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Chapter 10 Confession on a Rainy Day
Chapter 10 Confession on a Rainy Day
On the third morning it rained in Qingdao. It was not a storm. It came off the sea in layers and hit the glass, and turned Golden Beach into a sheet of darkened metal. At seven thirty the two couples were each back in their own rooms. This debrief was longer than yesterday's.
Chen Hao showed Xu Siyi the tooth mark on his shoulder. Xu Siyi looked a long time. She pressed it with the pad of her finger and did not use a nail. She said, "She bit you. Does it hurt?"
"No. I need to tell you that when there was sound next door I stopped for ten seconds. I almost came back. I stayed. Staying wasn't because she matters more than you. It was because if I had run back then, I would have felt I was treating both of you as switches."
Xu Siyi heard that through, and said her own through. She said she had used Lin Zheng to cover the sound on the other side of the wall. Lin Zheng had refused the posture that came from temper. She had cried, and she had come. While she said these things her eyes were on the rain outside the window, and her hand kept holding Chen Hao's. She held until both their knuckles were white, then let go.
"This morning I don't want to be touched," she said. "Not as punishment. My skin is already too full. You can sit beside me. Coming in isn't allowed. If you want to deal with yourself, go to the bathroom. I won't listen and I won't mind."
"I'm not going to deal with myself," Chen Hao said. "I'll sit with you. If at noon they suggest the four of us talk, will you go?"
"I'll go. Some things are better said by four people than guessed under a quilt."
Gu Wanning brought it up at noon in the lobby bar. The rain made Badaguan impossible. Almost no one else was at the hotel bar. She ordered a pot of hot tea and four cups, and put the already creased rules in the center of the table.
"I want the ugly part said into the second day," she said. "Last night the wall was thin. Everyone heard. If anyone pretends they didn't, this pot of tea is wasted."
No one pretended. Chen Hao admitted first that he had stopped for ten seconds. Xu Siyi admitted she had wanted to cover the sound. Lin Zheng admitted he had disliked his own reaction, and had not for that reason hurt Xu Siyi. Gu Wanning admitted she had been more aroused inside the sound, and that she had required Chen Hao to look at her, not at the wall.
After it was said, there was a strange ease on the table. The ease was not that the problem was gone. It was that the problem finally had a shape, and was no longer going moldy in anyone's stomach.
Xu Siyi poured tea for each of them. "I want a new agreement. In the time we have left, if we hear it again, we can stop or we can go on, but we say so at the time. We don't do it while swallowing it. Swallowing it turns it into a contest. I don't want to contest my husband, and I don't want to contest you."
"Agreed," the other three said, almost together.
Lin Zheng added one. "This afternoon the body can rest. If anyone wants to meet, all four meet. We don't split into pairs. If we go on at night, that's the last full night, plus the morning before checkout. Not doing it in the morning is also fine. We don't stuff the last of the time full. Stuffing it full would be like a clearance sale."
Gu Wanning looked at the rain outside. "I have another sentence that isn't pretty. I've started to like Chen Hao as a person, not only his body. The liking isn't enough to take him away. But a liking that isn't enough to take someone away can still bite. I told Lin Zheng. Now I'm telling you. If this sentence makes anyone want to stop, we stop now."
Steam off the tea hid their faces a little. Chen Hao's chest sank. He did not pretend this was manners. He looked at Gu Wanning, then at Xu Siyi.
"I have it too," he said. "I like the way she talks. Direct. When she stops, she doesn't pause. At home I sometimes go around things too much. This liking isn't love. The paper says we don't say love. I'll keep that. But I have to put it on the table. Otherwise when I go back I'll pretend it was only that we did it twice."
Xu Siyi's fingers tightened on the cup. She was silent a long time, long enough for the tea to cool a little. Then she said, "Thank you for not saving this kind of sentence for WeChat. I'm jealous. I can also listen. Because I like Lin Zheng too. I like the way he asks me. I like that when I cried he actually stopped. If this liking gets called love, I'll be afraid. So I won't call it that. I'll only say that after we go back to Shanghai, I want my husband to learn to ask me this way too. Not to learn his technique. To learn that he treats me as a person who can change her mind."
Lin Zheng's ears went red. He looked at his wife. Gu Wanning's eyes were red too, and she was smiling.
"All right," she said. "Then we leave the liking on the table. No one puts it in a suitcase. If we do it on the last night, we do it carrying this liking, and when it's done we set it down. Setting it down isn't forgetting. It's not taking it away to trade for the homes we already have."
Rain fell the whole afternoon. The four of them did not go back to the rooms to swap. They swam in the hotel's indoor pool. Lanes of water were between them. Xu Siyi's stroke was standard, left over from the bank's staff-club days. Gu Wanning swam slowly and stopped a long time at the wall. Chen Hao and Lin Zheng each took a lane. Neither raced. After they swam they soaked in the shallow end, water to the chest. To talk they had to raise their voices a little.
"Checkout is tomorrow," Chen Hao said.
"The day after tomorrow is still long," Gu Wanning answered.
Xu Siyi pushed her wet hair back. "Tonight I want to. Not because there's only tonight left and I have to grab it. My skin was empty all afternoon. Empty enough. I want Lin Zheng. I want my husband to know I want him. I want, after it's done, to go back and sleep beside my husband. Can we change the sleeping part tonight? Last night, we do it until a certain time, then each of us goes back to our own bed. No one wakes in someone else's arms. Seven thirty is too much like staying over."
Gu Wanning thought. "I agree. Back in our own rooms before twelve. We go back even if no one knocks three times. When the clock gets there, clothes on. That way of closing is clean."
Lin Zheng looked at Xu Siyi. "You're sure you want tonight? This morning you said your skin was too full."
"Morning was morning," she said. "Now is now. I've changed my mind. The rules allow a change, as long as no one talked you into it. No one talked me into it."
In the water Chen Hao held her hand, held it once, and let go, because in public they had agreed not to touch that way. He only said, "I know. Tonight I go across. At twelve I come back. If you come back early, leave the light on for me."
"I will," Xu Siyi said.
Rain struck the glass roof of the pool, sound after sound, like knuckles on a very long corridor. The four of them soaked until their fingers wrinkled, then got out. The towels were large and wrapped their bodies. In the mirror they looked like four ordinary guests, hair dripping, eyes brighter than on the day they checked in, and more afraid than on the day they checked in.
