09 / 15
Chapter 9 The Side Door
Chapter 9 The Side Door
On Friday morning she went to Yanbei anyway. Not to find him. Zhou Heng had set a meeting with Lawyer Pei on the clearance attachments, at nine, and she wanted to hand in the cost cap on the camphor herself, so it would not pass through another layer of telling. She arrived early. The small meeting room at the side of the seventeenth floor was empty. Tea had been made. The people were not all there. At the turn of the corridor a door had not been shut tight. Inside was Lu Chen's voice, and on speaker the voice of Han Yu, the latter loud enough to be standing in the room.
"One point five four billion is a pit you negotiated for yourself," Han Yu said. "Take it back now. One point six. Forty percent down. Don't write the tree. Relics, thirty days at most. She wants the tree, doesn't she. The tree can be comforted out loud. It does not go into the contract. You can eat with her. You can smile and talk. Don't negotiate the shareholders' money into charity."
"I am not eating with her," Lu Chen said. The voice was level, level to the point of hard. "And there is no comforting out loud. One point five four billion, with thirty-five down, is the number this deal can be signed at. You want one point six, thirty days, and the tree unwritten, and Jiang Ruoxue will walk. She walks, and this land rots through another rainy season, and the price you wanted to sell at last year looks worse. I am not soft. The buyer is not a fool."
"You are soft on that woman," Han Yu said, a cold laugh. "I am not blind. The way you look at her. Is that how a man looks at a clause."
A second of quiet behind the door. Jiang Ruoxue's back was against the wall. She knew she ought to go. Her feet did not move.
"How I look at a person does not go into the authority," Lu Chen said. "If you keep treating her as someone who can be sent off with a meal, then when this sentence is finished I step out of the deal. I can give the shareholders a notice of withdrawal today. Hire someone else for Nanpu. I will not change the relics clause from seventy-five days to thirty. That is a lawsuit waiting, not strength. The tree's cap is one million two hundred thousand. Above that, we talk again. That is what I agreed yesterday would go into the working draft. I can fight for five million inside the price, up to one billion five hundred forty-five million. I will not fight for a number the other side cannot sign."
Han Yu was still swearing. Lu Chen took it off speaker and put it to his ear. The sentences after that went low. She caught only a few words: authority, signature, do not insult people again. Then the call ended. A chair sounded.
Jiang Ruoxue stepped back to the elevator hall. Her heartbeat was heavy enough to sicken her. She had not been arranged so that she would hear this. This was not a concession performed for her. A performance would not have contained a notice of withdrawal, a sentence that might actually happen. She stood in front of the elevator doors and watched the floor lights until her heart was steady enough for a meeting.
The meeting on the attachments was so plain it seemed another world. Lawyer Pei was professional. Zhou Heng was professional. The cap of one million two was written into a note. Lu Chen did not come in until ten past nine. Blood in the whites of his eyes. The shirt changed. The anger not visible. He showed her none of the look that said she ought to thank him. He was even half an inch more distant than usual. He sat beside Lawyer Pei and argued with her for five minutes only on the number of days in the Zhou moving period. When the argument ended, both sides fixed the move at sixty days. In public she did not yield to him. At the close she said thank you, everyone, and the thanks were divided evenly.
At noon she sat ten minutes in the car before she sent a message: The door at the side wasn't shut. I heard. It wasn't on purpose. But I heard one billion five hundred forty-five million, and I heard you say you would step out.
A long time passed before he answered: Then what you heard is true. I'll fight for the five million. I don't promise a result today. You don't have to be better to me because you heard it.
She replied: I will not be better to you because I heard it. I will take it back to the board because it is the right structure. If you're free tonight, come up to the forty-first floor. Not to pay you for the notice of withdrawal. Because I still want you. If you think the two sentences contradict, don't come.
He replied: They don't contradict. Nine. I'll bring a clean working draft. And condoms.
In the afternoon she wrote the figure one billion five hundred forty-five million, alone, to her father and to two directors who could vote by phone. The reasons went down as short sentences: flood channel removed; tenants separated by kind; default matched both ways; relics at seventy-five days; the tree's cost capped; thirty-five percent down, not fifty; personal guarantee at zero. On a call where the bank's account manager was listening in, the man was silent a few seconds and said the structure was better than what they had feared. Her father did not say good. Her father said don't be pleased yet. Has the other side signed. She said not yet. She said the three words, not yet, as if she had already seen the road, and not as if she were asking.
At ten to nine that evening the top floor again had only her light. The city had been washed by the clear sky after rain. Almost no fog on the glass. She had taken off the jacket from the meeting. Under it she was still in a shirt and trousers. She had not changed into anyone's imagined clothes. She did not want to stage the night as a theater of payment.
Lu Chen was on time. He saw her eyes and set the file on the desk first. He did not touch her.
"You're still angry," he said.
"I don't know what the anger is at," Jiang Ruoxue said. "Maybe at the dirt in Han Yu. Maybe at myself for standing outside the door and hearing it through. Maybe at you, willing to step out over a clause, while my husband in a tent says he rests easy with me on everything. I can't spend this anger on you. So I say it clear first. I take today's refusal. I take it as proof that you, as the negotiator, are whole. I called you up because I want your body. The two things sit next to each other. They are not exchanged."
Lu Chen's shoulders let down a little. "All right. Then I won't hang the stepping-out on my mouth like a medal either. Director Han has not agreed to one billion five hundred forty-five million. He has only not replaced me. That is the whole result of the day."
"Enough to enter this room," she said. "Come here."
He came. This kiss was deeper than Tuesday's, and slower. She tasted a bitterness from a day he had not eaten properly, and took his lower lip into her mouth. His hand went into the hair at the back of her head. The clip came out. Her hair fell to her shoulders. She undid his buttons, one by one, and when they were undone she put her face to his chest first and listened to the heart. The heart was fast. That satisfied her.
"I want you in my mouth," she said. "The sofa. Tell me the pressure."
Lu Chen held her shoulder and looked at her seriously. "You don't have to prove anything with this."
"I'm not proving. I want to. If you don't want my mouth, say so."
"I want it." His throat moved. "Very much."
She sat him down and knelt on the carpet herself. The carpet was more familiar than on Tuesday. She undid the belt and freed him. His cock was hot in her palm, heavy, the head already wet. She kissed the tip once, heard him draw breath, then licked with the flat of her tongue from the base upward. At the ridge of the head she slowed and circled once. Her technique was not full of variations. She was attentive. She took the head in. The side of her cheek tightened. Her hand held the rest and stroked, slow. Lu Chen's hand rested in her hair without weight. He did not push. His voice came apart.
"Lighter, up at the front. Yes. Tongue underneath. Jiang Ruoxue. Look up."
She looked up. His face was no longer calm. The ears red. The mouth a little open. Being looked at, his cock jumped in her mouth. She took him deeper, until the corners of her eyes were wet, then came off to breathe, and took him again. Spit made him shine. Her other hand cradled his balls and rubbed, very light. He swore, low and filthy, and then breathed as if he were apologizing. She came off him and smiled.
"The filthy words can stay," she said. "I like you not performing. Don't come in my mouth unless you ask first. Tonight I want you to come inside. Put it on."
"Put it on now?"
"I take my clothes off first. You watch me take them off."
She stood and, in front of him, undid the shirt, undid the bra, pushed the trousers and the underwear together down to her ankles, and kicked them away. The glass on the forty-first floor was one-way. At night the outside could not see in. Even so she had a dizziness of standing in front of the city. A body of thirty-four was not an advertisement. A little softness at the waist from sitting in offices. Breasts full. Nipples standing from the kiss just now. Between her legs already bright with wet. The way Lu Chen looked at her was the way a man looks at a thing he does not dare handle carelessly. She came closer, straddled his thighs, and set her chest against his face. He took a nipple in his mouth and sucked harder than on Tuesday. She moaned. This time she did not press it all the way down.
He put the condom on. She watched his fingers smooth the rubber, and when she had watched she held him and sat down. The entry was easier than the first time. Her body knew him. When she sank to the base both of them trembled. She began to move, hands braced on his shoulders, breasts swaying in front of his eyes. One of his hands kneaded her breast. The other went down and rubbed her clit. She set the rhythm. A stretch of fast, a stretch of slow. When she wanted slow she stayed at the deepest point and ground. When she wanted fast she lifted herself and came down. The only sounds in the office were bodies meeting, the sound of wet, and him saying her name without stopping.
"If it's too deep, does it hurt," he asked.
"It doesn't hurt. Deeper. I want you hitting that place inside. Yes. Like that. Don't stop."
Her orgasm came sharp and full. She went rigid on him. Her vagina contracted, wave stronger than wave. Her clit numbed under his fingers. The sound broke into short cries. He was clenched until his eyes reddened, and he still waited out her spell before he held her ass and drove up. After several strokes he asked if they could change. She said yes. He had her kneel on the sofa and came into her from behind. The angle went deeper. Her hands gripped the back of the sofa. His chest was against her back. His hand came around to the front and kept rubbing. Each stroke brought his balls lightly against the tops of her thighs. She was wet and hot. She heard her own wetness. Shame and pleasure mixed and pushed her to a second time. The second time she could barely kneel. He locked an arm around her waist. The speed went ragged. His breath was at her ear.
"May I come."
"Come. I want you to come. All of it."
He drove in deep and stopped. His body shook hard. She felt him jump and jump inside the condom. She felt his teeth close lightly on her shoulder, a bite that did not break. The way he finished heated her eyes. He did not pull out at once. He lay along her back. His palm opened and covered her lower belly, as if confirming she was still breathing.
"Here," she said, answering what he had not asked aloud.
After they cleaned themselves they did not dress at once. The air-conditioning was a little cold. Lu Chen put her coat over her. He himself wore only the trousers. The working draft was spread on the carpet. The two of them knelt and corrected it, like two people refusing to admit they had just had sex, and also like people who, only because they had, were willing to put their knees on opposite sides of the same sheet. She wrote one billion five hundred forty-five million in pencil. Thirty-five, thirty-five, thirty. Relics at seventy-five days. Hand clearance first. The camphor at one million two hundred thousand. The Zhous at sixty days. Cai Shufen's settlement agreement as an attachment, not as a footnote under compensation. The place of the personal guarantee she struck with a slash. The slash was heavy.
"This is the draft I can sign," Jiang Ruoxue said. "Add anything above it and I don't sign. If you go back and it gets changed, you tell me. Don't use a body to cushion bad news."
"Bad news I will say with my mouth," Lu Chen said. His eyes fell on her bare collarbone, then returned to the paper. "If this paper gets signed, it is because you deserve this land. Not because I have been inside you."
She kissed his shoulder. "And you deserve a buyer you will not meet in a courtroom. Don't let Han Yu rewrite you into his mouth."
When he left it was nearly one. At the door he stopped and set his forehead to hers. He did not ask for another time. "If you see your family tomorrow, they will press you. You can refuse my calls. I will not change the draft back because of that."
"I know," she said.
After the door shut, his smell was still in the office. Cedar, paper, a little sweat. She locked the working draft in a drawer, dressed, and looked once more in the mirror. The woman in it looked like someone who had just been wanted, seriously. She allowed herself to keep that expression until the elevator opened. The elevator was empty. She drew the expression back into a face that could cross a lobby.
