الحافلة الأخيرة، جلست نائبة الرئيس في حضني — Chapter 4 Inside the Door

Chapter 4 Inside the Door

The corridor on the seventeenth floor was laid with old carpet, which took the sound out of their steps. Shen Man's hand was steady when she opened the door. The apartment did not have the main lights on. There was only a warm lamp in the entry. The place was not large. It was much smaller than her position. It was clean, and it smelled a little of paper and wood. The sofa was dark. By the window stood a chair, and a thin gray blanket was draped over the back of it. There were no second person's shoes.

She set her bag down and went first to the bathroom for two towels. She handed one to him and used the other to dry her own hair. The movements were natural, like receiving a colleague stranded by the rain, and also like something she had to make ordinary before she dared let it continue.

"The bathroom is on the left. The hair dryer is under the mirror. Dry your shirt a little. If the trousers are too wet, there's a blanket on the sofa." She said, "I'm going to change out of this. The door isn't locked. If you want to leave, leave whenever you want."

"All right."

She went into the bedroom. The door was pulled to, not shut tight. Zhou Ye stood in the entry with the towel against his face and heard, inside, the sound of a zipper, very light. He should not have listened. He peeled the wet shirt off himself and went to the bathroom to dry it. In the mirror the man's ears were still red. There was a faint red line on his collarbone, rubbed there by a wet collar. Only when the warm air blew on his skin did he realize how cold he had been. Once the cold drew back, another kind of heat had nowhere to hide. He thought of her saying he could leave whenever he wanted. That sentence was not courtesy. It was a road that could still be walked back. He fixed the road in his mind, and then dried the shirt until it no longer dripped.

When he came out, Shen Man had already changed. She wore a black long-sleeved house shirt that reached the middle of her thighs, and under it house trousers of the same color. Her feet were bare. Her hair was down. It was longer than when it was pinned, and the ends were still wet, sticking to her collarbones. The makeup had been taken off. Without makeup Shen Man did not look younger. She only looked more like a person who could be tired. The fatigue and the clarity of thirty-five were both there. Her eyes had softened a little from the heat and the light.

She saw that he wore only the dried shirt, the coat still over his arm, and pointed at the sofa. "Sit. I'll boil water. There's no alcohol in the house. I don't want to drink anything that makes a person decide badly."

"Hot is enough."

Before the kettle sounded, the only noise in the room was rain against the windows. Shen Man leaned in the kitchen doorway and looked at him, and suddenly said, "At the company you never dared look at me like this."

"At the company, if I looked at you, someone would notice."

"And now?"

"Now you've already noticed."

She set two cups on the coffee table and sat at the other end of the sofa. A cushion stood between them. She had put the cushion there. Zhou Ye did not move it. They drank hot water. The cups burned their hands, which was useful, because it gave the fingers something to do. Shen Man spoke first. She set the things that had to be said down under the lamp one sentence at a time, like a row of documents that could not be skipped.

"I've been divorced. I have no children. I don't keep in touch with my former husband. I'm not saying this to get your sympathy. I'm saying it so you won't use imagination, tomorrow, to fill me in." She said, "The scope I manage includes marketing. I'm not the person who reviews you, but if I wanted to affect whether you stay or go, I could do it. So tonight I'm saying this sentence until it can't be walked back. Your bonus, your level, your projects: I will not touch them. Starting tomorrow, I'll withdraw from any review that involves you. If this happens, it is not a price you have to pay."

Zhou Ye listened. His fingers tightened on the cup. "And if it doesn't happen?"

"Then you dry your clothes, and when the bridge opens you go home. On Monday we nod in the corridor. You go on revising your review. I go on being Ms. Shen." She looked at him. "I can bear both endings. I need to know which one you can bear. Don't force yourself through this moment."

The room was quiet for a few seconds. In that quiet the rain became very clear. Zhou Ye set the cup down. His voice was not entirely steady, but every word was his own.

"I came upstairs not because I'm afraid of you. And not because I want you to promote me. If you think I'm gambling on a position, I'll leave now, and after this I'll even take a different way around you on the last bus. I'm staying because I want to stay. I've wanted to since you sat down beside me. That wanting has nothing to do with reviews. If you're only cold, if you only need someone to help keep the rain off, I can be only that person."

A light came into Shen Man's eyes, and then she pressed it down. "You're saying it too clearly."

"You asked me to be clear."

She took the cushion away and still did not lean over. "I'm thirty-five. It isn't that I don't want. It's that I haven't, for a long time, allowed myself to want in front of a person who knows my title. Zhou Ye, if I kiss you, it's because I want to kiss you. It isn't the last bus's fault, and it isn't payment for giving me the seat. Can you not understand this as a debt?"

"I can," he said. "If you stop, I stop. If you tell me to leave now, I leave."

Shen Man looked at his mouth, then at his eyes. She set her cup down as well. She crossed the short distance in the middle of the sofa on her knees, but the movement was not fast. She stopped in front of him, close enough that he could see the very fine lines at the corners of her eyes, close enough that her breath fell on his lips. She did not kiss him at once. She waited for him.

Zhou Ye raised a hand and first touched her hair, brushing a wet strand back behind her ear. His fingers stopped at the side of her ear and gave her time to draw away. Shen Man did not draw away. She tilted her head and brought her mouth up to his.

The first kiss was very light, like confirming a temperature. Her lips were soft, carrying the heat of the hot water, and at the edges there was still a little of the cool that comes after rain. Zhou Ye's hand did not press her down at once. He only supported her jaw and let the kiss stay at a depth from which it could still be taken back. Shen Man drew away half an inch first and looked at him. The question in her eyes was clear. He nodded. Only then did she kiss him again. The second kiss was no longer a test. She took his lower lip, the tip of her tongue pressed it open, and slowly, clearly, she asked him to answer. Zhou Ye answered. His hand slid into the roots of her hair, his palm against her scalp. His other hand stayed empty, braced on the back of the sofa, as if he were still leaving her a way out. Shen Man caught that empty hand and pressed it to her waist. The cloth of the house clothes was very thin. The heat of her waist came straight through. Her waist was finer than it looked inside a suit, and softer.

The kiss gradually deepened. When she straddled his thighs, her knees sank into the sofa, and the cloth of the house trousers made a very light sound of friction. Zhou Ye's breathing went uneven. He was hard. There was no way to hide it. Shen Man felt it, and her movement paused. She did not laugh at him, and she did not dodge. She set her forehead against his forehead. Her voice was hoarse.

"This is your response. It isn't something I'm requiring you to hand over."

"I know."

"If you want to go on, say go on. If this is as far as the wanting goes, say stop."

Zhou Ye's hand tightened on her waist, and then loosened. The loosening was so the sentence would actually count. "Go on. Shen Man. Not Ms. Shen. If you still want me to use the title, I'll stop."

She closed her eyes for a moment, as if her name, called by him in that way, weighed more than the kiss. "Call me Shen Man. In this apartment you may."

She drew his hand from the side of her waist to the hem of her shirt and let him decide for himself whether to touch skin. Zhou Ye's palm went under the cloth and met a smooth heat at the side of her waist. Shen Man drew a breath. Her spine arched lightly, and her chest, through the clothes, came against his. She was not wearing anything under the shirt. That fact became impossible to misunderstand when two weights of softness settled against his chest. Zhou Ye's thumb stopped at the lower edge of her ribs and did not go up at once.

"You can touch," she said by his ear. "I want you to touch. If I stop wanting a step, I'll say so."

Only then did his hand cover her breast. Soft, full. The nipple was already hard, pressing into his palm. Shen Man bit her own lower lip and still let out a very light gasp. She held his shoulders. Her nails sank a little through the shirt. Zhou Ye kissed her neck, kissed the stretch the rain had wet, and his tongue tasted a faint salt and scent. Her legs tightened around his waist. The house trousers were too thick. Everything was separated by cloth. Even so she moved slowly once on his lap, as if looking for a place that would let her be closer.

"The bedroom," she said. "The sofa would make me afraid to sit here tomorrow. And the light is too bright. Not because I'm afraid of you looking. Because I want to look at you."

Zhou Ye picked her up. She was lighter than he had imagined. Her arms circled his neck. Her mouth still rested against his temple. The bedroom did not have the ceiling light on. Only a small lamp was left at the head of the bed. The sheets were light gray. Outside the window was the river. The rain smashed the lights on the water. Shen Man stood by the bed and took the long-sleeved shirt off herself. There was no performance in the movement. The shirt came off over her hair, and her shoulders, her collarbones, and her breasts were all in the warm light. The breasts, because of age and the way a body is carried, had a natural weight to them. The shape was full. The areolas were not dark. The nipples stood. She looked at his eyes and did not use her arms to cover herself.

"If this isn't what you imagined," she said, "you can leave. I won't retaliate against you on Monday. I'm saying that again because you're about to see all of me."

Zhou Ye shook his head. His voice was very low. "It isn't what I imagined. It's better than what I imagined. I want to stay."

He took his own shirt off as well. Shen Man's gaze moved from his chest to his abdomen, and then to the place already pushing at his fly. She reached to undo his belt, and before she undid it she looked at him once. He covered her hand, and together they drew the belt out. When the trousers dropped to his ankles, his cock sprang free, hard enough to burn, the head already a little wet. Shen Man's fingers circled him, not tightly. Her thumb passed over that wet opening. Zhou Ye drew a sharp breath. She lifted her eyes to him, as if she were recording his response.

"On the bed," she said. "We'll go slowly. The night is still long. The bridge won't open for a while."