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Chapter 1 The Last Bus
Chapter 1 The Last Bus
The rain had started at four in the afternoon and, at nine at night, still showed no intention of stopping. The last Route 32 bus was eleven minutes later than the time on the stop sign. When the doors opened, what crowded in first was a damp, cold breath of air, and only after that the people. Zhou Ye sat by the window in the rear section, a laptop that had already gone dead resting on his knees, his coat taken off and spread over the cushion beside him. A seam in the roof was leaking. When he boarded, that whole row had been wet, a cold film of water shining on the seats. He had blotted it with tissues and then pressed the coat down for a long time. Only the patch on his right had barely dried. His own trouser cuffs were soaked through. The cloth stuck to his calves, and the chill seeped, little by little, toward the bone.
He had worked late for the campaign review due tomorrow. Bo'an's office building was on the east side of the city. The place he rented was in Hexi, west of the river, and at night this was the only route that did not make him transfer. The last bus was usually empty. Tonight the rain had driven aboard everyone who did not want to walk. Almost no seat could be used. The ones that looked empty could not be sat on. Water dripping from the tips of umbrellas had gathered into little pools in the sponge. Someone had spread a plastic bag and was still standing, cursing the bus for not leaving even one dry place.
Shen Man got on at East Gate.
Zhou Ye saw a pair of high heels first, darkened by the rain, fine mud on the side of one heel. Then the hem of a beige trench coat, a deeper color along the lower stretch, wet cloth clinging to her calves. Her hair ought to have been pinned neatly at the back of her head. A few strands stuck to the side of her neck now, and rain ran along the line of her jaw down into her collar. She stood in the aisle for two seconds. Her eyes moved quickly over every seat, and the center of her brow drew in, lightly. Zhou Ye had seen that drawing-in at the company. At a quarterly meeting, when someone read a media-spend figure wrong, the executive vice president did not raise her voice. She only tightened the center of her brow, and the whole conference room went quiet.
She saw him. Her gaze stopped on his face and moved away again at once, as if she were unwilling, on the last bus, to greet an employee two levels below her. Shen Man was in charge of marketing, brand, and user growth. Zhou Ye's reviews belonged to Lin Qiming, the marketing director. There was still a layer between them. Rank did not need to be written on paper. An elevator door opening was enough to make a person straighten his back and pass the words he meant to say over his tongue twice.
There was no second dry place in the bus. Shen Man took a step forward. Her heel slipped on the standing water. She caught a vertical pole, her knuckles white. A man who was standing shifted aside, but the seat he freed had a dripping umbrella spread across it. She looked at the umbrella and did not sit. Zhou Ye drew the coat back onto his own legs, turned sideways, and gave up the patch he had warmed dry. His voice was not loud. It was only enough for her to hear.
"This side is dry."
Shen Man looked at that small piece of dark gray cloth, then at him. The carriage lights were yellow and lit the tiredness under her eyes very clearly. She weighed it for perhaps three seconds. The last bus would not stop longer for a vice president. Her skirt was already wet. If she stood all the way to the terminus, she might not still resemble herself at the operations meeting tomorrow morning.
"Thank you," she said, and sat down beside him.
The moisture on the trench coat came against him at once. She sat very straight, knees together, bag on her lap, trying not to touch him. A two-person seat was narrow to begin with. When the bus swayed, her elbow still met his sleeve. Zhou Ye shifted the laptop toward the window and moved toward the glass himself. Only after he had made room did he realize he was nearly pressed to the cold pane. The shirt on his shoulder dampened quickly.
"Zhou Ye." She spoke all at once, as if confirming, not making conversation.
"Ms. Shen."
"Still at the office at this hour."
"The review isn't finished."
She answered with a small sound and did not ask again. The doors closed. Route 32 drove into the rain. The streetlights outside were drawn into long streaks. The glass was covered in fog. No one could tell whether his own face was still properly arranged. Zhou Ye smelled a very faint scent on her, washed thin by the rain, and under it the smell of warm skin. He told himself to look out the window. Her breathing was close. Every time the bus braked, her shoulder struck him lightly and separated again, and both of them pretended that the strike was only inertia.
When the bus passed Qingnian Road, the water had risen over the curb. The driver dropped his speed to the slowest. Someone in the carriage complained that the last bus was worse than walking. Shen Man's fingers tightened on the bag strap. A drop of water fell from the end of her hair and landed exactly on the back of Zhou Ye's hand. It was warm first, and then it turned cool.
"Sorry," she said.
"It's nothing."
She drew a tissue from her bag, paused, and held the tissue out beside his hand. She did not reach over and wipe it herself. That pause let Zhou Ye understand that she also did not know whether a hand was allowed to fall on a subordinate's hand. He took the tissue and pressed it to the back of his hand. It carried the same faint scent as her coat. His ears heated for a moment. That kind of heat was out of place on a night of overtime. He was twenty-seven, not an age at which a drop of water should undo him, but the person sitting beside him was Shen Man. Last Friday she had still been standing at the far end of the conference room on the eighteenth floor, turning the budget page by page, very slowly, asking him why he had written the second wave of spending into third-tier cities. He had answered badly. She had not reprimanded him. She had only said to go back and do it again. Now the hands that had turned that budget rested less than a palm's width from his knee, the fingertips paler because of the cold.
"You take this bus often," she said.
"The last one. I usually can't catch the one before."
"East Gate to Hexi takes forty minutes."
"Fifty when it rains. Tonight will probably be longer."
Shen Man glanced out the window. The wipers scraped two fans across the windshield, and the glass smeared over again at once. "I don't usually take the bus." After she said it, as if she felt the sentence sounded too much like status, she added, "The car went in for servicing. I didn't want to call a company car at this hour. A record would be left."
Zhou Ye did not take the remark up. He knew what that record was. Bo'an's administrative system logged who had used a car at what time, from which building to which road. A vice president using a car alone at night was not, in itself, news. Shen Man simply seemed unwilling to hand her destination over to that sheet. The discovery stirred something small in him. In meetings she was always clear, sharp, and without explanation, as if a person's life ought not to have a seam. The seam had shown on the last bus, in the soaked hem of the trench coat and in that sentence about not wanting a record left.
The bus stopped again. The intersection ahead was flooded. The driver rolled the window down to speak with a traffic officer, and wet wind poured in. Shen Man drew her shoulders in. Almost by instinct Zhou Ye lifted the coat, already half wet, meaning to block the wind for her, and stopped halfway in the air. The coat was not dry, and the movement was not suitable. He put his hand down.
Shen Man had seen it. She did not smile, but there was a very shallow light in her eyes.
"No need," she said. "You're cold yourself."
"I'm all right."
"Your trousers are wet."
He looked down and only then noticed that the dark suit trousers were darker from the knee downward. She must have seen it when she sat, and had waited until now to say so. Zhou Ye suddenly did not know where to put his legs. Holding them together looked cramped. Separating them would touch the hem of her skirt. The hem was right there, soaked cloth against her legs, the line of them clearer than any suit she had worn in a meeting. He moved his gaze away. His throat rolled.
Shen Man was not looking at him either. She watched an advertisement on the pole ahead, her voice kept very level.
"Zhou Ye, thank you for the seat. Before the stop, we don't have to talk."
"All right."
They were quiet for a few minutes, as promised. The bus finally edged past that stretch of water. The speed was still slow. The silence was not as clean as she had announced. On a turn her knee touched his knee, and neither of them moved away at once. Under the cloth there was temperature. Only a small place met, and it was harder to pretend it had not happened than the drop of water had been.
Zhou Ye's heartbeat was so loud he worried she could hear it. He counted to five in his head before he moved his leg half an inch away. Shen Man's knee returned to where it had been. The tip of her ear was red. Under the yellow light it was almost impossible to see, but he sat so close that he saw it anyway.
The announcement sounded, muffled, saying there was still temporary traffic control ahead and asking the passengers to understand. Someone got off to try his luck. The rain soaked that person's back at once. Shen Man did not move. She held the bag a little tighter, her face in profile toward the front, the line of her jaw drawn tight. Zhou Ye knew that line. She held it when she listened to someone report a problem whose answer she already knew. What was different was a bead of water still undried on her lashes. When the bus lights swayed, the bead flashed.
He meant to move his eyes and failed again. Shen Man seemed to feel the look. When she spoke, she was still watching ahead.
"There's something on my face."
"There's water on your lashes."
She raised a hand and wiped, and missed it. Zhou Ye's fingers shifted on his knee and, in the end, did not reach across. Shen Man wiped once more herself. The bead was gone. The movement was light, too light for the person on the eighteenth floor who could press down an entire quarter's budget.
"That will do," she said.
"Mm."
The last bus kept going. Rain struck the roof, sound after sound, covering that little redness and also keeping it. Zhou Ye held the dead laptop a little tighter. The screen was black. It reflected nothing. He still felt that the heat on his face must be there. Shen Man's shoulder came against him again because of a brake, and this time it stayed longer than before. She did not leave at once. He did not dodge. The fog on the window grew thicker and turned the city outside into a blur of light.
