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Chapter 13 Personnel
Chapter 13 Personnel
There was no rain on Monday morning. The ground at East Gate was still wet, but the sky was very bright. Zhou Ye arrived at the company twenty minutes early and did not go to the eighteenth floor. Following Shen Man's message, at nine o'clock sharp he walked to the corridor outside personnel. Shen Man was already there, in a suit, hair pinned up, the envelope in her hand. The two of them did not hold hands. They only stood side by side, like two people who had come to discuss a procedure. Zhao Heng's assistant had them wait three minutes. In those three minutes Zhou Ye heard his own heartbeat. Shen Man's profile was very calm. Under the calm her knuckles were white. Zhou Ye touched the back of her hand with the back of his own hand. Only once. Her fingers loosened a little.
Zhao Heng was in his forties. He did not raise his voice when he spoke. The office door closed after they went in. Shen Man set the envelope on the desk and did not go around it.
"Zhou Ye and I are seeing each other. Since last week. He is in marketing. He is not my direct report, but the scope I manage covers his work. That creates a conflict of interest. I am applying, starting today, to withdraw from all decisions related to his evaluations, bonuses, promotions, and project assignments. The specific reporting line will change so that Lin Qiming reports directly to President Pei. We came to inform you. We did not come to ask the company for permission to be adults."
Zhao Heng looked at her for two seconds, then at Zhou Ye. "Zhou Ye, did you come of your own will? Has anyone used a position, an evaluation, or any picture to require you to come, or to require you to maintain this relationship?"
"No," Zhou Ye said. "I came of my own will. No one used a photograph or a position to require me to have a relationship with her. The relationship is what I want. If the company needs a transfer to avoid the conflict, I accept a transfer at the same level. I do not accept a demotion without a written reason."
Zhao Heng drew the paper out of the envelope, read it, and set it flat. "The company can manage a reporting line. It cannot manage where the two of you go after work. I'll take this paper. I will not take the photograph, and I don't want to see it. If anyone circulates private images inside the company, no matter whose they are, it will be handled as harassment and as an injury, not as gossip. I'll write that into the record."
Shen Man's shoulder line moved slightly. "Thank you. Lin Qiming may have unintentionally seen a lock screen that should not have appeared in a conference room. He did not ask for it. He did not spread it. We don't want that enlarged. If someone needs to explain the recusal to him, I'll go say it."
"I'll arrange it," Zhao Heng said. "As for President Pei, this morning I'll send one page of paper over. No image attached. No details attached. The two of you are not to put on a confession meeting outside his door. Ms. Shen, your recusal takes effect when this paper is signed. Before it is signed, you will no longer take part in any evaluation in marketing today. Zhou Ye, go back to your desk first. Don't tell anyone in the break room about this process."
"All right," the two of them said at the same time.
When they came out, the corridor was still bright. Shen Man returned the signing pen to the assistant, turned, and gave Zhou Ye only a nod. The nod was work. Her eyes were not. In the eyes there was an emptiness that comes after a heavy thing has been set down, and also a light that was still shaking. Zhou Ye did not kiss her in the personnel corridor. He said, low, "I won't look for you at noon. I'll wait for your message."
"Mm," she said. "Go work."
Marketing was unnaturally quiet that morning. Maybe only Zhou Ye thought it was unnatural. At eleven Lin Qiming called him into the small office. The door was not shut all the way. Lin Qiming's expression was like a man who had taken a mouthful of something very hot and also felt he ought not to show it.
"Personnel told me about the recusal. They didn't tell me the details. I don't want the details." He pushed a document over. "Starting today this page of yours goes straight into my weekly report. It doesn't pass through Ms. Shen. Your writing still shouldn't be lyrical. Also, that lock screen last time: I'll treat it as if I didn't see it. You'd better treat it as if it never happened in a conference room. If someone wants to make an article out of it, come tell me. Don't scare extra stories out of yourself."
"Understood," Zhou Ye said. "Director Lin, my work won't depend on this."
"It had better not," Lin Qiming said. "Go on. The ears don't have to be red. If they're red you look like a thief. And you aren't a thief."
Zhou Ye came out, and his ears were indeed hotter. Chen Xia glanced at him and asked nothing. That was a kindness. He sat down and made the keyboard sound, so he could return to the spreadsheet. A spreadsheet does not blush.
Pei Chengchuan's talk happened at four in the afternoon, and he asked only for Shen Man. Zhou Ye learned the content later. At the time he only received one message from her: It's done. We'll talk tonight. There was no extra punctuation. He looked at that message, worked until seven, and did not look toward the eighteenth floor again.
At night it was still the seventeenth floor. When Shen Man opened the door the heels were already off. The suit jacket hung on the back of a chair. She looked as if a length of strength had been drawn out of her, but her eyes were clear. She let him in, poured water first, and then repeated the afternoon's words to him.
After Pei Chengchuan heard Zhao Heng's one page, he was silent for a long time. He said the effect was very bad. He also said it was fortunate they had come themselves. He accepted the recusal. He did not accept them behaving in the company as if no one could manage them. He asked Shen Man whether she was serious. Shen Man said she was. He asked whether there had been an exchange. Shen Man said there had not. Pei Chengchuan looked at her for a while and said then they would do it by the rules, and he did not want to hear a second version from someone else's mouth. He also mentioned that if someone on the board made an issue of age and gender, the public line would be unified by the company. It would not be explained by the people involved, in an elevator.
"He didn't ask about the picture," Shen Man said. "Zhao Heng probably wrote that line about handling it as harassment into the record. It isn't that Pei Chengchuan doesn't want to know. It's that he knows some things, once you look at them, you have to be responsible for. He chose not to look."
Zhou Ye sat beside her. "Are you all right?"
"I'm not. And I haven't come apart." She said, "When I came out of his office my legs were soft. After they were soft I still held the next meeting. Once the recusal took effect, in the meeting I handed marketing's review to Lin Qiming. Some people looked up at me. I let them look. After they looked, they did the work."
Zhou Ye held her hand. Shen Man held back. This time they allowed themselves to lean together in the entry and not talk about rules first. The rules were already written on the desk in personnel. Shen Man's forehead rested against his shoulder. She was quiet for a long time before she said, "Did anyone ask you today?"
"Director Lin said I'm not a thief. Chen Xia didn't ask. Other people don't have a name for the story yet."
"There will be a name," she said. "When there is, don't go fight for me. And don't go admit more on my behalf. What we've already admitted is enough."
"All right."
They did not go to bed at once. Shen Man showered for a long time. Zhou Ye waited on the sofa and went over, in his mind, the sentences she had only later told him. The effect was very bad. It was fortunate you came yourselves. Those two sentences would live a long time in the company. They were not a scandal of spring light. They were a cost. The cost had already begun to be paid, so the sex did not have to keep pretending it had been stolen. When Shen Man came out her hair was wet. She wore the black long-sleeved shirt, walked up to him, and straddled his lap. Under the shirt she was bare. Her skin still carried the hot water.
"I want you now," she said. "Not to celebrate how brave we were. Because I spoke too many complete sentences today, and I want to put the sentences down for a while. If you're tired, say you're tired."
"I'm not tired." Zhou Ye's hands went under the long-sleeved shirt and held her waist. "I want you. It has nothing to do with President Pei. It has nothing to do with that page of paper either."
Shen Man kissed him, very slowly. She guided his hand between her legs. She was already wet there. When his fingers went in, she lay against his shoulder and let out a breath, as if she were finally releasing the breath she had been holding all afternoon. They spent a long time on foreplay on the sofa, until she came once first and her legs were too soft for her to sit steady, and only then did she draw him to the bedroom. On the bed she wanted him face to face. She wanted the light left on. When he entered she looked at his eyes. She said slow. She said tonight she wanted to remember it clearly. Zhou Ye thrust slowly. Each time he went to the deepest point, drew back until he had almost left, and came back. Shen Man's legs were locked around him. Her hands touched his face, touched his mouth. When she was close she still did not close her eyes. When the orgasm came she said his name, the sound low and long, and inside she bit at him in waves. Zhou Ye followed her there. He came in the condom, folded over her, and still held a little of his weight on his elbows so he would not press her until it hurt.
Shen Man stroked his back and said, "Still here."
"Here."
"Tomorrow at the company, you can nod to me. When other people are there you can call me Ms. Shen. Don't perform, in the corridor, that we are nothing. And don't perform, in the corridor, that we can do anything." She said, "The stretch in the middle, it's enough that we know it ourselves."
"All right."
The rain did not fall again. Across the river, the lights of one building went out. Zhou Ye looked at that extinguished light and suddenly remembered the seat on the last bus, the patch he had warmed dry. If every seat had been wet, she would not have sat down beside him. The thought was too close to fate. He did not say it. He said another sentence.
"I'll still take the last Route 32. If someday your car is in for service again, you can sit beside me. You don't have to wait until every other seat is wet."
Shen Man laughed once. The corner of her eye was a little wet. "Then I'll check the forecast in advance."
