เธอปิดสัญญาด้วยร่างกายของเธอ — Chapter 7 Rain

Chapter 7 Rain

On Thursday the rain in Linpu started in the morning. Not a storm. The kind of river rain that slowly soaks a coat dark. The ground at the old Nanpu warehouses soon put up mud. In the car Jiang Ruoxue changed into short boots, left the heels on the mat, and put a dark coat over the suit. Zhou Heng had not come. He hated mud. Ma Chi held the drawings and had a plastic bag over the folder. From Yanbei there was Lu Chen, a project manager, and two from the survey. Han Yu was not on site. The air had one less layer of performance.

Cai Shufen was there, as expected. She brought them into the small room behind Warehouse Three. The room was so clean it made the word demolition sound rude. Rain had lit the leaves of the camphor. The drain at the roots had indeed split, and green grew in the crack. The old woman poured them tea. The tea was coarse, and hot.

"Don't talk about moving the tree as if moving it were nothing," Cai Shufen said. She looked at Jiang Ruoxue, not at the men. "Planted the year my man died. You want the land. I understand. The land isn't mine. I can't take the tree with me either. But if you people who write turn the tree into rubbish on the page, I will come at night and curse you. Cursing won't help. I still have to say it."

"It will not be written as rubbish," Jiang Ruoxue said. "Keeping comes first. Only if a fire lane truly cannot pass do we talk about transplanting, and the cost does not come out of your settlement. I will write that sentence into the contract. Not into a brochure."

The old woman looked at her a while, nodded, and pushed the tea a little nearer. "There's a matter in your eyes. Not the tree's matter. I was like that when I was young. Drink it while it's hot."

The roots of Jiang Ruoxue's ears heated. She did not answer. Lu Chen stood by the door, head down over his tea, as if he had not heard. But he had heard. She could tell from the knuckles on the cup.

The walk went on. Raincoats and umbrellas were both poor tools. The wind came sideways off the river. The steel roofs of the seven warehouses made a fine sound in the rain, like a great many old keys. The surveyors went to check the northeast corner. The flood channel that had once been wrongly counted into the price was especially plain in the rain: an emptiness where no house could be built, fattened a circle by someone's red line. Lu Chen held the original drawing and the present state up for her. Raindrops sat on the plastic sleeve. He wiped them with his palm.

"You saw this right on Monday," he said.

"So inside one point seven two billion there is a piece of water that cannot be sold at all."

"Yes. I took that piece out of the new calculation. Once it's out, one point five four billion is no longer a handsome sentence you say alone. It is the cleaner number for this land. I have not yet persuaded Director Han to sign. I have persuaded myself."

The rain was too loud. The sentence was only enough for two people. Jiang Ruoxue looked at his wet hair stuck to his temple. She wanted to kiss him. A site could not be kissed. She pressed the want down into her boots and walked on.

The Zhou steel shed smelled of machine oil and metal. Old Zhou was not in. A lock hung on the door. Lu Chen did not let anyone force it. Compensation could be discussed, he said. A door should not be broken before a signing. Jiang Ruoxue agreed. In her notebook she wrote: sincerity is not a broken door. After she wrote it she thought the line did not look like a clause. It looked like a warning to herself.

After two the rain thickened. The surveyors carried the instruments back to the cars. Ma Chi went with them for another set of batteries. The project manager had to take a call and stood under an eave some distance off. Jiang Ruoxue and Lu Chen stopped at the top of the loading slope outside Warehouse Four. Overhead was a sheet of rusted iron. Rain hit it. The sound was dense as boiling. Suddenly no one outside could be seen. The world shrank to iron, rain, two pairs of wet boots, and each other's breath.

"No one else," she said.

"Mm."

"We can't do all of it. They'll be back in a few minutes. But I want your hand. Now. Will you."

Lu Chen's eyes went dark. He set the drawings on a dry step, came nearer, and still left her a step of distance. "I will. If you say stop halfway, I stop. You say."

"Inside. With your hand. Don't leave a mark anyone else can see."

His hand went in under the coat. The palm was cool, and her belly warmed it quickly. He opened her trousers with one hand. Careful. The metal sound was covered by the rain. At the edge of her underwear his fingers stopped, and he looked at her. She nodded. Only then did he really touch. She was already wet there. She could not tell the rain's imagining from the wanting that had stayed since the stair on Wednesday. His finger pads parted her labia, found her clit, and rubbed, light. The rain was that loud, and she still heard her own breath.

"Hot," he said at her ear. "Jiang Ruoxue. Stand steady. Hold on to me."

She held the collar of his coat. Two fingers went into her, slow. The thumb stayed outside and circled that point. Rain on the iron became a beat. Inside, his fingers bent, found the place from last night, unhurried, and accurate every time. Her forehead against his collarbone. Her mouth open. She did not dare make a sound. Her boot slipped a little on the wet concrete. His other hand took her waist and fixed her between himself and a post. The post was cold. His hand was hot. Her vagina sucked his fingers, stroke by stroke.

"Look at me," he said.

She lifted her eyes. Rain ran from the ends of his hair and fell on her brow. The picture was absurdly tender. She suddenly wanted to cry, not from grievance, but because the pleasure was arriving while she was still standing on ground that did not belong to her. She did not cry. She put her face back and opened her mouth against his collar and bit the cloth.

"I'm going to come," she said, muffled.

"Come. I've got you."

The orgasm broke inside the sound of the rain. Her legs shook hard. The inner walls spasmed and clamped his fingers. Her clit jumped under his thumb without stopping. She swallowed the sound herself. Only a tremor was left in the throat. He held her up the whole time. Only when the worst of it had passed did he draw out, slowly. His fingers were covered with her. He did not wipe them on her clothes. He used a handkerchief from the inner pocket of his coat, cleaned them, put the handkerchief away, then drew her trousers up, did the zip, and smoothed the coat. The whole process was like sealing a secret shut again.

"Can you stand?" he asked.

"I can stand." Her voice was still rough. "And you."

"Hard. It doesn't matter. I can wait. Waiting isn't a debt."

Someone called Director Jiang from farther off. Ma Chi's voice. Jiang Ruoxue answered. The answer came out bright, bright enough that she admired it herself. She bent for the drawings. Her legs were still soft. The characters on the page steadied again after three seconds. Lu Chen had already stepped back an arm's length. He looked only like a negotiator soaked by rain. Only she knew that in his pocket there was a handkerchief with her on it.

Cai Shufen was standing, somehow, at the end of the corridor, under an old umbrella. She looked at them once. There was no excitement of prying in the old woman's eyes. Only the calm of someone who had seen weather. She did not come over to expose them. She only said, "The rain is heavy. The steps are slippery. You people who write, don't break your legs. I've watered the tree."

"Thank you," Jiang Ruoxue said. That thank you was truer than any clause.

On the way back Ma Chi talked the whole time, about the floor-area ratio having to be recalculated once the flood channel was taken out. She answered. The wipers went. Her body still gave small pulls against the seat, as if the rain had not finished stopping. The phone buzzed. Lu Chen sent one line: I will wash the handkerchief myself. The transplant price for the tree is in. I suggest the cap be written at one million two hundred thousand. Above that, decide again. No automatic move.

She replied: One million two can go into the working draft. Today does not.

He replied: It doesn't. Tell me when you're home. The road is slippery.

She looked a long time at the care outside those few words, and only then set the phone down. As the car crossed the river bridge she thought: seventy-five days, one point five four billion, one tree, one million two hundred thousand. Those could be written on paper. The minutes under the iron could not. If a thing that could not be written would only hurt someone else, she ought to stop. But sitting in the car she could still feel the curve of his fingers. She knew she would want him again tomorrow. The wanting was no longer the rain's fault.