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Chapter 15 The Signing
Chapter 15 The Signing
Home, the suit, the company, the seal. She did the road the way she had done every major signing. A high-collared white shirt covered whatever red might have been left at the side of her neck. The dark gray suit skirt. Hair drawn tight. The color of the lipstick held in. The original authority was in the folder. Her father's call came before nine. Jiang Guoliang said he had called the directors. If the text was that version, he would be there. The seal could be set. He asked whether the other side had, in the end, accepted. She said she still did not know. She did not say she had already decided to accept no other version. Some decisions were safer kept on her own body than put into her father's ear.
At seventeen minutes past nine Lawyer Pei's email entered both sides' boxes. Yanbei's shareholder meeting had confirmed, that morning, acceptance of the final working draft. Price: one billion five hundred forty-five million. Payment, stoppage, the tree, and the clearance attachments all according to the text. Two in the afternoon, at Hengzheng, the law offices beside the Linpu notary, for signing. Han Yu would attend. The buyer was asked to bring the seal.
Jiang Ruoxue read the email twice. She did not shake. She forwarded it to Zhou Heng and Ma Chi with one sentence: this version. Not one word changed. If there is an inserted page on site, we stop. Then she replied alone to Lu Chen's work address, inside the formal chain, copied as it ought to be: Received. Jiangcheng signs this text.
He replied with the same formality: Received. Yanbei signs this text.
She looked at the two lines and stood a while in the empty office. Under the formal sentences were the morning's sentences. They had not dirtied each other. This was the rare result she wanted.
Before two, the meeting room at Hengzheng had been set as one long table. The air smelled of new carpet and ink. Jiang Guoliang sat on her left. His face was still hard. His eyes stayed on the text, fine. Zhou Heng checked pages. Ma Chi checked accounts. On the other side Han Yu's face looked as if he had swallowed glass. He still wore his best suit. Lawyer Pei aligned the clip of every set. Lu Chen came in last. Charcoal. No tie. The old watch on his wrist. He nodded to Jiang Guoliang. He nodded to her. The time his eyes stayed was ordinary, ordinary like a discipline. She returned the same ordinary. Only she knew that eight hours ago that wrist had still been cradling the back of her head.
The signing began. Zhou Heng read the titles of the key clauses. No lyric. Price. Payment. Default. Relics. The tree. Clearance. Account supervision. Dispute. At the end of each section both sides initialed in the margin. Jiang Ruoxue's characters were steady, stroke by stroke. She did not set crooked even the last dot of the character for snow in her own name. Lu Chen's initial was a plain character for Chen. The two characters appeared dozens of times at the two ends of the same page, like two people confirming, over and over on paper, that each was still in the original place.
Han Yu stopped on the page for the tree. The tip of the pen hung. "One million two hundred thousand. Truly absurd."
"Then put the pen down," Jiang Ruoxue said. Her voice was not high. "Put it down, and there is no signing today. I will not change my mouth on this page to purchase you a mood."
The room was quiet. Jiang Guoliang did not cut in. He looked once at his daughter. In that look there was, at last, a trust given in public. Lu Chen looked at Han Yu and said, "This is the text the shareholder meeting confirmed. Your pen today is responsible only for falling where it was confirmed. It is not responsible for negotiating again."
Han Yu stared at Lu Chen for two seconds, as if looking for evidence of softness. He did not find it. He finished the initial. He wrote it heavy. The paper dented. Jiang Ruoxue wore no face of victory. She only turned the next page.
The company seals were red. When Jiangcheng's seal came down the sound was dull, like a real stone falling into earth. Yanbei's seal came down opposite. The notary checked the authority, checked the identities, checked the page numbers. The figures, one billion five hundred forty-five million, were read out alone on the final signature page. Jiang Ruoxue signed. Jiang Guoliang signed. Han Yu signed. Lu Chen signed as the authorized representative. His pen and hers touched the same sheet of paper, one after the other. They did not touch each other's fingers.
When it was all done, someone in the room let a breath out, lightly. Ma Chi's eyes were bright, as if cash flow had finally stopped being a hole. Lawyer Pei began to gather the originals. Han Yu stood, shook Jiang Guoliang's hand. The handshake was short. The courtesy was short. Passing Jiang Ruoxue he paused, as if he meant to say a sentence about who had won or who had lost, and in the end only said, "Director Jiang. If your own schedule slips, don't come looking for the tree as the reason."
"We answer for our own schedule," she said. "We answer for the tree as well. Each accounted on its own."
People drifted out. In the corridor her father said to her, "This structure at least sounds like something." In his language that was already near praise. He was going to the bank. Zhou Heng was going to file. She told them to go first. She stayed in the meeting room to check a copy. Lu Chen stayed too. The reason was that Lawyer Pei needed him to sign a copy of his identity card. The reason was true. For a moment the room held only the two of them and a table of paper already finished.
"As said this morning," he said, low.
"As said this morning," she said.
No kiss. No touch. For those few seconds his eyes were no longer a negotiator's eyes. Only the man who had drunk cold coffee in the morning. Then he took the eyes back, finished signing the copy of the identity card, and gave it to Lawyer Pei, who had returned. Lawyer Pei asked nothing. The most important courtesy of an intelligent person is sometimes not to ask.
Jiang Ruoxue put the copy into her bag. When she walked out of Hengzheng the afternoon sun had turned the street very white. She did not go back to the company at once. She drove to Nanpu and stopped where she could see the camphor. She did not get out to disturb Cai Shufen. The tree was still there. The old warehouses were still there. From today they would change according to a contract. Change needed time. The time was longer than a week. She sat in the car and sent Lin Hao a message that would not cross a line, and would no longer disguise itself as nothing being wrong: The Nanpu land is signed. The structure is the kind I can answer for. When you come back, we need to talk face to face about something important. Not the project. Us. Put the rim away safe first. Come back safe yourself.
She read it three times before she sent it. After she sent it she did not recall it.
She opened the thread with Lu Chen. The thread was clean, because they had put the real business in email. She wrote: Signed. The clauses as the morning. The person as the morning. Three weeks.
A few minutes passed before he replied: As the morning. I will wait. If there is email about the land, I talk only about the land.
Jiang Ruoxue set the phone on the wheel. The wedding ring touched the edge of the horn and made a very small sound. She did not take the ring off. It still had to be seen in front of Lin Hao, and then taken off by her own hand. That step was not today. Today she had finished two things she was able to do. She had signed a contract she could live with. She had left in place the person she was preparing to answer for.
Wind came off the river. The smell at the end of March was still damp. The camphor's leaves turned lightly in the sun. She started the car and joined the city's lane. In the mirror the old warehouses drew slowly back. She did not turn again to look at the loading slope. Some places had already finished the work they had to do inside this week. The road that remained was not in the rain, and not inside anyone else's authority. It was in the hands on the wheel. The hands were steady. Under the steadiness her heart had not yet gone entirely quiet. She allowed it to sound. Sounding, she still drove the car back into her own lane.
