أغلقت العقد بجسدها — Chapter 6 Concessions

Chapter 6 Concessions

On Wednesday afternoon Han Yu was back. His temper had the look of a man fed by shareholders. The room was still the seventeenth floor at Yanbei. The sun was not as good as Monday. Cloud pressed the river dark. Jiang Ruoxue spread the structure page. The first sentence was not pleasant.

"Forty percent on signing, we will not do. Thirty-five, thirty-five, thirty, and the price that goes with it has to come in near one billion five hundred forty million. If one billion five hundred seventy million is to be tied to a forty percent down payment, that is you folding your financing cost into my cash. I refuse that arithmetic. On the relics stoppage I can come from ninety down to seventy-five. The trigger stays written notice and a qualified opinion. During the stoppage, no breach either way. After it, the schedule and the time factor inside the price reopen. Money paid is not forfeited. The camphor is kept first. The Zhou household and the Cai household are written apart on compensation."

When Han Yu had heard it, his palm hit the table. "Director Jiang. Are you here to buy land, or to write house rules for Yanbei. One point five four billion. You take this river view for a vegetable plot."

"The river view is not a vegetable plot," she said. "It is also not the tenantless imagination on your quotation. Your own ground papers are harsher than I am. I will not repeat facts this morning has already admitted."

When she said this morning she glanced at Lu Chen. Nothing private showed on his face. He took her structure page, read it through, and only then spoke.

"I can take seventy-five days to the shareholders," he said. "Keeping the camphor can also be discussed, on the condition that the tree's place does not block a fire lane, that the cost has a cap, and that above the cap it becomes a transplant. We do not hang a clear site out forever for the sake of one tree. Payment at thirty-five, thirty-five, thirty will make Yanbei's cash tight. If the price is one point five four billion, I will support thirty-five at the front. If the price has to reach one point five six or above, I will want forty back. That is the linkage I can account for to Director Han. Not a mood."

Han Yu stared at him. "You support thirty-five. Who gave you that authority."

"You did," Lu Chen said. "Inside the scope there is 'structure for price.' I am using it. If you want the authority back, take it back now. The moment you take it back, the sentence one point five four billion comes out of my mouth."

The strain in the room changed direction. Jiang Ruoxue saw that Han Yu did not want to pull the authority in public. Pulling it would be an admission that his representative had already negotiated the thing outside the reach of his temper. Lawyer Pei wrote with his head down. Zhou Heng's pen cap clicked once. Under the table Jiang Ruoxue's knee accidentally met Lu Chen's knee. The warmth of cloth came through. Last night the place of his palm seemed still to be on her waist. Her breath went wrong for half a beat. Half a beat could not be something Han Yu saw.

She sat her body straight and went on about the order of mortgages the bank could accept. The voice held. While she spoke, Lu Chen's knee did not leave. It only rested there, lightly, like a sentence only she could hear: I am here, go on. By the time she reached the joint-control conditions on the supervised account, her underwear was a little wet. She hated the wet. She also used it. The way she used it was to make the sentences harder, hard enough that no one could believe the center of her was going soft.

"The supervised account is held jointly by both sides and the bank," she said. "Without agreement, nothing moves out toward a shareholder dividend. That is one of the conditions of one point five four billion. If it cannot be done, the price returns to the start. The start is not one point seven two billion. The start is me leaving this table."

Han Yu swore, an ugly swearing, about young people these days treating shareholders' money as someone else's. Lu Chen did not defend the word young. He said he accepted the joint account. The limit on dividends would be written at the level of the project company, not into Yanbei's other businesses at the parent. Jiang Ruoxue thought for a few seconds and agreed. This was a real concession. Not a concession made in a bed. In the same minute she could feel the heat at her knee and feel that the distinction had to exist.

The meeting ran until five. Nothing was signed. There was, however, a skeleton more decent than Monday's. The price was not yet set down, but two roads had gone into the working draft: one point five four billion against a thirty-five percent first payment, and one point five six billion against forty. Relics at seventy-five days. The camphor kept first, the cost cap still to be estimated. The personal guarantee had not come back to life. Han Yu signed the words agree to continue. He signed them angry. An angry word was still a word.

Afterward she did not stay in the corridor. She was afraid a stay would turn into a face someone could read. She went into the fire stairs, meaning to walk two floors and walk the heat off, and the phone rang. Lu Chen.

"Page three," he said. No greeting. "On your side's calculation sheet, the balance of the supervised account, the decimal has moved one place. Not a hundred and ten thousand. One place. If you send that sheet to the bank tonight, they will think your cash is ten times what it is. I didn't say it in the room just now because Director Han would have turned it into an attack, and it is a slip of the pen, not your ability."

Jiang Ruoxue leaned on the concrete wall. The stair smelled of dust. She shut her eyes. "Thank you."

"Being hard on each other is a daytime matter," he said. "This is another thing. Your knee."

"What about it."

"I didn't move it. If you think that was me using a body to interfere with your price, say so, and next time I sit farther off. What I was thinking was not interference. I was hard. It isn't glorious. I still heard the joint account out."

She laughed. The laugh echoed in the empty stair, and she killed it. "Lu Chen, the way you talk is sometimes genuinely hateful."

"Were you wet."

The question came too straight. The stair light was white, too white for a sentence like that. Her face heated. She answered anyway, because she hated pretending about this.

"I was. I still finished the account. So we are even."

On the other end his breath went heavy once. "I am not coming over tonight. Not because I don't want to. Because I want you to see that the clauses were not led by last night. I'm having someone ask the going rate for moving the tree. I'll give you a number when we walk the site tomorrow. If you don't want to see me, the walk can send only the project manager."

"I'll go," she said. "I want to see the site myself. You have to be there too. What has not happened between us, on a site, we treat as if it hasn't. What has happened, we do not perform in front of Auntie Cai."

"All right."

After she hung up she stood another minute in the stair. The white lamp hummed. She put her forehead to the cool wall. Thirty-four, her legs weak from a sentence asking whether she was wet, and at the same time able to remember that a decimal had moved one place. She did not know whether that was a split or a wholeness. She only knew she did not regret last night, and she did not mean to make up another time tonight. Leave the wanting for tomorrow's rain, or for the day the contract was actually clean. She did not yet know whether she could leave it.

Back in the office she corrected the wrong sheet, sent it to Ma Chi, copied Zhou Heng, and did not copy Lu Chen. A copy would leave an electronic trace that was too close. The thanks had already been said on the phone. Some thanks belonged only in the air between two people.