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Chapter 13 Qingdao North
Chapter 13 Qingdao North
The hall at Qingdao North Station was high. The announcements rounded the place names. Their train was a little after one in the afternoon. Hongqiao in Shanghai was a bit over four hours away. In the security line someone carried a box of seafood. Someone chased a child back and forth. When Xu Siyi handed over her identity card her hand was steady. Chen Hao's bag was asked open. Inside were chargers, two dirty shirts, and a box of condoms that had not been used up. The officer glanced, expressionless, and closed it. Chen Hao's ears heated anyway. Past security, Xu Siyi said quietly, "Three left. We can use them at home. We don't use them up and call it a task."
"Not a task."
While they waited they bought two cups of very hot tea and a box of pastries. The pastries were mung bean, ordinarily sweet. Xu Siyi took one bite and pushed the box at Chen Hao. She still had to spoil a sweet thing before she ate it, but a pastry could not be stirred open. She bit it in small bites, as if finishing something she was not required to like.
"You're thinking of him," Chen Hao said.
"I am. Thinking of the way he handed over coffee. Thinking of you too. Which part do you want?"
"Both."
"When he handed the coffee I liked him for three seconds." Xu Siyi looked at the platform doors. "In those three seconds you weren't there. Then the three seconds ended, and I immediately wondered whether you had seen that I liked him. You saw it. You didn't punish me with it. Now I'm giving you the same chance. If you want to talk about her, you can. When you've said it, we get on the train."
Chen Hao opened the tea lid and closed it again. "I think of the way she said twelve o'clock and meant twelve o'clock. She didn't ask me to stay. I was relieved, and after the relief there was a hollow. The hollow wasn't wanting to remain. The hollow was that someone ended a thing seriously. I don't meet that often. In sales I've seen too many endings that pretend there will still be contact. She didn't pretend. I like that. After I liked it I wanted even more to sit this train with you. Because you don't pretend either. Even not liking the mung-bean cake, you show it clearly."
What he said made Xu Siyi want to laugh. She laughed once, and her eyes reddened. "That flattery is clumsy. I'll take it."
Their seats were on the window side, the two of them together. After the train left, Qingdao's sea was quickly replaced by ordinary fields, buildings and trees. There was water in the fields. Daylight pressed on the water. Chen Hao had prepared a whole journey of talk. Once he was actually sitting, half an hour passed and he had not spoken. Xu Siyi did not push him. She put her forehead to the glass and watched the poles go backward, one by one.
Past Weifang she spoke. "I'm going to tell you the details of last night. If you don't want to hear, say stop. The rule I made about stop works in bed. It works in talking too."
"Tell me. If I stop, I'll say stop."
Xu Siyi kept her voice very low, too low to be heard in the aisle. "When he entered me he asked whether I still wanted it now. He didn't ask once before and then treat that as my agreeing all the way to the end. When I cried his fingers stayed inside and waited for me to decide. I told him to go on. When I came there was sound next door. I hated that wall. I was also wetter because of that wall. That's the sentence I least want to tell you. But if I don't tell you, some night after we get back I'll think it by myself, and after I've thought it I'll feel I betrayed you a second time."
Chen Hao's hand closed into a fist on his knee, then opened. He looked at her profile, at the ear that had gone red with shame. He was a little hard. He hated being hard now, and he would not lie to her about it again.
"Hearing it made me hard," he said. "And it hurts. The hurt is in my stomach. The hardness is in a very specific place. If you see it, don't think appetite is all I have left. I have both."
"I see it." Xu Siyi's gaze stopped on his crotch for a second and moved away. "I'm not pure either. While I was telling it I responded too. I'm not going to deal with it on the train. I'm only letting you know that after it's told, we're still sitting together. That matters more than being unmoved."
So Chen Hao told his part too. He told her about entering Gu Wanning from behind while they lay on their sides, about her requiring a condom even on the last night, about calling her name when he came and then adding that he would tell his wife about that sound. When Xu Siyi heard the name, her nails went into her palm. She did not say stop. She waited until he finished, then showed him the crescents she had pressed.
"This hurts," she said. "It isn't your fault. It's my body keeping the account. When the account is kept, it lets go. Look. I let go."
She had. The four crescents in her palm went quickly from white to red. Chen Hao took her hand to his mouth and kissed the marks. The kiss was light. Someone in the aisle walked past with hot water. No one looked twice.
The attendant pushed the food cart through. They bought two boxed meals. The taste was ordinary. The steam was real. While they ate they did not talk about bodies for a while. They talked about work. Xu Siyi said she would call the client's guarantee clause back tomorrow. She would not hand herself over on a day off. Chen Hao said this quarter's target was still short a stretch. Short was short. He did not intend to make it up by drinking with clients. The talk was deadly ordinary. Ordinary let Xu Siyi's shoulders come down, a little at a time.
"You see," she said, chewing. "Besides those three nights, we still have clauses and targets. If a marriage is kept up only by not swapping, it's too thin. It also depends on who refuses a rude phone call, and who is willing to say the anxiety about a target out loud, instead of taking it home and turning it into temper."
"Then after we're home we keep one evening a week when we don't talk about work," Chen Hao said. "And we don't talk about them. We only talk about how we want to be touched. The agreement may be embarrassing. Embarrassment can count as paying a debt. The debt is one I owe you. I used to finish and go shower, and leave you alone on the bed. You said that the first night. I didn't take it as law then. I do now."
Xu Siyi looked at the greens in the boxed meal and nodded. "The law passes. With an attached clause. When I want it, I say I want it. When I don't, I say I don't. We don't use having sex to prove I'm not thinking of him. Sex as proof is canceled."
"Canceled."
After Jinan the light darkened. Their two faces showed on the window glass, laid over the lights outside. Xu Siyi lowered her seat a little and put her head on Chen Hao's shoulder. She could not sleep. She only leaned. Chen Hao could smell a little of the hotel's citrus shampoo still in her hair. Under the shampoo was her own scent. He suddenly wanted to cry. The want came without warning. He made no sound, but tears fell into her hair. Xu Siyi felt it and lifted her head.
"What are you crying about?"
"That we're still on this train," he said. "And that I almost felt the only person who knew how to end a thing seriously was her. That isn't true. You're ending it too. Your ending is harder, because you still have to go on living with me. Going on takes more spine than ending."
Xu Siyi wiped his tear with her thumb. "Then grow the spine. I'm not asking you not to think anymore. I'm asking that when you think, you come back, instead of standing outside the platform."
"I'll come back."
Near Suzhou the lights grew dense. Shanghai had not arrived, but the air already felt like the air of the delta, wet, bright, without salt. Xu Siyi went to the toilet. When she came back her eyes had been washed. She sat, took the rules out of her wallet, unfolded them, and folded them again.
"About Jiaxing, my answer right now is that I won't go," she said. "Not that I'll never go. On that Saturday thirty days from now, I probably still won't want to put us back at a tea table. I want to finish, at home, what needs saying. If you want me to go, you say so. You wanting me to go doesn't mean I will. I'll listen, then I'll decide."
Chen Hao thought a long time. The train announcement was already previewing Hongqiao. "I don't want you to go. In that not-wanting there is jealousy, and there is protection. I'll separate them. The jealousy is that I don't want you to see him again. The protection is that I'm afraid if you go, you'll break the spine that's growing at home. I admit both reasons. The final right not to go is yours. My opinion is not to go."
"Then I'll note your opinion," Xu Siyi said. "If I change my mind in the thirty days, I'll tell you a week ahead. I won't disappear for an afternoon without warning."
Hongqiao arrived. The crowd pressed them out of the doors. The wind in the underground passage was hard. Chen Hao pulled the suitcase. Xu Siyi carried the laptop bag. Their hands came apart once in the crowd and found each other again quickly. When they found each other, neither spoke. Speaking had been the train's work. The passage was only responsible for returning people to the ground.
