أغلقت العقد بجسدها — Chapter 5 Voices

Chapter 5 Voices

On Wednesday she woke very early. Places in her body were still reporting the night. A soreness high on the inner thigh. Nipples sensitive where they met the undershirt. Hip bones that felt as if they had been held. In the shower she covered herself with her palms, not to come again, but to confirm that those places were still hers. The water was hot. She washed Lu Chen's rhythm down to a degree she could manage, and then she put on a higher-collared shirt, the gray suit, and pinned her hair up. The woman in the mirror could go into a meeting.

At seven forty Jiang Guoliang's call came. Her father's voice carried the blood pressure of morning.

"The bank's account manager was sounding us out yesterday," he said. "If that southern line doesn't start, they want more security. On the Nanpu side, don't turn it into a seminar. If the price is inside one point six billion and the structure is more or less there, close it."

"Inside one point six is not the authority," Jiang Ruoxue said. She put bread into the toaster. Her voice was flat. "The authority says that above one billion five hundred sixty million I come back and reopen the board. I will not let one phone call from you rewrite it."

"You sound like my father now."

"If your father were still here, he wouldn't stake the whole household on a piece of land that isn't clear."

A second of quiet on the line. Jiang Guoliang swore, half a laugh in it, and then told her again to watch the other side's representative. Men like that, he said, were best at digging pits inside the details. She said she could see the pits. She said nothing else. After she hung up, the edge of the bread was burnt. She cut the burnt part away and still ate it. The burnt taste stayed on her tongue, a small punishment.

At quarter past eight a voice message came from Lin Hao. The signal, astonishingly, held. Wind in the background, and farther off the light knock of metal tools. His voice was dried by sun. The end of it was soft.

"Ruoxue, yesterday's rim matched. The rim. I'll show you the photograph once it compresses. The soil is a pale yellow. When the wind drops you can see a very fine cord mark. I suddenly wanted your hands. Nothing else meant by it. Just wanted. Don't negotiate too late. Eat. On this side we may get into the center of the house foundation on Thursday. The signal will be worse. If you need anything, leave a message. I'll look when I come up out of the trench."

She listened twice. The first time her mind was all him. The second time the sofa of last night came in, and the shame was like being seen in her own kitchen. She set the phone face down on the counter, braced both hands on the edge, and lowered her head. Lin Hao had done nothing wrong. He wanted her hands, and last night her hands had held another man's cock and had also corrected a decimal of a hundred and twelve thousand. Both things were true. True things did not cancel each other.

She did not send a voice back. She typed: Congratulations on the rim. I'll wait for the photograph. On my side it's the ordinary kind of hard. I've eaten. Mind the sun. Don't force it at the center of the foundation. Miss you.

After the two words, miss you, went out, she stood a long time in the kitchen. She was not going to throw a bodily decision she had not yet thought clear across to Hexi inside a voice message. What Lin Hao deserved was a sentence said face to face, not a tearing done in the gaps of a signal. The judgment did not make her noble. It only kept her, for now, from adding one more way of doing harm.

At the company no one saw anything in her. Ma Chi came to match the bank's cash flow. Zhou Heng came to match the triggers on the relics clause. She wrote four lines: written notice from the competent authority; an on-site opinion from a qualified body; no claim of breach by either side during the stoppage; past the limit, a reopening, not a forfeiture. When she came to the word reopen, the pen paused. Reopen could be used of other things. She did not allow herself lyric inside a clause, so the pen went on and finished.

At noon she ate a bowl of noodles alone on the top floor. That morning she had had the sofa put back into an ordinary shape. The cushions had been beaten. The waste bag she had carried out herself and dropped into the public bin outside the building. Sitting down, her body still remembered how deep her knees had sunk. She picked up a mouthful of noodles and suddenly wanted to hear Lu Chen's voice. What she wanted to ask was not the bed. She wanted to ask whether, if she threw out seventy days as a middle number that afternoon, he would refuse her in front of the room. Wanting to know whether a man would refuse her confirmed it more than wanting his mouth: the thing was no longer inside a well-ruled box.

She still did not send the message. She finished the noodles, washed the bowl, and wrote seventy days in her notebook, with a very small question mark beside it. Under the question mark she wrote: the tree. Keeping first, transplant as the alternative, a cap on cost set out on its own line. She closed the book, put lipstick on, and went downstairs to ask design how much saleable area the walk would eat. The number that came back was ugly. She looked at the ugly number and decided that in the afternoon the walk would still be in her mouth. Some things, like an orgasm, were not kept because they looked good.