เธอแก่กว่าผมสิบสองปี และเธอเป็นฝ่ายเริ่มก่อน — Chapter 15 The Way Back

Chapter 15 The Way Back

At seven fifty in the morning the three people in the lobby looked like any project team rushing a schedule. Wu Ziyi's lipstick was the weekday color. There was a little blue under Zhang Xue's eyes. Li Gan's shirt collar lay flat. The client's car came. Nobody touched anybody's hand in the back seat. The close of the briefing was shorter than the night before. The other side said the contract process would move next week. Outside the gate the rain had stopped. The ground was still wet.

On the flight back Wu Ziyi slept for twenty minutes. Her head dipped, and she caught it herself. Across the aisle Zhang Xue looked at her once and passed over her own neck pillow. Wu Ziyi paused, then took it. Li Gan did not see the handoff. He sat in the back row, shut the laptop, and looked at the clouds outside the window. He did not know which city was under the clouds. He suddenly wanted very much to be back in that old car. The plane was too fast. Too fast to be the speed of the three of them.

Linjiang was raining. Real rain, fine and dense. Li Gan went to the garage for the car. The two of them waited in the arrivals hall. When his car turned in, Zhang Xue still pulled the back door open first. Wu Ziyi looked at her. "You're not sitting in front today?"

"Not today," Zhang Xue said. "It isn't a retreat to the old place. I want to sit in the back as a place I can also choose. You take the passenger seat. If you think I'm yielding it, you can switch with me. Right now I really want to lean on the back window and listen to the rain."

Wu Ziyi looked at her for a few seconds, nodded, and sat in the passenger seat. The doors shut, and the rain became again the kind of distance they knew. Nobody spoke at once. The car went onto the airport expressway. Li Gan's hands rested steadily on the wheel. There were not many red lights. There was one long ramp. Wu Ziyi's hand came down on his thigh, through the trousers, and only rested there.

"May I?" she asked, though the hand was already there. "Zhang Xue is in the back. I'm asking both of you."

"Yes," Li Gan said.

Zhang Xue said from the back, "Yes. Don't take your hand off for the sake of fairness. I see it. I'm not sour today. If I get sour I'll knock on your seat."

Nobody knocked. The hand stayed there, hot, steady, all the way to the first red light in the city. When the light came on, Wu Ziyi took her hand back, as if obeying a traffic rule only they understood. "When we reach the light, I won't touch you. So you don't get distracted. And so I don't wear the word red light out myself."

Li Gan turned his face and looked at her once, then looked at Zhang Xue in the rearview mirror. Both pairs of eyes were there. His chest filled, full enough that it almost affected his breathing. "I have something I want to say before we get home. Very short. We fought this week. We had sex. In the hotel we touched the edge of the word love. After we go back I may still do it wrong. The only thing I want to say first is that I'll still drive the car. Whoever doesn't want to get in, say so ahead of time. Don't vanish at the revolving door. I can't stand that kind of waiting."

Zhang Xue's voice came from behind, a little nasal, maybe from the air-conditioning. "If I'm not getting in, I'll say so. Don't talk about us as if we're passengers who evaporate. We're harder to peel off than you are. Especially Ziyi. Her bag can sit in your car for a whole week."

"That was once," Wu Ziyi said, and the roots of her ears went red. "Li Gan, I heard you. I have a sentence too. I won't use your page numbers to vent in a meeting again. If I'm jealous, I'll say it the way I said it that night. After I've said it I may still want my own room. You let me want it. Zhang Xue, you let me too. When I let the two of you, you've already done it. I remember."

"Remembering is enough," Zhang Xue said. "I have a sentence that isn't short. I don't want us to go back to the politeness from before the kitchen light was turned on. Politeness will turn me into furniture again. We can fight. Someone can not want sex. Someone can go to sleep first. But we can't pretend again that there's nothing in the rearview mirror."

Li Gan said all right. The three all-rights were not written into a memo. Traffic turned onto the familiar road. The light in the compound garage was still that white. When the white light fell on their faces, all of them had a little of the worn look that comes after a trip. In the elevator Zhang Xue's head rested against Li Gan's shoulder for two seconds and then left. Wu Ziyi saw it and did not speak. When the door opened she only went out first, held the door, and waited for them.

The flat had a smell of having been shut a while. Zhang Xue opened a window. Rain-smell came in. Wu Ziyi went to boil water. Li Gan carried the three cases into the rooms they belonged to, and when he reached the master-bedroom door he stopped and did not go in unasked. Wu Ziyi put her head out from the kitchen. "Leave it at the door. Tonight I want to sleep alone. It isn't a retreat. I want to set the hotel night down and see whether it's still here inside this flat. If the two of you want to stay together, you can. Just tell me."

"I'll go back to my own room tonight," Zhang Xue said. "I need all four limbs on the ground too. Li Gan, don't look abandoned. Nobody is abandoning you. We'll see you in the morning."

He smiled, a little foolishly. "All right. Then I'll go shower. Call me when the water's boiled. I can do the dishes tonight."

"Of course you'll do the dishes," Zhang Xue said. "When people come back from a trip, somebody has to do a labor that touches the ground. Otherwise you float."

That night the three doors shut again, each on its own. What was different from the night of the crack was that before the doors shut they stood a while in the kitchen and finished a pot of water. Nobody's hand went inside anybody's clothes. Wu Ziyi said she wanted soy milk in the morning. Zhang Xue said she would go downstairs and buy it. Li Gan said he would drive in the morning if the rain was still there. The sentences were ordinary to the point of being dull. The dullness let Zhang Xue's shoulders drop. Before she went back to her room she looked at them once. "This is all right too. Not every day has to catch fire. I used to be afraid of ordinary. Now it looks as if ordinary is something we fought for ourselves."

While Li Gan washed the dishes, Wu Ziyi had already turned her light off. A line of light still came from the crack of Zhang Xue's door. When he finished he wiped the counter dry and stood on the patch of floor the white light had once cut through, and listened to the rain. He did not feel shut out. He felt both of them were still inside the breathing of this flat. That was enough for this one night.