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Chapter 14 Morning
Chapter 14 Morning
The alarm did not sound first. Jiang Ruoxue woke first. Outside, the sky was a gray white. The river was like a sheet of paper no one had written on yet. Lu Chen slept on the outer side of the bed. His brow was faintly drawn. The weariness of thirty-six had nowhere to hide inside sleep. She looked at him a while, got up, and went barefoot to the kitchen. The coffee machine was older than the one at home. She still produced two cups. The taste was ordinary. Ordinary was good.
The smell woke him. He came out with his hair in disorder, saw her in nothing but his T-shirt, and stopped in the kitchen doorway. His eyes darkened first. Then he did not come over to take possession of the picture. He took the cup. He said thank you. The voice was rough.
"What time," he asked.
"Twenty past six. The alarm has no right to speak yet. Lu Chen, before we do it again I want the place of the words set down. The sex can happen. The words are not the payment for the sex, and they are not its precondition. If you still want me after you've heard them, we do it. If you don't, after you've heard them, we drink the coffee and each go prepare to sign."
He set the cup down. "Say it."
Jiang Ruoxue's hand rested on the counter. Morning light fell on her wedding ring.
"What I am going to sign is this. Not one word less. And none of their private goods added. One billion five hundred forty-five million. Thirty-five percent down. Another thirty-five when title is clean. The balance when the clear site is delivered. Relics stoppage at seventy-five days. The trigger looks to written notice and a qualified opinion. No claim of breach during the stoppage. Before any machine digs, the ground is cleared by hand. The camphor is kept. The cost cap is one million two hundred thousand. Above that, decide again. No automatic transplant. And it does not come out of Auntie Cai's settlement. The Zhous at sixty days. Oral tenancies and residence written apart. No personal guarantee. And my body written into no side agreement. If Han Yu puts the price back to one point six billion, or deletes the tree, or turns seventy-five into thirty, I do not sign. I can walk in carrying the seal, and I can walk out carrying the seal. That is what I mean to sign."
"I heard it," Lu Chen said. "It is the same document I can hold. If he changes it, I will say at the table that this is not the text I asked to have signed. After I say it I stand on the side where you leave. Not inside his joke."
She nodded. That was the contract. Below it was the person. Her voice was still steady. Only slower.
"About the person, I have decided this way. I will not keep a life that looks true on both sides. Lin Hao is my husband. He trusts me. He has not done wrong enough to be thrown away by a message. So I will not send a confession the moment he comes up out of a trench. He comes back in about three weeks, if the dig is not extended again. After he lands, I will tell him to his face that this marriage is already over. Not because you touch me better than he does. Because I am already not inside that marriage. I choose you. Choosing means that after I have said that face-to-face speech, I still want to see you, in the manner of daylight, not only in the manner of hiding in an office. Before I have said it, from after today, I will not go to bed with you. I will not keep coming while I wear a ring and wait for him to come home. That would turn the person I chose into a secret. You should not be a secret. You should be the person I am preparing to answer for in the open."
The kitchen held only the last dripping of the coffee machine. Lu Chen looked at her a long time. His eyes reddened a little. It was not a performance.
"Three weeks," he said. "I'll wait. What I wait for is the face-to-face you named. Not a step for you to hand me if you change your mind. If you see him and find you still want that marriage, you tell me. The contract will not turn its face because of it. I will not go and make a scene in your house. I can do that. What I cannot do is pretend, these three weeks, that I don't miss you. The missing, I will handle myself. I will not use messages to drag you out of the speech you have to make."
"You don't have to do the missing like a hero," she said. Her throat was tight. "When I miss you, I will handle it too. I only will not deliver myself to your bed again until the ring has a face-to-face ending. This morning still counts as inside this week. This week is the week I have already chosen. So I still want you now. After this time, we stop until after that day. If you think that is too harsh, refuse now. A refusal does not touch your signature this morning."
Lu Chen pushed the cup aside. He came nearer and still stopped a step away. "Not harsh. Clear. I want you. Now. When it's done I will take this once as the last time before the three weeks. Not as something you owe me. You don't owe me. Come here."
She went. The kiss in the morning had the bitterness of coffee. His hand went in under the hem of the T-shirt. His palm lay on her bare waist, went up, covered a breast, and his thumb passed the nipple. She was already soft. Not a new temptation. A body that had had the whole night still remembered him. He lifted her onto the counter. The surface was cold. She made a sound. He lifted her down at once.
"It'll be cold," he said. "The bed. I don't want you freezing for the sake of a mood."
The bed was still a mess. They fell back into it. The T-shirt came off. She pulled his sleep trousers down. His cock was already hard, set against her belly, hot. She reached and held it and stroked, slow, and watched the muscles of his stomach tighten. He bent and took her breasts in his mouth, both of them tended, until she hooked him with a leg. One condom was left in the drawer. Both of them smiled when they saw it. The smile was short, short like a kind of care. He put it on. She opened. When he entered, both of them watched each other's eyes.
This time was slow, and deep. Not many words. Her legs circled his waist. Her hands held his back. Each entry was like stamping the sentences of last night and this morning into the body. She knew the seal was not here. The seal was in the afternoon. Here there was only her wanting him, and him wanting her. Her clit was ground, again and again, by his lower belly. Her breath gradually came apart. He asked if it hurt. She said it did not. Deeper. She wanted to come once in the morning. He pushed the bend of her knee higher. The angle changed. He reached farther in. At last she could not hold the sound down. When she came she looked at him. Her vagina clenched hard. Her eyes did not close. She wanted him to see that she was awake. He swore low at the grip of her, thrust a dozen times more, and when he came he buried his face in the side of her neck and called her Ruoxue. She held his head. She felt him shake. She felt herself still answering him, stroke by stroke.
They lay until the breathing leveled. The alarm went off then, absurdly on time. Lu Chen reached and shut it off. Neither of them turned the alarm into anything beyond the joke of it.
While she showered he did not come in. This was a new boundary, in force from this moment. She cleaned her own body. The hot water took last night and this morning down to a degree at which clothes could be put on. Before she put the black dress on she looked at herself a long time in the mirror. Thirty-four. The corner of her mouth a little swollen. The eyes were clear. Clear was not light. She pinned her hair up. The wedding ring stayed on her hand.
Both cups of coffee on the table had gone cold. She did not drink again. Lu Chen had already changed into a shirt, the buttons done to a degree fit to be seen, the old watch on. The two of them looked like two people about to walk into a hard meeting. That was also true.
"I go first," she said. "I go back to my place and change into a suit. The seal is at the company. We don't walk in together. If in the meeting you have to oppose me, oppose me. Don't soften a sentence because you were inside me this morning."
"It won't soften," he said. "And you, don't turn one billion five hundred forty-five million into a favor because you chose me. It isn't one."
She stopped at the door and kissed the corner of his mouth. The kiss was light, like a last private seal before a signing. "Three weeks. Not a disappearance. I go and finish the speech that has to be made. Don't come to my door. I won't climb your building in the middle of the night either. If we speak in email, we speak only about the land."
"Only the land," Lu Chen repeated. "Ruoxue. Go. At the table I will know you. Know you as the opponent, and as the person of this draft. The rest waits until you have finished the matter of the ring."
She nodded. On the way down in the elevator her legs were still a little soft. She stood the softness into a straight line. The wind on the ground floor was a Monday wind, dry and bright. She sat in the car, gave herself one minute, and then started it. In the mirror the old building grew smaller. She did not go back up. The decision had been said in the morning. What had been said would be proved, in the afternoon, by whether the ink could stand.
