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Chapter 2 Across the Table
Chapter 2 Across the Table
At half past one the personal-guarantee clause was gone. Not struck through. The whole page had been reset. Jiang Ruoxue held the new page against the old one up to the light. No ghost of the line remained. She nodded once to Lu Chen. The nod meant the paper was fit. It meant nothing else.
The afternoon room was warmer. Sun came through the blinds in strips and lay on the table. Han Yu did not mention her husband again. He mentioned time instead. The bank. The shareholders. Warehouse rent turning, if they dragged on, into a joke in cash. Jiang Ruoxue let him finish. She noticed that while Han Yu spoke, Lu Chen did not look at her. He lifted his eyes only when a figure entered a sentence, as if checking whether Han Yu had added a scene.
"Price." She pushed the fourth page to the middle of the table. "One point seven two billion buys an asset with no clear site, no handling of the oral tenants, no matched default, and no division of relics risk. That is not an offer. That is your internal delay folded into my cost. I can give a number to start a discussion from. Or we can finish the structure first and let the price fall onto the structure. I suggest the second. Structure, then price. Otherwise we perform compromise on a number that was never real."
"What is Director Jiang's starting number?" Han Yu asked.
"There isn't one now," she said. "I will not put a figure on a wrong structure and let you lock it."
Lawyer Pei's mouth moved, almost approval. Zhou Heng opened the list of structure she had written beforehand. She did not want fifty percent out the door on the day of signing. That would push Jiangcheng's cash to a dangerous edge while the land certificate had not yet been changed and the tenants had not yet been cleared. What she wanted was stages. A sum on signing large enough to show intent and not so large that the other side lost the reason to finish. Another sum once title was clean. The balance when the site was actually delivered clear. The delivery date would change from "one hundred and twenty days from signing" to "a set number of days after the last written lease expired or was lawfully ended." The special residence would have its own agreement. Default both ways, the same rate. The buyer would not give an unlimited personal guarantee. In its place: supervision of the project company's account, a pledge of equity, and an undertaking of diligence from her as an executive. A diligence undertaking was not a guarantee. Zhou Heng had written the difference in a way that was very annoying and very clear.
Lu Chen heard her out and was silent for about ten seconds. No one filled them.
"Staged payment can be discussed," he said. "The split cannot be the kind you open with, the kind that turns us into a lender at no interest. We are not a bank. The balance can wait until the site is clear, but if too much waits, Director Han will be asked at tomorrow's shareholder meeting why he lent the land out for nothing. Default both ways: I accept. If the rate matches yours on late payment, five ten-thousandths a day, then delivery needs clear exceptions. A government road closure on short notice. Force majeure. And the relics stoppage you want. A relics stoppage needs a trigger. It cannot be Director Jiang deciding the ground feels wrong. The trigger is in writing: a notice from the competent authority, or an on-site protection opinion from a qualified body. During the stoppage neither side claims breach. Past an agreed limit, both sides may reopen the schedule. Not a one-sided termination."
"The agreed limit," Jiang Ruoxue said. "Ninety days. If work still cannot restart after ninety days, price and schedule reopen. Money already paid is treated as a cost of funds. It is not forfeited."
Han Yu shook his head at once. "Ninety is too long. The land is ours. While it sits, the tax and the watching are ours."
"The land sits because what is under it may not be something you can dig as you like," she said. "Ninety days is the longest I can explain to a board. Shorter, and the clause is decoration."
They fought the ninety days until three. No conclusion. Lu Chen wrote both versions down: sixty and ninety, and beside them, "to move with price and payment split." He wrote fast. The characters were still straight. Not a man hurrying. Jiang Ruoxue watched the hand longer than a negotiator ought to be watched, and then looked away.
The photographs of the oral tenants arrived. Cai Shufen stood beside the camphor. The person was small. The tree was large. She held a kettle. Her face was neither pitiful nor cooperative. She only looked at the lens, as if asking what they thought they were photographing. Another tenant repaired small parts for boats inside the steel shed. The contract had been expired two years. The power bill had been paid the whole time. Lu Chen laid the bills out in a row and said the two households could not be handled with one sentence. Residence needed settlement and time. A business needed compensation and a period to move. Write them together and the future was a lawsuit.
"You describe the other side's risk more clearly than our own lawyers," Zhou Heng could not help saying.
"Because winning a suit is not the same as breaking ground," Lu Chen said. "My shareholders want a deal. Not a contract that looks fierce and comes apart when you try to use it."
Han Yu coughed, plainly unhappy at being summed up by his own man. Jiang Ruoxue kept it. The sentence from the corridor that morning, the wanting, was still there. These hours of craft had not washed it out. It had only changed where it sat. The more she watched him talk about tenants, the less she could treat him as a man who had simply declared himself at an elevator. He meant to get this done. Seriousness itself had a pull. She disliked how fast she admitted it.
After four the price was finally put on the table. Han Yu offered one billion six hundred eighty million, as if it were an enormous concession, with the look of a man giving charity. Jiang Ruoxue did not smile.
"Still not a number that can be talked," she said. "And your concession has no structure under it. Until the structure lands, I treat the figure as void."
"Then Director Jiang names a number," Han Yu said, watching her. "There has to be a number. Otherwise how do I know you aren't here to waste time so you can go back and tell the bank a story?"
Everyone in the room looked at her. It was one of the oldest traps in a negotiation: before you were ready, use face to make you bid first. Her ceiling of authority was one billion five hundred sixty million. A handsome result sat around one and a half. If she said one five six now, they would treat it as a floor and build upward. If she bit down on one and a half, Han Yu would end the meeting, and the cost of an ended meeting was the southern line still spinning empty.
Lu Chen laid his pen across the paper and said, suddenly, "We do not set a price today."
Han Yu turned. "What?"
"Not today," Lu Chen said again. His tone did not rise. "Two pieces of structure are still open. Relics stoppage at sixty or at ninety. Payment at thirty, thirty, forty, or some other cut. A price on the wrong frame warps. Director Jiang will not throw out a number that can be locked. I think that is right. Yanbei should not trade one point six eight billion for a line in a newspaper about a steep concession. Give everyone a night. Tomorrow morning at ten, each side brings a version of the structure that could be signed. On price, each side names a range. Not a number built for a performance."
Han Yu's color was bad. He was the nominal host of the negotiation, and his own representative had changed the timetable in front of the room. Jiang Ruoxue saw that Lu Chen did not look at her for agreement. He finished the timetable and waited. That made it easier to stand with him, because standing with him looked like standing with a rule, not with a man who had said at noon that he wanted her.
"All right," she said. "Ten tomorrow. We will bring structure. There can be a range. The authority on the figure will not be written on paper for you to file."
The close was quieter than the morning. Han Yu left first. Lawyer Pei stayed to check two pieces of wording, then left. Zhou Heng and Ma Chi went down to the garage for the car. Jiang Ruoxue said she was going to the washroom and told them not to wait. She did go. Cold water ran over her wrists. She looked at herself in the mirror, touched the second button at her collar, and did not undo it. She said to herself: he kept the price unset today because the judgment was professional. Not because he was courting. If you read every piece of craft as an approach, you will talk the company into a wreck.
When she came out, only Lu Chen was left in the corridor. He stood by the window, not in a pose of obvious waiting. The thick sheaf was rolled into a tube in his hand, then let open. Seeing her, he set it straight.
"They've gone."
"I know."
"This morning's sentence. If you want me to treat it as unsaid, you still can."
Jiang Ruoxue stopped opposite him. Outside, the sun had turned the river into a piece of whitened metal. She heard her own voice steadier than she had expected.
"I don't want you to treat it as unsaid. I also do not accept it becoming a condition of any kind. You stopped the price in there. That was right. The reason it was right should not be me. If it was because of me, tomorrow I will judge you again."
"It was not because of you," Lu Chen said. "One point six eight billion is still a bad number. A bad number, landed early, dirties every clause that follows. I stopped it because I want a contract you can sign, that I can take back to shareholders, and that will not put us in a courtroom next year."
"Then what is it, that you want me."
"It is that I want you," he said. "Alongside the contract. Not crossed with it. You can stop either one at any time. The other goes on. Stop it now and I go downstairs. Don't stop it, and I only leave the sentence where it is. I don't spend it to buy your evening."
She looked into his eyes and tried to find the calculation. Of course there was calculation. A person in a negotiation could not be without it. But this calculation did not reach toward her skirt. He had not even taken a step forward. The distance made her own body's answer clearer: a light tightness low in her belly, her nipples awake at the wrong time inside the shirt, and her mind still working. Both were present. Neither pretended to be the other.
"I am married," she said.
"I know. The way Director Han put it was bad. I don't apologize for him. I only say that I know, and that I did not say it because I didn't."
"He is digging a site. Far away. The signal is poor. That is not a reason for anything I do. If I do something, it is my choice. Not because he is absent. Still less because you gave half a step on a contract."
Lu Chen nodded. "All right."
"I am not choosing now," Jiang Ruoxue said. "I choose to bring the structure at ten tomorrow. As for you, I have seen you. Seeing is not a yes."
"Enough," he said.
He turned aside to let her go first. Passing him, she smelled a faint cedar and the smell of paper, nothing of perfume's attack. Her sleeve almost brushed the back of his hand. Neither of them turned the almost into intention. There were other people in the elevator again. They stood on opposite sides and watched the floor numbers drop. Neither spoke.
In the garage Zhou Heng had already brought the car to the mouth of the lane. Jiang Ruoxue sat in the back. Ma Chi, in the front, flipped through a calculator and said, excited, that if two-way default could really be written in, the bank would be much easier to talk to. She answered once. The car came up into the light. The sun was sharp. She turned her face to the window. Linpu's streets ran backward fast across the glass.
She pressed her thumb to the ring, turned it half a circle, and turned it back. Lin Hao's face was clear in her head: skin darkened by sun, an old scar through one eyebrow from a school playing field. When he smiled he narrowed his eyes first. He trusted her with the dirty work of the business, trusted her almost to the point of not asking. Not asking had once felt like respect. This year it felt more and more like distance. Distance was not a fault. The fault had not happened. She had only, for the first time, this close to a negotiating table, heard a man want her, and had not felt insulted. She felt danger. The danger was that she wanted to hear the sentence again.
Back at the company, the light in the top-floor office was still on, the one she had not switched off when she left. The city under the glass was beginning to change color. She spread the day's two drafts. The red pen circled structure only, not a person. At the end she still wrote a line on a slip, for herself: He did not come closer.
She tore the slip up. The shreds went into the machine. It ran for a few seconds. The river was still outside. She sat back in the chair, knees together, then not together. The body's honesty was harder to shred than a slip of paper. She did not put her hand there. She left the heat where it was, and let it know she would not use it to decide anything today.
