue said. "My mother went early. Because of that, one place at the table at home has stayed empty. My father filled the place with seals. I learned to as well. So when I see Auntie Cai, I have no way of seeing only a cost. That isn't moving either. It is my limit."
He held her hand. He held it firmly. He did not rub a love-speech out of it. "Then both of us have limits. A limit is not a weakness. Men like Director Han call a limit softness because the only limit they have left is money."
They talked about earlier things. She said she had married at twenty-eight. The first two years had really been good. Good in that Lin Hao could talk about a piece of pottery as if it were a love letter. Good in that he was not greedy for her family's property. Later the field seasons multiplied. The love letters shortened. She was not asking Lu Chen's permission to leave the center of that marriage. She was only stating a cooling that had already happened. When he had heard it, Lu Chen said that at thirty he had had two years of living with someone. What the other person wanted was a man who could appear at dinners whenever required. He could not give that. When they parted there was no child, and no drama. He said it so she would know he had not wanted her suddenly out of a blank. He had had a life. The life had not succeeded far enough to be shown off.
"Are you afraid I'm only this week's person," she asked.
"I am," he said. "But I am more afraid of gripping you into a guarantee of next week. A guarantee goes bad. If after Monday you don't want to see me again, I will still sign the characters clean. I can repeat that sentence as many times as you need. The repeating is not because I have no desire. It is because desire cannot become a lock."
Jiang Ruoxue shut the tablet and put it under the bed. She straddled his lap. Under the T-shirt there was nothing. His body answered at once. She bent and kissed him, deep, as if she meant to taste the fears they had just named.
"Once more," she said. "Slow. I may cry in the middle of it. Crying is not me telling you to stop. If I want to stop, I will use the word stop. Can you tell them apart."
"I can," Lu Chen said. "If you cry, I hold you and go on, unless you say stop. If you say stop, I leave your body at once, no matter how badly I want to come. That is our rule."
"All right."
This time there was not much beforehand. She was already wet. He put a condom on. She sat down herself, all the way. Both of them let a breath out together. She was in no hurry to rise and fall. She only sat, holding him inside her, forehead to forehead. Then she began to move very slowly, almost like breathing. His hands held her ass and took her weight. His thumb now and then brushed the skin farther back. He did not push into the more private place. He only let her know her whole person was being held. Her clit rubbed his lower belly, a fine and continuous numbness.
Halfway, the tears came anyway. No sound. They fell on his collarbone. Lu Chen's movement paused. He looked at her mouth. She shook her head. "Not stop. Hold me tight. Go on."
He held her tight. The speed stayed slow. Each stroke went deep and then drew back a little. She cried and clenched him. The crying was not from pain. It was because pleasure and a decision had arrived in the same minute, and the decision had not yet been said aloud. Her vagina tightened in waves. The orgasm came quiet, and long. She buried her face in his neck and shook. He followed her rhythm for dozens of strokes more, and asked her. She said he might. When he came he groaned, muffled. His palm opened on her back, as if holding down a bird that would not fly, and also as if he knew a bird was not made to be held down, so the palm gradually loosened.
Afterward she wiped her face on his T-shirt and felt the use a little rude. He said the shirt could be washed tomorrow. Eyes could not go to a signing carrying salt. The sentence made her laugh. While she laughed the tears were not yet dry. The two of them leaned at the headboard, shoulder to shoulder, and watched the bridge lights outside go bright and go dark.
"I haven't finished deciding," she said. "Don't push me to say a whole life in the minute after you've come. I have only decided to sleep here tonight. That is already large."
"Large enough," he said. "Sleep. I set the alarm for seven. Before seven, Han Yu does not exist in the world."
She did sleep. She woke once in the middle. The sky was still black. His arm lay across her waist, heavy, hot. She drew his hand closer and put it on her heart. In his sleep he made a sound and did not wake. She listened toward the river. She could not hear water. She heard only his breath. She thought: if tomorrow she chose him, this breath should not hide behind a contract forever. If she chose to stop all of it at tonight, she ought also to have the courage to say stop at daylight, and not use silence to make him guess. Both possibilities were still there. She held them, and slept again. Before she slept she touched her wedding ring. The ring was still there. In the dark it neither shone nor disappeared.
