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Chapter 12 Who Made Him Laugh
Chapter 12 Who Made Him Laugh
The crack did not come from the bed. On the bed they had already learned to ask. The crack came from a laugh.
Tuesday's client call was long. On the phone Zhang Xue caught a line of the other side's obstruction and asked back, polite and vicious, and someone in the meeting room could not help laughing. Li Gan laughed too. After he laughed he sent a line to the internal chat: I'm putting Zhang Xue's sentence into the minutes. Wu Ziyi saw it while she was in another room revising a proposal. She stared at the line for a few seconds and set the phone face-down. Face-down did not mean unseen.
At noon in the pantry, Chen Qi from the project said something without using his brain. "Li Gan, you really have it too good. One car every day, two older sisters riding with you. How come I don't have that kind of luck." A few people laughed. Li Gan's face sank at once. "Not older sisters. And not a ride they're being given. We split the gas. Don't say that kind of thing again." Chen Qi still wanted to smooth it over. He saw the expression and swallowed the rest of the sentence.
Wu Ziyi was standing in the doorway and heard the second half. She did not go in to take his side. She turned and left. Zhang Xue came from the other end and only saw that Li Gan's face was still dark. "What happened?"
"Chen Qi made a joke," he said. "It was ugly. I told him to stop."
"What did he say?"
Li Gan repeated it. Zhang Xue's eyes went cold. "Next time I'll say it myself. You don't have to snatch the words older sister away for me, as if I'll shatter if I hear them."
"I don't think you'll shatter." He lowered his voice. "It's that the sentence set the two of you down as my benefit. I can't listen to that."
Wu Ziyi said very little in the afternoon meeting. When she revised Li Gan's page she revised it finely, finely to the point of almost no mercy. Even Zhou Heng glanced at her. After the meeting broke Li Gan followed her and called her in the fire stairwell. "Ziyi. Are you revising the proposal, or are you angry at me?"
She stopped. The stairwell smelled of dust. She looked at him, and her voice was kept very steady. "Both. That page of the proposal really was loose. The anger is real too. You said in the chat you were going to copy Zhang Xue's sentence. I wasn't there when you laughed. I'm not asking you not to laugh. I found that I still measure whether I've been set behind by counting the times she makes you laugh. That's ugly. I'm telling you first, so I don't turn it into coldness at night."
"Telling me is right," he said. "I copied her sentence because the sentence was useful. Not because she can make me happier than you can. But if I swear now that everyone is the same, you won't believe it either. We'll talk when we get home. This is a fire stairwell. I don't want you handling this in front of a concrete wall."
"All right." She nodded. "I'll say it tonight. Don't buy food ahead of time to make it up. I'm not a person who can be bought back with sweet things."
In the car that evening all three of them knew there was something to say. Zhang Xue sat in the back and spoke first. "Ziyi, he told me. If you're jealous, finish saying it at home. Don't revise a person's page numbers like that in a meeting. Page numbers are page numbers. You set that rule yourself."
Wu Ziyi held the seat belt. "You're right. I revised that page too hard. Tomorrow I'll add a sentence to Zhou Heng on my own, that my standard changed, not that Li Gan didn't do the work. As for the jealousy, I'll say it at home. If I say it now, I'll say it crooked in a red light."
At home, before the coats were fully off, Wu Ziyi stopped in the entry. "I'm jealous that she makes you laugh. Not jealous of one time. Jealous of that lightness. When Zhang Xue curses a client, your eyes light up. When you look at me, what's in your eyes is often seriousness, wanting, care. I'm greedy for those. But I also want you to laugh once for no reason because of me. I'm saying it under our tenth term. I'm not asking the two of you to spend tonight proving it to me."
Zhang Xue set her bag down and looked at her. "I heard you. I won't pretend to be generous either. When I heard Chen Qi say older sister, my stomach turned. I'm grateful Li Gan answered for us, and I'm also annoyed. What I'm annoyed at is that in other people's mouths I'm still an age. Making him laugh isn't my weapon. If you take my jokes as evidence that I'm snatching something from you, I'll hit back. I'm not hitting back now because you spoke like a person."
Li Gan stood between them and did not take either hand. "My mistake was that the line in the chat was too light. I didn't think it would land in you as a comparison. I'll still laugh after this. I won't strangle laughter for the sake of fairness. But anything that concerns the two of you, I won't send it in a chat where other people are. At home I can say again why I laughed. Listen if you want to. If you've listened and you're still miserable, we stay inside the misery. We don't cover it with sex."
Wu Ziyi looked at him. The rims of her eyes were red, and she did not cry aloud. "No sex tonight. I want to be by myself a while. This isn't a red light. It's that I need the room. The two of you can stay in the living room. Don't go silent on purpose in order to compensate me. I can hear a deliberate silence the moment it starts."
She went into the master bedroom. The door shut. Two people were left in the living room. Zhang Xue went to boil water. Li Gan followed her in and leaned on the doorframe. "I'm not going to touch you while her door is shut. I only want to ask if you're all right."
"I'm not," Zhang Xue said. "But I'm still here. Go knock on her door once. Tell her the water's boiled, and if she wants a drink she can come out and get it. Don't go in. She said she wanted the room."
He knocked. Wu Ziyi opened a crack. Her eyes were dry, dry with effort. "What is it?"
"The water's boiled. If you want some, come out and get it. I won't come over," he said. "Zhang Xue told me to say it this way. I think so too."
The person behind the crack was still for two seconds, then nodded. "In a minute. Just put the cup on the table."
That night nobody crossed into anybody else's quilt. After the three doors shut, the flat seemed larger than it had before they became lovers. Li Gan lay there and felt that this was the real cost of the relationship. Not the little endurance before coming. It was whether, when a person was miserable, you could keep from charging in and working her until she forgot her words. He sent both of them the same sentence: I'm here. I'll drive you again tomorrow. If you don't want to get in the car, say so.
Wu Ziyi answered: I'll get in. Only tomorrow I may still not be very able to laugh. Allow it.
Zhang Xue answered: Allow her. And allow yourself not to learn perfection overnight. Sleep.
He looked at the two lines and set the phone on his chest. The crack was still there. Nobody had used a body to smooth it flat. He felt, instead, that tomorrow's car could still be sat in.
