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Chapter 14 The Lamp at Home
Chapter 14 The Lamp at Home
The apartment in Xuhui was on a road that was not wide. Downstairs there was a fruit shop and a nail salon that was always being renovated. When they came in, the sky was fully dark. The light in the entry was on a sensor. The moment it came on, the smell of home met them. Laundry detergent. The scent Xu Siyi usually burned. Fruit in the refrigerator that might have been there too long. No sea. No citrus. No other couple.
They stood in the entry. Neither took their shoes off first.
"Like coming back from a business trip," Chen Hao said.
"It is coming back from a business trip," Xu Siyi said, dropping the keys into the dish. "The content of the trip can't be written on an expense form."
At last they took their shoes off, washed their hands, and threw the dirty clothes into the basket. Chen Hao opened the refrigerator. There were two bottles of water and half a cabbage. Xu Siyi glanced and said they would order noodles tonight. Before the noodles arrived they sat on the sofa with a cushion between them. After a while Xu Siyi took the cushion away and sat closer. Not pressed against him. Allowing leg to touch leg.
"I'm going to shower," she said. "Alone. After I shower we eat. After we eat we decide whether to touch. Don't come in while I'm showering. At home there isn't a corridor to escape down, so the door has to be shut even more."
"I'll shut it for you."
When the water started, Chen Hao sat on the sofa and answered two work messages, then felt he had answered too fast, as if he were escaping. He turned the phone over. The tooth mark itched under his collar. He did not pick at it. He looked at the lamp on the ceiling, the one they had bought together. There was a fine crack in the shade, from a knock when they moved. The crack was still there. If the marriage was this lamp, it was still this lamp. It only had one more crack that had to be acknowledged.
When the noodles came, Xu Siyi had already dried her hair. She wore an old T-shirt and shorts. Her legs were long. There was no makeup on her face. Chen Hao looked at her and felt more unsettled than he had in the hotel. In the hotel she had been held up by rules. At home she was only his wife, thirty-one, a little blue under the eyes, slurping when she ate noodles.
"What are you looking at?" she asked.
"You, at home."
"The me at home is harder to handle. I know." She broke the braised egg and gave him half. "After we eat I have something to say. Not the rules kind. Wanting."
They finished the noodles and put the boxes in the trash bag. Xu Siyi washed her hands, came back to the sofa, and sat straight onto his lap. The place was the same as the night before they left. Chen Hao's hands held her waist and did not go down.
"I haven't said how far the wanting goes," she said.
"I'll wait."
"I want kissing. I want your hands inside my clothes. Before you go below, ask again. I don't want the light off. If it's off I'll think we're hiding. And I may drift in the middle. If I drift I'll say so. Don't get harder in order to pull me back. Force isn't a rope."
"Kissing is all right. The light stays on. If you drift, you say so. I won't use too much force."
The kiss began slowly. The sofa at home was more familiar than the hotel bed, familiar enough that Chen Hao nearly used the old speed to take her tongue. He slowed. Xu Siyi noticed. Between kisses she said, "Is this slowness yours, or did you learn it?"
"Some of it was learned. Some of it I'm keeping. If you hate it, I'll change."
"I don't hate it. As long as the person you're looking at is me."
He looked at her. His hand went under the hem of the T-shirt, palm on her waist, then up, and stopped at the side of her breast. Xu Siyi was not wearing a bra. When her breast fell into his hand, both of them sighed. His thumb crossed the nipple. She trembled lightly. Chen Hao bent and took it once through the cloth, then felt the cloth was in the way, so he pushed the T-shirt up under her collarbones. The light made the red very clear, on the outer side of her left breast, left by Lin Zheng's mouth. Chen Hao saw it. His tongue stopped beside that red.
"I want to kiss here," he said. "Not to stamp over it. To know it's there, and still kiss you. May I?"
Xu Siyi's eyes were wet. "Yes."
He kissed the red, very lightly, and only then took the nipple in his mouth. Xu Siyi's hand went into his hair. Her breathing broke. Chen Hao's other hand pressed her stomach and did not go down. She twisted. The cloth of her shorts rubbed the place where he was already hard.
"Hand in," she said. "Touch the outside first."
His hand went into the shorts and pressed her through her underwear. The cloth was wet. Chen Hao's throat went dry. He pressed slowly with the heel of his hand, as if asking. Xu Siyi put her forehead to his and said, "Move it aside. Fingers can go in. Get a condom and put it where I can see it. Whether you enter waits for me to say it separately."
Chen Hao took a condom from the drawer of the coffee table and set it where she could see it. Then he moved the underwear aside. The pad of his finger met her labia. She was hot, slick, matching the memory of the three nights he had been away, and slightly different. The difference might only have been more wetness. He did not ask about the difference. He found her clitoris and circled lightly. Xu Siyi's waist went soft at once.
"One finger," she said.
One finger slid in. The walls closed around it. Chen Hao stayed inside, waited for her to adjust, then moved. His thumb took care of the outside. Xu Siyi's eyes were open, looking at him, and looking at the living-room lamp. She said, suddenly, "I drifted. I thought of his fingers stopping like this too. I thought it. I'm back here with you now. Go on. Don't speed up."
Chen Hao's heart was pricked. His hand stayed steady. "I heard you. I'll go on. The speed doesn't change."
He did not speed up. Xu Siyi's shame and pleasure wound together and soon pushed her to the edge. She bit his ear and said like this, don't change. When the orgasm came she clenched his hand, buried her face in his neck, and the sound was muffled and not entirely hidden. Chen Hao did not draw out until she relaxed. He went and washed his hands. When he came back she was still on the sofa, legs open, eyes red, her expression clear.
"I want you inside," she said. "Wear the condom. On the sofa. Light on. Ask me before you enter. If I say wait, you wait."
Chen Hao put the condom on. The smell of rubber was especially plain in their own home. He knelt on the rug, took her shorts and underwear off together, and kissed the inside of her knee. Then he stopped.
"Xu Siyi. I'm going to enter. Now."
"Now."
When he entered, both of them looked at each other. She was a little tighter than in the hotel. It might have been the angle of the sofa. It might have been that the string in her had not fully loosened. Chen Hao stopped halfway and asked if it hurt. She said it was full, he could go all the way. He did. Their foreheads touched. He began to move, slow, deep, each stroke withdrawing very clearly. Xu Siyi's legs locked around his waist. The lamp threw their shadows on the opposite wall. The shadows swayed lightly with the movement.
"Look at me," she said.
"I am."
His thumb returned to her clitoris. Xu Siyi's voice gradually came out. It was no longer the hotel voice, afraid of being heard next door. This was her home. She could make a sound. When she did, Chen Hao felt his eyes heat. He did not turn the heat into harder impact. He kept the speed she wanted. The second orgasm was slower than the first, and longer. Inside she clenched in waves, clenched until he could not hold. He said he was going to come. Xu Siyi held his face and said come, come looking at me. He came looking at her. In his sight there was no sea and no other bed. There were her eyes, and the lamp with the crack.
After he came he did not get up at once and go to the bathroom. He pulled out, pinched the condom, knotted it, threw it away, and got a hot towel. The towel was from home, old, soft. He wiped her stomach and the insides of her thighs, slowly. Xu Siyi watched him do it, and at last the tears fell. This time it was not a guilty cry. She could not have said what it was either. Chen Hao picked her up, put her on the bed, and lay down too. The towel was still in his hand. A while later he remembered to drop it.
"I'm here," he said.
"I know." She put her face to his chest. "The marriage is still here. It isn't the one from before the three nights. It knows now that we look at other people, that we get wet, that we get jealous, that we make sounds in someone else's arms, and that we also come back at twelve. It's still only the two of us. A third person doesn't get into this bed. Doesn't get under this lamp. Do you agree with that definition?"
Chen Hao's arm tightened. "I agree. It's still a marriage. Ours. It isn't open. Those three nights are a story with the seal on it, not a new system. The system has only this new clause: if you want it you say so, if you don't you say so, if you drift you say so, if you're jealous you say so. After you've said it, you stay here."
Xu Siyi nodded. Her hair brushed his skin. "I still lean toward not going to Jiaxing. I've noted your opinion. If we fight about this in the thirty days, we fight. We don't throw that paper. The paper can be torn. It can't be thrown at someone for them to see."
"I won't throw it."
They turned off the living-room light and left a small one by the bed. When Xu Siyi was nearly asleep she said, "Tomorrow you'll see the tooth mark. Tomorrow I'll see the red on my chest. We look once and go to work. Work isn't escape. Work is the other half of living. The other half has to be there too, or this bed is only a hole."
"See you at work," Chen Hao said, and after he said it he felt the sentence was too clumsy, clumsy in just the right way.
Xu Siyi let out a breath in his arms that was almost a laugh. A car passed outside. Its lights swept the curtain and went. The smell of home closed around them again. The sea was still sounding, very far away, sounding in memory, no longer responsible for numbering their doors.
