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Chapter 6 The Kitchen Light
Chapter 6 The Kitchen Light
Saturday had been set for the afternoon. On Friday night the agreement broke itself.
Zhang Xue could not sleep. At half past eleven she got up to pour water, meaning only to turn on the small light on the refrigerator. The living room was dark. There was someone in the kitchen. She walked barefoot to the doorway, and the picture she saw stayed in her head a long time afterward: Wu Ziyi sitting on the counter, the hem of her house clothes piled at her waist, Li Gan standing between her legs, his hand gone up under the hem and covering her breast. Wu Ziyi's hand was inside his sleep pants, holding the thing that had already gone hard, moving it slowly up and down. They were kissing. The kiss was deep. The wet sound was light, as if they were afraid of waking someone, and as if they had already forgotten there was a third person in the flat.
Zhang Xue did not speak at once. That was the part she was angriest about later, angry at herself. She stood in the dark and watched for several seconds. She watched Li Gan's thumb pass over Wu Ziyi's nipple. She watched Wu Ziyi's waist go soft under the touch. She watched her fingers rub once at his tip, and heard him breathe her name, low. That one "Ziyi" burned through the soles of Zhang Xue's feet. She could have gone back to her room and left Saturday for daylight. She did not go back. She lifted her hand and turned on the big kitchen light.
The light was white all at once, and cruel.
Li Gan jerked half a step back. The shape in his sleep pants did not retreat as cleanly. Wu Ziyi pulled her hand out and tugged the hem down, but her legs were still open, and when she closed them her knee knocked his waist. None of the three found a first sentence. The refrigerator began to hum, like a spectator who had arrived at the wrong time.
Zhang Xue spoke first. Her voice was steadier than she had expected. "I'm not here to catch adulterers. Don't put on those caught faces. That face makes me want to smash a glass."
"Zhang Xue." Wu Ziyi got down off the counter, barefoot, and stood straight. She did not hide behind Li Gan. "I started it. Not only tonight. I thought the things you wanted to say on Saturday could wait for daylight. I couldn't hold it. I'm sorry. What I'm sorry for is the place, the time, and hiding it from you. I'm not sorry that I want him."
Li Gan's throat was dry. "I agreed to it. If you're going to curse someone, curse me. Don't only curse her. Just now Ziyi asked me whether we should go back to the room. I was the one who said you were asleep, so the kitchen was all right. I judged wrong. That sentence is mine."
"What disgusts me most about the two of you right now," Zhang Xue said, biting every word clear, "isn't the doing. It's that you thought I was asleep. I live in this flat like a piece of furniture with regular hours. You can kiss outside my hours, touch outside them, shove condoms into pockets. I even lie in my room thinking about these things and touch myself. After I've touched myself I still save Saturday for you, a decent conversation. And you couldn't even wait out Friday night."
Wu Ziyi's eyes moved. "You've thought about it yourself."
"Yes. I've thought about it myself." Zhang Xue set her glass on the table, and she set it down hard. "I'm jealous. I'm jealous enough that I can't sleep. I'm not only jealous that you got to him first. I'm jealous of myself for pressing a liking down for eleven months. Li Gan, look at me. If you only take me for a roommate, say so now. After you say it I can go on being angry, but I'll know how that door is supposed to close. If you don't only take me for a roommate, then don't play dumb at a moment like this."
Li Gan looked at her. The kitchen light made his face very young, young enough to hurt her chest, but his eyes did not dodge. "Not only a roommate," he said. "I like Ziyi. That's something that has already happened. I also can't stand here and say I haven't looked at you. After the night you had the fever, I was looking. I didn't say it because we live together, and if I said it and you didn't want it, you wouldn't even have a home. I thought not saying it was protecting you. Tonight it looks as if not saying it only left you humiliated on your own."
Zhang Xue's eyes went hot. She would not let them fall under the light. "Wu Ziyi, what about you? Do you only want a young man, or have you known all along that I was in this car too?"
Wu Ziyi was silent for a few seconds. She did not use the kind of closing she used at work to close this scene. "I knew. I didn't only know today. Sometimes when you look at the back of his neck, I get irritated. After I'm irritated I feel I have no right to be, because I was the one who put my hand on him first. Part of hiding it from you was fear. Fear that if you came in, I'd become the older woman who couldn't keep her composure. Fear that after he compared us, he'd find you could make him laugh more. That fear is ugly. I'm saying it now because you're already standing under the light. I don't want to use a lie to push you back out."
All three of them were breathing hard. Desire had not yet fully left the air. Zhang Xue could see the shape in Li Gan's sleep pants that had not gone all the way down, and she could see the reddened skin inside Wu Ziyi's collar where she had been handled. She hated that she was still looking. She pulled her gaze back to their faces.
"Tonight ends here," she said. "Neither of you come over and hold me. If I'm held now, I won't be able to tell comfort from possession. Moving Saturday's talk up to now is useless too. My anger hasn't cooled. I'll only announce a few things. First, there will be no more scenes in this flat where the light comes on and somebody has to pull their trousers up, unless I'm in the room myself and I've agreed. Second, at the office we go on being colleagues. Nobody uses this to affect anybody's project. Third, we talk tomorrow in the daytime. While we talk, nobody takes clothes off. I need your minds present."
"All right," Wu Ziyi said.
"All right," Li Gan said too. He wanted to say he was sorry again. Zhang Xue lifted a hand and stopped him.
"Don't say it in a string. One is enough. Say more and it sounds like you're begging me to forgive you at once. I can't give it that fast." She picked up her glass, walked to the doorway, and stopped again with her back to them. "Li Gan, when she was holding you just now, I heard the voice you used to say her name. I was jealous enough that my legs went soft. Take that sentence. Don't waste it. If tomorrow you dare say you don't know what I mean, then I'll count tonight's light as having been turned on for nothing."
She went back to her room. After the door shut she slid down it to the floor. A little water from the glass spilled onto the back of her hand, cold. She did not cry aloud. She put her forehead on her knees and listened to the two of them tidying the kitchen very quietly. Nobody kissed again. The tap went on and off. Then two doors shut, one after the other.
Li Gan lay on his own bed and looked at the ceiling a long time. His hands still had the feel of Wu Ziyi's breasts, and his eyes were full of Zhang Xue standing under the light. Her old T-shirt. Her bare feet. The look on her face, angry and true at once, when she said she had lain in her room thinking of these things and touched herself. He had been hard, and he had been cursed at, and now the two feelings stacked into a guilt with nowhere to be put. He messaged Wu Ziyi: Are you all right.
Wu Ziyi answered: No. But she was right. We'll sleep. Tomorrow nobody moves first. She needs us to talk like adults.
He opened the thread with Zhang Xue. He typed and deleted. In the end he sent only: I'll be here tomorrow. I won't run.
Zhang Xue saw it. She waited ten minutes before she answered: You'd better be. Don't bring flowers. And don't make breakfast to please me. If you do I'll be angrier.
He set the phone face-down. The kitchen light was already off. In the dark he could still see the three faces in that instant of white light. Not one of them was innocent. That let him breathe a little. If only he and Wu Ziyi were guilty, Zhang Xue would be the judge. She was not. She had stood there with soft legs, jealous, and she had put her own desire on the table too.
At last he closed his eyes. Before he closed them he thought: if tomorrow's talk fell apart, how would this car still be driven. How would three people still put the same set of keys in the same entryway. That fear was heavier than the urgency before coming. He was willing to take the weight. At least it was not silence.
