أكبر مني باثنتي عشرة سنة وأخذتني أولا

Chapter 1 The Night Drive

The rain came down hard the moment the meeting broke. Fog filmed the conference-room glass, and then the whole window went white under the wash. Zhou Heng shut his notebook and said that was enough for today; Beiwan's numbers could be checked again tomorrow. Chairs scraped in a rush. Li Gan was still staring at the last page of his notes. The tail of his sentence dropped in his throat, and nobody asked him to pick it up.

Wu Ziyi sat off to the side and a little behind him. She capped her pen and looked at him once. There was no praise in the look, and no picking of faults. She had simply seen him clearly. She was thirty-eight. When anything came up in solutions, people found her first and Zhou Heng only after. Li Gan did not report to her. He was twenty-six, carried on the delivery roster, and the person he reported to was Zhou Heng. She would say that more than once later. But on that rainy night, before the car had even started, he felt the silence change because she had looked at him.

Zhang Xue poured what was left of two Americanos into the sink, crushed the paper cups, and dropped them in the bin. She was thirty-six, client success, quicker with words than anyone, and quiet today all the same. Passing Li Gan, she pushed across the car keys he had forgotten on the table. "There's standing water by the garage exit. Drive slow."

"All right," he said.

The three of them going down together was not an arrangement. It was a habit of eleven months. The company had pulled them out to Linjiang for the Beiwan Bank project. The housing allowance sat at an awkward figure: too little to rent alone, just enough to share. Zhang Xue would not take a two-bedroom. Three people squeezed into two rooms, she said, and given time something would go wrong. In the end they rented an old three-bedroom on the east side of the city. Wu Ziyi took the master. Zhang Xue took the south-facing second bedroom. Li Gan took the smallest room, the one against the kitchen. The car was his, a gray old sedan with dull wipers. He did the driving. The other two transferred him their share of the gas each month. At first it was only to save trouble. Later it became a default: the end of the day, the revolving door, his car, their places in it.

Outside the revolving door the rain had stitched itself into lines. Zhang Xue opened an umbrella and a rib bent at once. Wu Ziyi carried none. Her trench-coat collar was up, and one wet strand of hair stuck to her cheek. Li Gan pulled the car in under the eaves, hazards blinking. Wu Ziyi opened the passenger door, set her bag by her feet, then sat down. The smell of rain came in with her, and a faint citrus on her skin. Zhang Xue climbed into the back. Water flicked onto Li Gan's wrist as she closed the umbrella. She said she was sorry. He said it was nothing.

The doors shut. The rain went far away.

They were often quiet. Zhang Xue answered messages. Wu Ziyi watched the road. Li Gan drove. That kind of quiet had no weight. Today was different. A red light held the car. The wipers cut two fans across the glass, and the rain covered them again at once. Wu Ziyi's hand rested on her knee. Her fingers were long. There was no ring. Li Gan knew she had been divorced for three years. On the project that was not a secret. The secret was the day he had begun, in gaps like this, to look at her hand.

She spoke, not loud. "When you reported today, the moment you got to collections, the end of the sentence fell. You used to lift the numbers a little without noticing."

His hands stayed on the wheel. "You hear even that."

"I sit off to the side and behind," she said. "Zhou Heng asked you a second time. You didn't get annoyed. I saw it."

From the back seat came Zhang Xue's voice, a little amused and a little warning. "Ziyi, don't hold a meeting in the car. I've already had eight hours of Beiwan today."

"No meeting," Wu Ziyi said.

The light turned green. The car slid into the rain. Water thrown by the car ahead hit the windshield in a white sheet. Li Gan looked straight ahead. The corner of his eye was all her. A dark wet patch marked the hem of her coat. Her calves were together. The skirt stopped at the knee. He called himself dull and still could not pull his eyes all the way back. Twenty-six was too old to behave like a man who had never seen a woman. He had. There had been a short relationship, and the reason it ended was ordinary past bearing: different cities, both of them busy, nothing especially cruel said by either. Wu Ziyi sitting beside him was not something those memories could explain. She was twelve years older than he was. He had done the sum, felt ridiculous when he finished it, and today he was doing it again.

Zhang Xue asked from the back whether they should buy food. Wu Ziyi said there were noodles at home. Li Gan said he could pull over. In the end none of them ate anything from the roadside. The car went down into the compound garage. Concrete cut the rain off. The world went suddenly dry, except for the drip of water off the tires. Zhang Xue got out first and said she would put the water on. Her steps sounded a few times between the pillars, and then she was in the elevator.

Wu Ziyi did not pull the handle at once.

The engine was still turning. The heater lifted the ends of her hair. She looked at the concrete pillar ahead as if she were making sure of something. "The quiet in this car tonight isn't quite right."

"The rain's heavy," Li Gan said.

"It isn't only the rain." She turned. The garage light was white, and her eyes were steady. "I felt it. If that makes you uneasy, pretend I didn't say it."

His throat moved. "I'm not uneasy."

The sentence was false. She could hear that, and she did not take it apart. She nodded. Her fingers rested on the door handle and stopped. "Li Gan, I'll leave one sentence here. I am not your superior. I lead the Beiwan proposal. Your review sits with Zhou Heng. Any day you don't want to drive me, you can say so straight out. I won't trip you at work because of it. If you're sitting an extra minute in this car because we share a place, because I'm older, because it's awkward to refuse, then that minute ends here."

He looked at her. When she said these things her ears were not red and her voice did not shake. His did. "It isn't because I can't refuse."

"Then what is it because of?"

He could not answer. Not because there was no answer. Because the answer was too hot to say for the first time in a garage. All he could manage was, "I don't know how to say it. But it isn't because I was forced."

Wu Ziyi looked at him for a few seconds, as if she were putting that insufficient sentence away in some drawer. "All right. Then tonight ends here." She pushed the door and got out. The hem of her coat swept the edge of the seat. Two steps on she bent again and spoke through the half-open window. "Don't boil the noodles too soft. Zhang Xue always turns them to mush."

He smiled, and the smile was short. "I know."

After she went upstairs he was still sitting in the car. There was a little damp on the wheel. Maybe it was only his imagination. He put his forehead against it and swore at himself, quietly. The elevator numbers climbed. The lights in the three-bedroom would come on one by one. He did not search the night for those windows. He locked the car.

In the kitchen Zhang Xue had already boiled the water. She was in a gray long-sleeved house shirt, hair loosely pinned, and when she saw him she pushed the noodle cakes over. "Where's Ziyi?"

"She's up. She said she'd shower first."

"Oh." Zhang Xue broke the noodles and glanced at him. "Your ears are red."

"The garage is hot."

"The garage isn't hot." She dropped the noodles into the pot, and her tone loosened. "Forget it. Rain makes people strange. Go and change. Don't flick a wet sleeve into my pot."

When the noodles were ready Wu Ziyi came out, hair half dry, the collar of a black cotton house set loose, a small patch of pink at the collarbone where the hot water had steamed her. The three of them sat at the small table and ate. Nobody mentioned what had been said in the car. The tap dripped once. Zhang Xue's phone rang. She took a client's voice message out on the balcony, and at once her voice went polite, clear, impossible to fault.

In the living room there was only the light click of chopsticks against the rims of bowls. Wu Ziyi picked up a small bite of noodles and set it in Li Gan's bowl. "Eat more. At lunch you only had half a rice ball."

"How do you know."

"Zhang Xue said." Her lashes lowered. "And I saw it."

The balcony door was still open a crack. The smell of rain came in. Li Gan bent his head to that mouthful and understood something with a sudden clarity: once a silence had been named by her like this, it could not be forced back into its old shape. The person across from him had not touched him. She had only passed him the noodles, finished saying where the line of power was, and then sat here the way people sat on any ordinary night of sharing a flat.

But his knee was tight under the table. Hers was less than a palm away. Neither of them came any closer.

When Zhang Xue came back she looked at the table and at the two bowls and asked nothing. She only said the client had changed the wording again and she would have to be up early. Wu Ziyi answered her. Li Gan drank the last of the broth and got up to wash. The water ran loud. He used the loud water to cover the sentence in him that still had not been said.

At night he lay in the smallest bedroom and listened to the kitchen pipe knock now and then. Beyond the wall was Wu Ziyi's master room. Past that was Zhang Xue. All three doors were shut. He almost typed a line to Wu Ziyi: I really did want to sit that extra minute. Halfway through the characters he deleted them. Not because he did not want to send them. Because he still did not know what wanting would have to carry.

The rain did not ease until after midnight. Before he slept, the last thing he thought of was not her body. It was the sentence she had left in the garage: if it's because you can't refuse, that minute ends here.

In the dark he answered, very softly, and nobody heard him. "I can refuse. I just don't want to refuse you."

Chapter 2 The Red Light

For the next three days it was the same car and the same three people. The change was small enough to be denied. When Wu Ziyi got in she took off her coat, folded it, and laid it on her lap, and the citrus on her was clearer. At red lights she no longer only watched the road. She looked at the side of his face, and when she had looked she took her eyes back, as if nothing had happened. Zhang Xue still answered messages in the back. Now and then she lifted her head, caught some pause in the rearview mirror, and explained the pause to herself as tiredness.

At the office Li Gan still called Wu Ziyi Teacher Wu. The younger people on the project all did. She heard it and let it pass, and she did not particularly like it. At noon on the fourth day the two of them were alone in the pantry. She was drawing hot water. He was waiting on the microwave. She said, "In the car, don't call me Teacher Wu. Ziyi is enough. The word teacher makes the age sound ugly."

"That isn't what I meant."

"I know it isn't." She watched the water turn in the cup. "But I hear it and I'm uncomfortable. If you're willing, change it."

"Ziyi." He tried it. The two syllables were strange on his tongue, and close.

She smiled a little. "Mm. That sounds better."

The microwave beeped. Someone passed the door. They stepped half a pace apart at once, like two colleagues who had both happened to be thirsty. Li Gan carried his heated lunch back to his desk, and his chest was still stopped inside that half pace. He hated the half pace. He was grateful for it too. She had not touched him at the office. She had even taken her eyes back. That made what she had said the other night more believable: she could tell one setting from another, and she could tell power from the rest of it.

On Friday a client kept Zhang Xue for dinner. She sent a voice note to the group chat and said not to wait, she would take a cab. The note was bright. After the brightness the chat went quiet. Wu Ziyi glanced at Li Gan. Between the open desks the glance was too short for anyone else to read. She said, "Then tonight it's only the two of us in the car. If you want me to take a cab as well, say so now."

"I'll drive you," he said.

"All right."

The evening rain was fine, fine enough that the wipers were too lazy to move. The passenger seat was empty for a few seconds. She got in, buckled the belt first, and set her phone face-down on her thigh. "Zhang Xue isn't here. May I speak a little more directly than usual?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll ask you." Her fingers rested on the belt and did not come near him. "From Tuesday until now, do you still want to sit that extra minute? Not out of politeness. Not because I spoke first and you're embarrassed to leave me with no way down. Do you want it yourself?"

The red light came on just then. He held the brake and turned his head to look at her. There was no coaxing on her thirty-eight-year-old face. There were faint lines at the corners of her eyes. The color of her mouth was her own. He felt that face dry him out. "I want it," he said. "I do. I've been wanting it in the daytime too. I know you're twelve years older than me. I haven't failed to count. I'm not saying this because I've taken you for some novelty. If all you want to hear is a young man's impulse, then what I'm saying is more trouble than impulse."

Wu Ziyi's breath slowed by a beat. "A little trouble is better. I've seen plenty of impulse. Trouble means you're willing to think."

He could not smile. "But I still get impulses. When you sit over here, I get hard. Saying that is ugly. But if you're asking whether I want it, I can't give you only the pretty half."

The car went quiet. A horn tapped behind them. The light was already green. He drove on. She was not frightened off by the bluntness. She watched the rain ahead, and her voice dropped, as if she had finally let herself a little way out of the rules.

"Li Gan, may I put my hand on your leg? Through the trousers. If you say no, I'll take it back this moment, today's subject ends here, and at home we're still roommates."

His palms were all sweat. "Yes."

Her hand came down. First the fingertips, then the whole hand, warm, steady, resting on his right leg near the knee. It did not go up at once. She only left it there. The cloth made that small heat clearer. The muscle in his leg went tight, and he forced it to loosen so the accelerator would stay even.

"All right?" she asked.

"All right." His voice had gone rough. "Your hand is hot."

"Your leg is hot too." Her thumb moved once, slowly, still far from the place that had gone tight. "I'm not asking to sleep with you tonight. I need to know first that you're clear-headed in my hand. You can say take it off at any time."

"Don't take it off yet."

Her thumb moved again. The car passed a junction. He was hard enough to hurt, and the shape of it showed plainly through his trousers. She saw it. Her eyes stopped there a moment. She did not laugh at him, and she did not pretend she had not seen. "It doesn't look as if you're humoring me."

"I'm not."

"Then I'll ask one more thing." Her hand was still only on his leg, but every word seemed to move an inch higher. "If someday I want to kiss you, and I want you to touch me, you can still refuse. If you refuse, on Monday in the weekly meeting I'll still finish walking through your page numbers. Do you believe that?"

"I believe it," he said. "You've said it twice. I believe you aren't here to hold me down. Ziyi, if I don't want something, I'll say so. Right now I don't want to say I don't."

Her fingers finally shifted up and stopped on the inside of his thigh, still through the cloth, only a little way from the hard length of him. She did not take hold of it. She only let him feel that she could. Then, before the light at the garage entrance of the compound came on, she took her hand back, and she took it back cleanly.

"We're home," she said. Her breath was not entirely steady either. "Tonight ends here. If you go into the elevator like that, and Zhang Xue gets back first, she'll see it."

"And you?" He looked at the hand she had withdrawn. "You're completely unaffected?"

Wu Ziyi unbuckled and turned a little toward him. Her eyes were bright in the dark. "I'm wet. I'm giving you that sentence too, so you don't think you're the only one making a fool of yourself. But I'm not planning to deal with it in the car today. I want you able to look me in the eye while we eat."

He swore, very softly. She smiled once, pushed the door, and got out. On the way up they kept a little distance. Zhang Xue was indeed not back yet. Only the entry light was on. Wu Ziyi went to wash her hands and washed them a long time. Li Gan went into his room, shut the door, put his back against it, and pressed his hand over the place that was still hard, but he did not undo anything. He did not know what contest he was in with himself. Maybe he was treating her "tonight ends here" as a rule to be kept.

Zhang Xue did not come in until eleven, carrying a little wine and a little rain. She poured water in the kitchen, saw that Wu Ziyi had already gone to her room, and saw Li Gan come out for a charger. She looked at him for two seconds. "On the nights it's only the two of you coming back, you look like you ran a red light."

"I didn't run one," he said.

"You'd better not have." Zhang Xue set the cup down, and her voice went suddenly thin. "Li Gan, this flat isn't large. If someone starts keeping a secret, the other two aren't deaf."

She said it and left. One kitchen light stayed on. Li Gan stood under it and felt, for the first time and clearly, that nothing in the car had truly begun, and Zhang Xue had already smelled the smoke.

He went back to his room and sent Wu Ziyi a message: She's back. She said the flat isn't large.

Wu Ziyi answered quickly: I know. That's why I took my hand off tonight. Sleep. Don't explain it to her in the kitchen. Halfway through an explanation it turns into a confession. We don't have anything yet that can be confessed that completely.

Li Gan looked at the line, then at his body, which had not settled. He wrote back: You're right. But I'm still hard. It's undignified.

The other side paused a few seconds: Then deal with it yourself, or endure it. I object to neither. Don't send a photo. If I want to see, I'll ask you to your face.

The sentence actually made him laugh. After the laugh he was harder. In the end he did not deal with it himself. He turned the phone face-down and listened to Zhang Xue running water in the bathroom. The water was loud. Inside the noise, for the first time, he was not thinking only of Wu Ziyi's hand. He thought of the two seconds Zhang Xue had looked at him, and of her saying the other two weren't deaf. In those two seconds there had been a sting, and a heat he did not dare claim.

He covered his eyes with his arm. The red light in the car was still jumping in front of him. After Wu Ziyi's hand left, that patch of skin stayed cool for a long time. The cool was what proved the heat had been real.

Chapter 3 She Bent Down First

The next Tuesday, Zhang Xue wrote in the group chat that an old classmate was in from out of town, she would not be back for dinner, and they should not wait. Wu Ziyi looked at the line, set her phone face-down on the desk, and walked over to Li Gan's station with a set of minutes that did not need to be handed over in person. Her voice was a work voice. "Help me check the page numbers on the Beiwan attachment against the projector in the meeting room. After hours. Fewer people."

"All right," he said.

By evening most people had gone. Only one bank of lights was on in the meeting room. She stood at his side and watched him turn the pages. Her shoulder nearly touched his and did not. When the last page had been checked she shut the projector off. The room went a little darker.

"Li Gan, Zhang Xue isn't coming back tonight. I don't want to go straight home." She looked at him. "There's a parking lot by the river. On a rainy day almost nobody's there. I want to go there with you. After we get there I'll kiss you, if you want it too. You can say we should go home right now."

His heart beat stupidly. "Let's go."

"Then say a complete sentence." She did not let him off. "You're willing to go to a parking lot with me, willing to be kissed by me, and willing to stop when you want to stop. Is that right?"

"Yes," he said. "I'm willing. Ziyi, I'll go with you."

The rain was denser than last week's. He parked behind a row of closed snack stalls by the river. The only light left was one under the bridge in the distance. He cut the engine. Rain knocked on the roof as if someone were urging them on with a knuckle, tap by tap. Wu Ziyi undid her belt and did not lean over at once. She looked at his eyes first.

"I'm going to kiss you," she said.

"Kiss me."

She leaned in. The first touch was only mouth against mouth, dry, testing, almost restrained. Li Gan did not know where to put his hand. It hung at the side of her waist. She said, low, "You can hold me." Only then did his hand come down and press her waist through the coat. She made a small sound, and the kiss went deep. The tip of her tongue pushed his teeth apart and came in slowly, clearly. She tasted of the bitterness of tea, and of a heat that was hers. Li Gan was kissed until he went dizzy. When he kissed back he was too urgent, and their teeth knocked once. She laughed into his mouth and did not pull away. Instead she reached up and pinched the back of his neck. "Slower. I'm not going to run."

"If you say that I'll be more urgent."

"Then be urgent for me." She drew his hand over and set it on the outside of her chest. "Through the clothes first. Tell me whether you want to touch."

"I want to." Under his palm her breast was soft and rose with her breath. "Ziyi, I want to touch you. I want to undo your buttons."

"Undo them," she said. "I want you to undo them too."

The buttons of the coat opened one by one. Under it was a shirt, and under that a dark bra. His fingers stopped at the clasp. He looked up at her. There was a shine of water in her eyes, not all of it desire. Some of it was the strain of handing herself over. "Yes," she said. "Undo it. I want you to see."

When the clasp let go she drew a small breath. Her breasts came out of the cups and settled in his hands. The color of the areolas was deeper than he had imagined. The nipples were already hard. His thumb passed over one, and her waist jumped. Her forehead came against his. "Harder with your hand. I'm not glass."

He took one into his mouth and circled the nipple with his tongue, and his hand worked the other. Wu Ziyi's fingers went into his hair, not heavily, but they held him to her. The rain in the car covered her breathing, but he was close enough to hear every sound. She said, "Li Gan, are you hard? Let me feel."

"I'm hard." He pressed her hand between his legs. The place pushed hard against his trousers. She gripped him through the cloth, and he sucked in a breath. She lifted her head. The corner of her mouth was wet, and her eyes were clear. "I want to use my mouth on you. If you don't want that, say so now. If you do, put the seat back."

"I want it." His voice nearly broke. "I want it. You don't have to do this to pay me back."

"I'm not paying you back." She looked straight at him. "I want you in my mouth. I want to see what you become because of my mouth. This is my idea, not a reward. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

The seat went back. When she bent down, her hair swept his lower belly. The zipper was loud in the rain. She opened his trousers. His cock sprang out, hot, hard, the head already a little wet. She looked at it first. Her thumb wiped across that wetness and made him jerk. Then she put out her tongue and licked slowly from the base to the head, and opened her mouth and took him in.

Li Gan's hand caught the door handle. Her mouth was hot and tight. Her tongue pressed the underside. She took him to a certain depth, drew off, and took him in again. She was not in a hurry to swallow him to the deepest. She watched him. Each time she drew back, a little shine stretched between her lips and the head. She asked, low, "Does this feel good?"

"It feels good." He was panting. "Too good. Ziyi, your mouth — if I watch you I'll come fast."

"Then watch." She said it and took him in again, deeper this time, her nose almost touching his belly. Her throat tightened once. She came off, breathed lightly, and was not embarrassed. "If it's too deep I have to go slower. Don't push my head. I'll do it myself."

"I won't push." He took his hand back and only gathered her hair lightly, so she could see he was not forcing her. "If you want to stop, stop."

She made a small sound, as if the sentence satisfied her. Then she took him in again, her hand around the base, mouth and hand moving together. The sound of saliva in the quiet car was clear enough to make a person flush. Li Gan felt his whole lower belly burning. He said her name, and the name came out broken. She looked up at him with him still in her mouth, and that look nearly made him come. He said in a rush, "I'm going to come. Let go. I'll come outside."

She drew off, but she did not leave him entirely. Her hand went faster. Her lips stayed against the head, and her voice was thick. "Come in my mouth. I want to swallow it. If you don't want that, say so."

"I want it, I want it, Ziyi—"

When he came, the small of his back went numb and his come shot into her mouth. She did not flinch. Her brow creased a little. Her throat moved, and she swallowed most of it. A little spilled at the corner of her mouth. She wiped it with the back of her hand, then put her tongue out and licked the rest from her lip. Then she pushed herself up and looked at him. In her eyes there was an emptiness after finishing, and a brightness.

Li Gan pulled her up and kissed her. Kissing the taste still left in her mouth made him hot again. His hand went under her skirt and stopped at the top of her thigh. "And you? I'll give it to you. May I?"

"Yes." She opened her legs a little, caught his wrist, and pressed his hand onto her underwear. "Touch me. I'm very wet. When you came just now I had my legs clamped. I was about to go off by myself."

The underwear was soaked through. He pushed the cloth aside. His fingers met the slick seam, and both of them breathed out. He found the clit, already swollen, and circled it lightly with the pad of his finger. Wu Ziyi's forehead dropped onto his shoulder. The sound came through her teeth. "Yes, there. Not too hard. Rub like that first. Li Gan, put one finger in. Slowly."

When he entered her she was hot and tight inside, drawing on his finger. His thumb stayed on her clit. He crooked his finger, looking for the rough place. She suddenly caught his arm, and her nails went in. "There. Bend a little more. Yes. Don't stop."

Rain blurred the windows. She rocked her hips in his hand. The bra was still hanging on her arms, and her breasts trembled lightly with the movement. She stopped making whole sentences. There was only "faster," "I want it," "look at me." He looked at her. When she came, her cunt bit his finger in waves. Her whole body went taut and then collapsed into his arms, and the sound she made was bitten into his clothes. Wetness came out and covered his palm.

He did not pull out at once. He waited until her breathing evened, then drew out slowly and held her tight. Wu Ziyi leaned on him. Her heartbeat struck his chest one beat at a time. A good while passed before she said, "I'm thirty-eight. Brought to this state by your hand in an old car. I ought to find it absurd."

"Do you?"

"I find that I want it again." She lifted her head. Her eyes were red, and she was smiling. "And I'm afraid. Afraid you'll treat me as a secret that starts after I get in the car and doesn't exist once we're at the office. Afraid I'll use my age and push you forward. Li Gan, if you regret it now, we stop this tonight. I won't make a scene, and I won't give you a face in the flat. That doesn't mean I won't be hurt. I'll digest the hurt myself."

He held her face. His hand still carried her smell. "I don't regret it. What I regret is not kissing you at the red light last week. You've been clear about work. I believe you. I won't pretend not to know you in the weekly meeting, and I won't put on an act in front of Zhang Xue. But I still don't know how to tell Zhang Xue. That's what I'm afraid of."

Wu Ziyi was silent a moment. She pulled the bra back into place and did the buttons up one by one. Her fingers were still a little unsteady. "We don't tell her yet. Not a permanent secret. If we pull her in to referee before the two of us are standing steady, it isn't fair. If she sees it herself, we won't lie to the point of insulting her. All right?"

"All right," he said. "But I don't want to treat her like a fool."

"Neither do I." Wu Ziyi sat back in the passenger seat and looked at the blurred river. "Zhang Xue isn't a fool. She's faster than either of us. So we especially can't use her home as the backdrop for an affair and pretend the rain is very loud. Tonight ends here. Drive me back. After we go through the door, we're roommates."

He started the car. The wipers moved again. Her hand did not go back onto his leg. The silence between them was not the silence of the first night. In it was the taste left in her mouth, and the tightness his fingers remembered. Near the compound she said suddenly, "Next time, if you're going to enter me, use a condom. I have them. If you don't, say so, and I'll buy them. You don't have to tough that out."

"I have them." His ears went hot again. "At home. I didn't bring them in the car."

"Then bring one next time," she said. The corner of her mouth finally took on a curve that was truly relaxed. "Or we don't use the car. We'll see whether we dare."

In the garage, before she got out, she kissed him once, very lightly, only the corner of his mouth. "This one doesn't count. This one is because I'm glad."

In the elevator they stood properly. When the door of the flat opened, Zhang Xue's room was dark. The sensor light in the entry burned for a few seconds. Wu Ziyi said good night and went into the master bedroom. Li Gan stood in the kitchen and washed his hands twice, and then felt there was nothing the washing could take off. When he lay down, his phone lit. It was Wu Ziyi.

Only four characters' worth: I'm all right. And you.

He answered: So am I. I miss you.

The other side was still a long time, then came back: Sleep. I'll see you in the meeting tomorrow. Don't look at me too obviously.

He read the line several times before he laid the phone on his chest. Beyond the wall her bed made a sound. He was hard, and he did not touch himself again. He wanted to leave tonight in her mouth and on his hand, not rub it away in a hurry.

Chapter 4 The Light Was Still On

The first time he truly entered her was in a small meeting room at the office. Both of them thought about that afterward, more than once. They thought about whether it had been too dangerous, whether it had been too unfair to Zhang Xue, whether they had put work and desire too close together. But when the day happened, both of them were clear-headed. The door was locked from the inside. The condom was one he had brought from home and warmed in his pocket.

On Thursday night Beiwan suddenly wanted a risk note that was only for internal eyes. Zhou Heng left first and said the pages were Wu Ziyi's to close. Zhang Xue was at the client site. The background of her voice note was noisy. She said not to wait tonight; she might sleep straight through at the contract hotel over there. When the note ended, Wu Ziyi stood a while in the space between the two desks that were left.

"Do you want to go home and write, or stay here and finish it?" she asked.

"What about you?"

"I want to stay here." She looked at his pocket as if she could see the little square. "After we finish writing, I want to sleep with you. The place is that meeting room inside, the one without glass. You can refuse. Then we just send the file, and you drive me back, and last night's business ends at last night."

Li Gan's ears roared. "I wasn't going to refuse. I've been carrying a condom since morning. I didn't know whether there'd be a chance tonight, but I didn't want it to be like last time, getting to the moment I wanted to be inside you and only then saying I didn't have one."

Wu Ziyi's eyes darkened, then steadied quickly. "Then we finish the file first. No kissing before it's done. If I kiss you now, this version of the risk note will come out with some very unprofessional sentences."

They actually did finish the file. For an hour her voice kept the temperature of work, and his hands stayed on the keyboard. Only once, when she passed him a pen, her fingertips brushed his. Both of them stopped for half a second, then went on. When the email went out, the floor was already empty. A cleaner's cart sounded once in the distance and went farther off.

The small meeting room had no glass. She went in first, pressed shut the last gap in the blinds, and locked the door. The bolt made a light sound, and it cut the company outside away from them. She leaned on the door and looked at him, and she set the rules first.

"Li Gan, this is the office. There may still be people outside. So we have to be quiet. If you want to stop, say stop, or say red light. Red light means stop at once, no matter what step we're on. I'll use it too. Do you agree?"

"I agree." He took the condom out of his pocket and set it on the table. His hand was a little unsteady. "Ziyi, I'll say something too. If you regret it in a minute because this is the company, we put our clothes back on. I won't think you led me on."

"I know where I am." She came over and started undoing her own shirt, one button, then another. "I chose here because I don't want to take your clothes off across the hall from Zhang Xue's door. That's her home, and it's my home. I'm not ready to let the person on the other side of the door hear me cry out. So I'm putting this here first. If you want to call me selfish, you can."

"I won't call you that," he said. "I only also hope she won't be standing outside the door some day without warning. But tonight you've already asked me. I stayed because I want you."

Her shirt was open. Under it she was not wearing the complicated bra from last time, only a soft gray one. She pushed it down to her waist herself. Her breasts came out and looked very real under the meeting room's cold white light. The nipples were hard from the air-conditioning and from her own expectation. Li Gan went to her and did not kiss her mouth first. He bent and took one nipple in, and his hand held the other. Wu Ziyi bit her own wrist before she made a sound.

"The table," she said, breathing hard. "Let me sit on it. You kneel. Last time I used my mouth on you. This time I want you to lick me. Are you willing?"

"Willing." He said it almost at once. He lifted her onto the long table, pushed the skirt to her waist, and drew her underwear down her legs. The wet mark in the middle of it was dark enough to tighten his throat. When she opened her legs her ears went red, red enough that she almost was not the steady person she usually was.

"You can look," she said. "But when you're looking at me, don't laugh. I'll smile at you. If you laugh at me for being this wet, I'll be too ashamed to keep my legs open."

"I won't laugh." He went to his knees and pressed her knees with his hands. "Ziyi, seeing you like this, all I want is to lick you open."

His tongue touched beside her clit first and did not press straight onto it. The inside of her thigh jumped. He slowly licked those wet, soft folds open and tasted her, thicker than in the car. Her hand caught his hair. Her voice was kept very low. "A little higher. Yes. Use the flat of your tongue. Don't suck too hard. Mm — Li Gan, like that."

He did as she said. The flat of his tongue lay against the swollen bud, stroke after stroke, not rushing. Her hips began to push into his mouth. He added a finger, and she bit down on it at once from the inside. He looked up at her. She was biting her own knuckle. Her eyes were wet. Her breasts rose and fell with her breath. Her thirty-eight-year-old body was without reserve on this table where people held meetings. The sight struck him. He licked more seriously, and his finger crooked, looking for the place she had wanted last time.

"There." Her voice broke. "Don't stop. I'm going to come. Keep going, look at me, I want you watching me when I come."

When she came her legs closed around his head, and then she was afraid of hurting him and opened them herself. Her cunt contracted in pulses. Wetness got onto his lips and his chin. She pressed her palm over her mouth, and still a short cry leaked out. When the wave passed she pulled Li Gan up and kissed the mouth that was full of her own taste, and she kissed him hard.

"Come in," she said. "Put the condom on. I want all of you in me now. Do you?"

"I do." His hands were almost clumsy tearing the packet. She watched him fumble and did not tease him. She only took it, helped him roll it on, held his burning cock, and lined him up with herself. "Push slowly. It's been a long time since I let anyone in like this. Slow isn't because I'm unsure. It's because I want to feel you coming in inch by inch."

He pressed against her. The head pushed open an entrance that was soft and wet again. Heat, tightness, a grip the condom could not keep out. He got halfway in and stopped. His forehead was against hers. Both of them were shaking. "Does it hurt?"

"It doesn't hurt." Her legs locked around his waist. Her heels pressed his back and drew him farther in. "Full. Very full. Come all the way in. I want you to the end."

When he sank in to the root, both of them let out a breath together. She was hot and dense inside. Every movement seemed to draw him deeper. He began to thrust, slow at first, each stroke pulling out until only the head was left and then sending the whole of him back in. Wu Ziyi's nails held his shoulders. Her voice was broken and clear. "Yes. Like that. Don't only go for speed. Let me feel that you want me, not that you're finishing a task. Li Gan, say my name. Don't call me Director Wu, and don't call me teacher."

"Ziyi." He kissed her mouth and her neck. "Ziyi. I want you. I've wanted you since that night in the rain. You're gripping me so hard I can barely stand."

"Then faster." She finally used up the last of her composure. "I can take it. Harder. The table will knock. Hold me tight. Don't let the legs hit the floor."

He held her tight and picked up speed. The impacts turned into the dull sound of flesh, partly swallowed by their chests. Her breasts were crushed against him. Her nipples scraped his shirt. She reached between her own legs and rubbed her clit, and her eyes did not leave him. "Look at me. I'm touching myself for you to see. While you fuck me, I want you to know how much I want it. It isn't that you're young, so I'll just give it to you. It's that I chose you."

That sentence undid him more than any dirty talk. He drove into her deep and steady, each stroke landing beside her fingers. Her breath broke. The second orgasm came sharp and long, and her inner walls spasmed around him. She buried her face in the hollow of his neck and said his name until, at the end, there was only air. Li Gan saw stars from the grip of her and still asked through his teeth, "May I come? I'm close."

"Come," she said. Her legs were still around him. "Come in the condom. Don't turn your face away when you do. I want to see."

He came looking at her. His come struck into the condom in pulses. The small of his back went numb. His arms braced on the table, or he would have fallen onto her. She held his face in her hands. Her thumb wiped something from the corner of his eye that might have been sweat or might have been something else. Neither of them spoke first. The air-conditioning blew on sweat-damp skin and was cold enough to put them suddenly back in the meeting room.

When he pulled out, both of them flinched lightly. He tied the condom off and wrapped it in tissue, and for a moment he did not know which bin he could throw it into without the cleaners seeing it. Wu Ziyi looked at the absurd seriousness on his face and laughed, low, and while she was laughing one tear fell. She herself was startled. She lifted a hand to wipe it.

"It isn't regret," she said, before he could. "Don't get tense. It's that it's been too long since anyone still looked at me after we finished. In the last year with my ex-husband, he'd go shower the moment it was over. I thought I'd gotten used to it. Just now you asked if it hurt, and then you asked if you could come, and I suddenly felt I hadn't gotten used to it at all."

Li Gan drew her shirt up from the crook of her arm and buttoned it for her, one button at a time. His hands were still shaking. He did one button wrong, undid it, and started again. "Then I'll ask every time after this. If you think I ask too much, like I don't know how, tell me. But I don't want you getting used to finishing and having nobody look at you."

She caught his hand and pressed it to the front of her shirt, which was already buttoned. "That's too big a thing to say. We've only just had a first time. Don't make promises about later in the minute after you've come. Later we'll see. Right now just tell me whether, after we walk out, you're still willing to ride the elevator with me, instead of each of us taking a different flight of stairs."

"I'm willing," he said. "I'll ride with you. In the garage, if you want distance, I'll do what you say."

She nodded. They wiped the table and put the chairs back. The faintly sweet, raw smell in the air was not so easy to disperse. She opened a crack of the door and looked down the corridor, then turned back. "Let's go."

The corridor lights were on sensors. As they walked, the lights went out in stretches behind them. At the elevator Li Gan put the wrapped condom into the innermost layer of his bag, meaning to throw it away at home. Just as the elevator doors were about to close, Old Chen the security guard put his head out from the stairwell and said they were working late, they should look after themselves. Wu Ziyi's voice was as steady as if nothing had happened. "Beiwan's draft just went out. Brother Chen, finish your round early too."

In the car they did not kiss again. The rain had already stopped. The road threw the streetlights back. Now and then her hand touched the back of his, as if confirming he was still there. In the underground garage she said, "If Zhang Xue is home when we go in, talk normally. Don't explain why you're late. An explanation opens holes."

"All right."

The lights at home were on. Zhang Xue was sitting on the sofa, laptop open, the tiredness of a face with the makeup taken off. She looked up, first at Wu Ziyi, then at Li Gan. "You really did stay at the office until now. Have you eaten?"

"Convenience store," Wu Ziyi said. Her voice was natural, but Li Gan could see that the buttoning of her shirt from the second button down was not the same neatness as the morning. Zhang Xue's gaze stopped there too.

Zhang Xue did not ask. She only closed the laptop a little and said, "There's soup in the pot. I heated it. If you want it, ladle it yourselves. I'm going to sleep. I have to be on site again tomorrow."

When she passed Li Gan she suddenly said something very lightly, only loud enough for him. "The square in your pocket showed at the side of your bag when you got out of the car. Next time don't be in such a rush."

She said it and went into her room. The door did not shut loudly. In the living room Wu Ziyi was still standing in the entry. She had obviously heard it too. The two of them looked at each other. Neither spoke. The soup in the pot was still making a small sound. The sound was like a reminder: a secret, in this flat, did not live through a single night.

Chapter 5 The Rearview Mirror

Zhang Xue had not only seen it that night. The soup was an excuse. The buttons were an excuse. What she really began to rewind was Wu Ziyi looking at the side of Li Gan's face in the red light. That look was not a colleague's. A colleague would not remember the falling end of a person's sentence so clearly, and would not, after saying "no meeting," still leave her gaze on the hand that held the wheel.

She sat in the back. The laptop was lit, and not one character on the screen went into her head. In the rearview mirror Wu Ziyi's hand rested on her own knee, one gear-change away from Li Gan's hand. The car was an automatic. There was no gear lever to stand between them and that distance. Zhang Xue deleted an email she had not finished typing, then typed it again. She was thirty-six. She had done client success for eight years. What she was best at was hearing, in another person's pause, the demand that had not yet been spoken. Using that craft in her own home now was like holding a knife backward.

That night she had said the flat wasn't large, and the moment she finished she regretted her tone. Too much like grabbing. Too much like a person who had not been invited and had already gone to stand in the doorway. After she went into her room she did not turn on the big light. She only sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the kitchen tap run for a while. Li Gan did not come out after her to explain. Neither did Wu Ziyi. That made it look even more like what it was.

She and Li Gan had lived together for eleven months. At the beginning she had taken him for a younger brother who needed reminding to eat. Later she found he was not that. When she was rushing a draft he would set cut fruit at the corner of her desk and say nothing. He remembered that she did not eat cilantro. After she had finished arguing with a client he would change the music in the car to something without lyrics. These things were small, small enough to be explained as manners. But Zhang Xue knew the night she had stopped explaining them as manners. That night she had a fever. He knocked twice, set a thermometer and fever medicine outside the door, and said, "I won't come over. If you want to open the door, open it." She opened it. He only looked at her face, made sure she could still stand, put his coat over her, and stepped back to the doorway. She thought then: this person was twenty-six, and he already understood what kind of closeness would not shame a person.

She kept that liking pressed very low. The reason for pressing it low was practical. The same flat. The same company. She was ten years older than he was. She had seen too many women pay care out first inside an age gap, then get called older sister, and in the end have to apologize for their desire on account of that name. She would not. So she went on sitting in the back seat, went on transferring the gas money to the cent, went on saying the garage wasn't hot when his ears were red, and then stopping the sentence there.

Wu Ziyi had reached out before she did. Once that was seen clearly, jealousy was not a fog. It was a specific stone.

The next morning the three of them still left together. Everyone in the car was normal. Normal enough that Zhang Xue wanted to laugh. Wu Ziyi talked through Beiwan's wording. Li Gan answered. Zhang Xue herself added a line about the mood on the client side. At the office they split in the elevator and went to their own desks. At noon Zhang Xue saw them miss each other by half a step in the pantry. That half step had more in it than an embrace. She stood outside the glass with her own cup and suddenly wanted to set the cup down, walk in, and ask: how long do you plan to hide this, until I voluntarily clear the master bedroom for you?

She did not ask. She went back to her desk and wrote an email that could have been soft so that it came out hard. In the afternoon Wu Ziyi came to her to align the client's phrasing. Zhang Xue revised it sentence by sentence until there was no crack in it. Wu Ziyi looked at her. "You're angry today."

"So is the client," Zhang Xue said. "Ziyi, if some things need saying, don't say them at the desks. And don't make me guess from buttons and condoms. I guess accurately. When I guess right, it's more humiliating."

Wu Ziyi's face went white for a moment, then recovered. She nodded. "We'll talk at home tonight. Or you set the time. I don't want to act it out with you here."

"Li Gan has to go through data with Zhou Heng tonight. You know that." Zhang Xue closed the file. "Saturday. Before Saturday, don't do anything in the kitchen that I'd walk in on. That's the only demand I want to make right now. The rest I have to sort out myself first. When I've sorted it, I'll ask you. I won't ask and then cry and tell you to get out. And I'm not here to grant permission."

Wu Ziyi looked at her. There was an apology in her eyes, and a hardness that came after being seen through. "All right. Saturday. Thank you for still being willing to choose home, and not the office."

"Don't thank me," Zhang Xue said. "I just still want to live there."

That evening she got home before they did. She showered, changed into an old T-shirt, and sat in her room without turning on the television. When headlights swept through the gap in the curtains she knew it was Li Gan's car. She did not go out. She heard the two of them come in, heard Wu Ziyi say "sleep early," heard Li Gan getting water in the kitchen. The water stopped. Nobody knocked on her door. That let her breathe out, and it made her hate them more.

After she lay down, the hatred slowly changed its shape. It was no longer only "you hid it from me." It became "where will his mouth go." She could imagine too well. She imagined Wu Ziyi in the passenger seat, skirt up, Li Gan's head going down. She imagined the hand she had seen countless times pressed to Wu Ziyi's waist. She imagined the sound of him saying Ziyi, rougher than the sound of him saying Zhang Xue at home. Her body was more honest than her pride. Her underwear gradually went wet. When she put her hand inside she swore at herself once, and still did not take it away.

The moment her fingers pressed her clit she bit the pillow. She was thinking of Li Gan's tongue, and she was not thinking only of herself. She also saw Wu Ziyi's open legs, saw the woman who had gotten him earlier shaking. Jealousy and desire stacked together and burned until her eyes were hot. She pushed two fingers into herself, rubbed that point with her thumb, fast and hating. She would not make a sound. The wall was not thick. When she came the tops of her thighs went tight, her hips lifted, and then they dropped hard, and the wetness covered her palm. In the aftershock she buried her face in the pillow. Her breathing was disordered and angry.

She did not only want to be fucked. She wanted to be chosen. She wanted to push that door open not as the person catching them, but as a person desire had also named. But she was clear about this too: wanting it was not the same as being able to accept herself becoming the one who joined later. What a person of thirty-six feared most was not the absence of sex. It was being assigned, inside a story other people had already started, the place of the one who understood.

She pulled a tissue, dried her hand, and poured herself half a glass of water that had already gone cold. The glass sat at the head of the bed. The surface of the water was steady. She looked at that little water and lined up, in her mind, the things she would say on Saturday. At the end of the lining-up, only three sentences were left.

I saw it.

I'm jealous.

I want him too, and I will not accept being treated as the landlord who needs soothing.

She pressed the three sentences under her tongue and finally slept. Before she slept she thought of one more thing she resented having to admit: she had thought about Wu Ziyi's body too. Not only today. Once Wu Ziyi had come out of the shower with water on her collarbone, and Zhang Xue's gaze had stayed too long, and Zhang Xue herself had been the one to move it. If Saturday's talk was only about Li Gan and not about this, she would still be lying. She hated lying. She especially hated lying to herself.

On the two nights before Saturday the three of them kept up a fragile politeness. In the car Zhang Xue still sat in the back. At red lights she looked at the rearview mirror on purpose. Wu Ziyi no longer looked at Li Gan for too long. Li Gan's hands stayed honestly on the wheel. Honesty itself was a kind of admission. Zhang Xue saw her own eyes in the mirror and suddenly felt the car was ridiculously small. All three of their breaths were on the same small piece of glass. Whoever wanted to leave whoever inside the silence, the silence would not agree.

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.

Chapter 7 Saying It Plain

Saturday had no rain. The sunlight was white enough to look a little false. It came into the living room and put three bright rims on the glasses on the coffee table. All three of them were up. Nobody made the kind of breakfast that was excessively generous. Zhang Xue fried eggs herself and asked whether they would eat. Wu Ziyi said yes. Li Gan said yes. The eggs sat on the plates like a temporary ceasefire.

When they had eaten, Zhang Xue pushed the plates into the kitchen, came back, and sat down. She did not circle. "I'll say mine first. I'm jealous. The jealousy is specific. Ziyi touched him first, kissed him first, slept with him first in the car and at the office. I don't know every detail. I know enough. At the same time I want Li Gan. I don't want a cohabitation in which I'm looked after. I want him to touch me. I want to be able to open my legs in front of him without first turning into a person who understands. And I have to say something more troublesome. Ziyi, I've looked at you. Not only as a rival. When you come out of the shower, my eyes stop. If this relationship only allows me to hate you and doesn't allow me to admit I also want to touch you, then I'm still pretending."

The living room was quiet for a few seconds. Outside, someone was walking a dog. The dog barked once and went far off.

Wu Ziyi's hands were clasped on her knee, clasped tight, then loosened. "I heard you. I'll own mine first. I was the one who reached for Li Gan. I checked more than once that he wasn't failing to refuse because of my rank and my age. His review isn't with me. I'm making that clear to you now too, so you don't think I'm holding him inside the company. I hid it from you because I was greedy. I wanted to possess a beginning that belonged only to me. I was also afraid of you. You laugh more easily than I do. You make this flat feel more like a home. If I only took you for an obstacle, I wouldn't be sitting here today. I'm sitting here because I can imagine that after you join, I don't only lose an exclusive claim. I might also get something I can't give him by myself. As for you looking at me." She lifted her eyes. "I wasn't unaffected. Once you handed me the hair dryer and your fingers touched my wrist, and afterward I stood in the bathroom a long time. I didn't count that as permission to already put my hands on you. Now that you've said it, I can say it."

Li Gan sat in the single armchair off to the side between them. He felt the position was too symbolic, so he shifted his body forward until he was equally near both of them. "I'll finish mine too. I want Ziyi. Not because she came first, so I have no choice but to want her. I want her, the person. The way she asks me. The way she fears being taken for a teacher. The way, when I'm inside her, she still wants me to say her name. I don't want to give any of that back. I want you too, Zhang Xue. I don't want you in order to patch the balance of the household. The night you had the fever I got hard, and I hated myself for it then. Not going through your door was right. Going on afterward pretending there was nothing was wrong. I'm twenty-six. I haven't been with two people I like at the same time. I may do it wrong. When I do it wrong, say so directly. I don't want you swallowing hurt in order to take care of my age."

Zhang Xue stared at him. "You said you want both. You said it very smoothly. Have you thought about how the smoothness itself hurts? For her and for me, it sounds like you want to keep everything."

"I have thought about it," he said. "So I'm not going to say now that I can guarantee fairness forever. I can't do that math. What I can guarantee is that when I'm in one person's body I won't be thinking about how to hide it from the other. I won't compare which of you is tighter, which of you cries out better, and then use that to provoke the other one. And I won't let either of you become the person who only watches, unless that time she herself wants to watch. If some day I find that what I actually wanted was only novelty, I'll say so, and then I'll step out. When I step out, the one who moves is me. You two looked at the flat first. The car can go on being yours to use. At work I'll ask Zhou Heng for a few days remote and finish the handover. I won't use disappearing to punish you."

Wu Ziyi looked at him a long time. "Those sentences make me want to kiss you more than your breathing in the kitchen last night did. But Zhang Xue said no taking clothes off while we talk. I'm holding it."

Zhang Xue was made to laugh by that, a short laugh, and the anger went down a little. "Then we talk terms. If we can't agree, today ends here. If the two of you still want to go on, get a room outside. Don't do it in this flat again. I'll consider moving out. That isn't a threat. It's my boundary."

"Reasonable," Wu Ziyi said. "If we do agree, my terms are here too. First, anyone can say red light. Once it's said, we stop, whether it's two people or three, no matter how close we've gotten. No punishing the other person with a face after stopping. Second, at the office we don't do it anywhere someone might walk in. I don't want another night like that meeting room. Too dangerous, and it drags security and the cleaners into it. Third, we don't use work to speak. If someone's proposal gets revised, that's the proposal. It doesn't get taken to bed as revenge, and nobody promises a project in bed. Fourth, condoms. Until all three of us have been tested, and until we say again whether we want to do without, we wear them, no exceptions. Fifth, between me and Zhang Xue there is no duty to perform for Li Gan. We touch if we want to touch. When we don't want to, he doesn't beg with his eyes. Sixth, jealousy can be said on the spot. It doesn't get saved into an explosion at midnight, and it doesn't get saved into an 'I'm fine.'"

Zhang Xue nodded and added her own. "Seventh. For the month before this started, I don't require the two of you to write a confession about what you already did. But from now on, in this home, there is no sex hidden from the third person. If some time only two people want it and the other one is home, ask first. Asking isn't requesting approval for every time someone enters someone. Asking is telling the other person: we want to now. You can join, you can go out for a walk, or you can say not today. If the other person says not today, we stop. Eighth, I will not be called the later one, the extra one, the one who understands. If, when you speak, you set me down as a supplement, I'll walk out. Ninth, Li Gan is not allowed to call me older sister. Especially not in bed. If Ziyi doesn't want to be called teacher either, then all of us use names."

"I agree," Li Gan said. "I didn't want to hide behind older sister anyway."

Wu Ziyi's fingers loosened. "The tenth is mine. Zhang Xue, if some time I'm jealous enough that I don't want to watch the two of you, I can say I'm going out for a turn. You have to let me go. Don't read the going as me pulling the table out from under us. I'll allow you the same. We haven't bought a contract that requires someone to be present every minute."

"Yes," Zhang Xue said. "But before you go you say it's jealousy. Don't say you're going to buy water. I can't stand that kind of clever excuse. I promise the same. When I go out, I speak like a person."

They went through the ten terms again. The going-through was not sexy. It was like aligning meeting minutes. Zhang Xue felt her shoulders come down a little at a time. Minutes were more reliable than an affair. Reliable was what made it possible for her to hand her body over again.

Li Gan poured water for all three of them. His hands still shook a little. He set the water down and said, "Then when we start is for the two of you to decide. I can do nothing today. I even think that doing nothing today sounds more like the right thing."

Zhang Xue looked at him. "Tonight is all right. But not now. If anyone kisses me now, I'll feel it's to stamp the agreement. I don't want a stamp. I want the evening. After we've eaten, after we've showered, if all three of us still want it, then we start. If someone stops wanting it halfway, they say red light and go back to their own room, and the other two don't follow them in and coax it through to the end."

Wu Ziyi nodded. "All right. Then I'll add one sentence that belongs only to tonight. Li Gan, tonight the first touch is Zhang Xue. Not because I'm generous. Because she has waited longer than I have, and I've already had a taste of you. If the first touch is still me, I'll look down on myself. Zhang Xue, this isn't me handing you what's left. If you don't want to be first, change it. You have the right to change it."

Zhang Xue's throat tightened. She stared at Wu Ziyi, looking in the sentence for charity. What she found was a fairness that had been forced out through clenched teeth. "I accept. But you are not allowed to stand beside us playing mentor. If you want to watch, watch as a person who wants to watch. If you want to touch me, ask me first. I might say yes. I'm not sure now. Not sure isn't a refusal announced in advance. It's that I truly don't know yet whether I'll cry when you touch me."

"Then I'll ask," Wu Ziyi said. "I won't suddenly put my fingers in your mouth to prove we're very bold."

Li Gan listened until the roots of his ears were red through. He still did not move. "Then at night I'll ask every time we change what we're doing. You may think I ask too much. I'd rather ask more."

"You ask," Zhang Xue said. "If you don't ask, I stop. I'm thirty-six. I'm not here to experience a young man deciding things on his own."

By the time the talk reached there, the sunlight had moved from the coffee table onto the rug. All three of them were a little tired, tired the way people are after a real meeting. Wu Ziyi got up to wash the dishes. Zhang Xue followed her in to wipe the table. Their shoulders touched once in the narrow kitchen. Neither of them dodged, and neither pressed in on purpose. In the living room Li Gan wrote the ten terms into a note on his phone in his own words, read them through, and sent them to both women.

Zhang Xue answered: Written like a delivery document. Ridiculous. Keep it.

Wu Ziyi answered: I'll say the seventh again. The person who is home is not furniture.

He looked at the two messages and suddenly wanted to laugh, and could not. Evening had not come yet. The agreement had not been tested by skin. But the air in the living room was already different from last night's bare bulb. It was still tight. Inside the tightness there was a place that existed because it had been spoken. Each person had a place. Nobody was required to turn first into the shape of someone who understood.

In the afternoon all of them actually slept a while. Before Zhang Xue fell asleep she wondered whether she had agreed to the evening too quickly. When she finished wondering she put her hand on her lower belly and admitted it: it was not too quick. She had already said the hardest sentences under the light. What remained, if she still wanted it, ought to be answered with the body, not with another week of silence used to punish everyone, herself included.

Wu Ziyi lay in the master bedroom and looked at an old crack in the ceiling. She thought of Zhang Xue saying she had looked at her collarbone. That sentence made her wetter than any scolding. She did not touch herself. She saved the desire for evening, for the moment when it would have to be admitted in front of the others. She was afraid. The fear made her feel she was still alive, and not a person who only knew how to move first and then keep the situation in hand.

Li Gan could not sleep. He lay in the smallest room and heard the two women's beds each make a sound, then go quiet. He thought of the red light, of the rain by the river, of the legs of the meeting-room table, of the kitchen light. In those scenes Zhang Xue was absent, or she was only in the doorway. Tonight she would be there. He was hard, and as she had asked he did not take care of it early. He wanted to walk into the evening carrying a whole day's clarity. To want them while he was clear. And to be ready to be stopped by any single sentence.

Chapter 8 The First Touch

Dinner was two meat dishes and one vegetable that Zhang Xue ordered. She said she had no strength to cook, and she did not want to watch Li Gan perform in the kitchen. While the three of them ate they drank water, not wine. Wu Ziyi said the reason aloud. "If I drink, I'll suspect every yes I give tonight." Zhang Xue said she was the same. Li Gan put the beer back in the refrigerator. The sound of the door shutting felt solemn even to him.

By the time they had showered it was nearly nine. Only one floor lamp was left on in the living room. Zhang Xue sat at one end of the sofa, hair blown half dry, in a washed-out black T-shirt and shorts, legs bare. Wu Ziyi sat at the other end. The tie of her house robe was not tight, but she had not let it fall open on purpose either. Li Gan sat on the rug with his back against the coffee table, a little lower than they were. The height made Zhang Xue look at him and say, suddenly, "Come up here. I don't want you to start on your knees. Kneeling looks like asking to be sentenced. We already did the sentencing in the daytime."

He sat beside her. There was still a palm's width between them. "Zhang Xue, may I kiss you?"

She looked at his mouth for two seconds. "Yes. Only a kiss first. Don't start by undoing my clothes."

He leaned in. The first touch was light, light enough that it was still a question. Zhang Xue's lips were a little thinner than Wu Ziyi's, and hotter. She did not open her mouth at once. She felt his breath first, and felt that he was not pressing her down into the sofa. Then she lifted her own hand, caught his collar, and deepened the kiss. When the tip of her tongue met the tip of his she made a sound in her nose, as if her own need had angered her and she still would not retreat. Li Gan's hand hung at the side of her waist. "May I hold you?"

"Hold me," she said into his mouth. "Don't let your hand go down right away. Let me know first that this is you kissing me, not you completing clause seven."

His arm went around her. His palm lay on her back. Under the T-shirt the shoulder blades were tight. She kissed deeper and deeper. Her jaw loosened. Her breath went uneven. At the other end of the sofa Wu Ziyi watched, and her fingers dug into her own palm. Her thighs pressed together once. She made no sound.

Zhang Xue felt that gaze. She drew back half an inch. Her forehead was still against Li Gan's, but her eyes turned to Wu Ziyi. "Are you still here? Not whether your body is here. Whether you're still willing to be."

"I'm here." Wu Ziyi's voice had gone rough. "Watching him kiss you, I'm sour and I'm wet. I'm not going to call red light. If the sour covers the wet, I'll say so."

"Then come a little closer," Zhang Xue said. "Don't touch me yet. Sit where I can see you. If you stay that far, I'll think you're proctoring an exam."

Wu Ziyi moved over and knelt on the inside of the sofa, close to Zhang Xue's knee. Li Gan could see both their faces at once. His cock was already hard enough to push against his trousers. He did not use it to touch anyone. He only asked Zhang Xue, "May I touch your chest? Through the clothes is fine too."

"Inside the clothes," Zhang Xue said. Her ears were red, and the words were direct. "I'm not wearing anything under. You'll know when you touch. My nipples are very sensitive. Use your palm first. Don't pinch with your nails. I don't like pain."

His hand went in under the hem of the T-shirt and up along her waist. The skin was hot. When his palm covered her breast she drew a breath. The breast just filled his hand, and the nipple scraped hard across his palm. He rubbed slowly with the palm. His thumb only circled the edge of the areola and did not grind directly. "Is this all right?"

"All right." Her waist lifted a little. "The other side too. Don't only tend one, as if you're inspecting."

Both his hands went in. The T-shirt was pushed up and bunched under her collarbones. In the lamplight Zhang Xue's chest rose and fell. The skin was whiter than her face. The color of the nipples was a light brown. She was being looked at by two people, and she lifted her chin and would not shrink. "Look, then. Ziyi, if you want to touch my leg, you can ask now."

Wu Ziyi's gaze moved from her breasts to her eyes. "I want to put my hand on your knee. Only the knee. May I?"

"Yes."

The hand came down. Its temperature was a little cooler than Li Gan's palm. Zhang Xue's leg jumped once and did not pull away. Li Gan bent and took one nipple into his mouth. His tongue was light and slow. Zhang Xue finally cried out, a short sound, as if she had startled herself, and then she bit her lip. Wu Ziyi's thumb drew a small circle on her knee. "You don't have to bite. There isn't a fourth person in this flat tonight. If you want to be quieter, that's your choice, not a rule."

"Then don't be so good at talking either." Zhang Xue was panting. Her hand went into Li Gan's hair. "Li Gan, lower. Your hand. I want you to touch me down there. I've been wet a long time, since before you kissed me. When you feel it, don't offer a commentary. Tell me straight whether you want to go on."

His hand came out from her chest and stopped at the edge of her shorts. "Do I take the shorts off, or go in through the leg?"

"Take them off." She lifted her hips herself. He drew the shorts and the underwear, already wet in a small patch, down to the bend of her knees, then stopped and looked at her. She worked her legs out of the cloth and opened them. The light was not dim. The hair was trimmed short. The middle was already shining. Her breath was fast, and her eyes were clear. "Look. This is what I look like when I'm jealous enough to do it myself. Now you know. Do you still want me?"

"I want you." Li Gan's voice was low enough to be hoarse. "Zhang Xue, I want to lick you, and I want to be inside you in a while. Right now I'll use my hand first. May I? One finger. If you feel it's fast, say slow."

"Yes. Touch my clit first. Don't shove in the moment you arrive."

The pad of his finger met that wetness, found the point that had already swollen, and circled it lightly. Zhang Xue's head went back against the sofa. The short length of her throat was entirely bare. She swore, very softly and very dirty, and then she caught the hand Wu Ziyi had left on her knee, not to push it off, to hold it. "Ziyi. Look at me. I want you watching while he touches me. I don't want you turning your head away to make room for me."

"I'm watching," Wu Ziyi said. The tie of her robe had already loosened. The hollow of her chest rose and fell with her breath. She did not open her own clothes. She only watched, eyes dark, lips a little parted. Li Gan's fingers rubbed slowly between Zhang Xue's legs. A wet sound gradually came. He put one finger in. Zhang Xue's inner walls were hot and tight and bit him. He stopped inside her. His thumb went on tending the outside. "Does it hurt?"

"It doesn't." Zhang Xue looked at him. "Deeper. Bend it. Yes. Don't only mind the technique. Kiss me. I want your fingers inside me while you kiss me."

He kissed her. He kissed her until she hummed into his mouth, and her grip on his fingers almost kept them from moving. Wu Ziyi's hand moved from the knee to the thigh, and before it moved she asked, "Here all right?" Zhang Xue said yes, muffled. The hand stopped at the top of the thigh. It did not touch Li Gan's hand. It only pressed that shaking flesh. The three breaths tangled. Zhang Xue's hips began to push themselves onto his hand. Her nipples were painfully hard in the air. Wu Ziyi saw them and still asked first. "May I take one in my mouth? Only once. If you don't like it I'll leave."

Zhang Xue's eyes were wet. "Yes. Lightly. Your tongue. I haven't tried a woman. I may shake very hard. That isn't a red light."

Wu Ziyi bent her head. Her hair fell on Zhang Xue's chest. The tip of her tongue touched the nipple first, very lightly, like testing water. Zhang Xue's whole body jerked, and her cunt clamped hard on Li Gan's finger. She cried out, and this time she did not bite it back. "Ziyi — lick me again. Li Gan, don't stop your hand. The two of you together, I'll be fast. If I'm going to come, let me come. Don't ask me a long sentence while I'm coming."

"I'll only ask one thing," Li Gan said. His thumb went faster. "Like this, now, may you come?"

"Yes, yes, just like this—"

When she came she caught Wu Ziyi's hair, then was afraid of pulling it and changed to holding her shoulder. The tops of her thighs spasmed. Wetness surged out and ran down Li Gan's finger into his palm. Her hips left the sofa and fell back. Her chest rose and fell hard. Her nipple was still in Wu Ziyi's mouth. Wu Ziyi lifted her head. Her lips were shining. She looked at her and did not smile, and did not speak. She only put her forehead into the hollow of Zhang Xue's shoulder. Her own breath was just as uneven.

A good while passed before Zhang Xue let go. She looked at the ceiling and suddenly laughed once, and there was a cry inside the laugh. "I didn't say red light. My legs are just soft. Neither of you summarize what just happened. If anyone summarizes it I'll be angry."

Li Gan drew his finger out slowly. As it left she trembled again. He kissed her knee once, very lightly. "Then no summary. I'll go wash my hands and get a condom. Before I come back, if you want to talk, talk. I don't have a rule that some things can only be said when I'm not in the room."

He stood. His shorts were still tented. The way he walked made Zhang Xue swear again, and this time the swearing had a laugh in it. Wu Ziyi was still against her shoulder. The two of them listened to the water in the bathroom. Zhang Xue turned her face and saw Wu Ziyi's lashes. "Are you jealous? Just now."

"Yes," Wu Ziyi said. "And I want it. Both at once. I wasn't pushed out by you. I'm here on my own. Zhang Xue, when you grabbed me just now, I nearly came too. That isn't comfort. That's my business."

Zhang Xue's fingers touched her wrist and stopped. "When he comes back, I want to watch him enter you. I want to watch. Not to pay you back a favor one for one. I want to see whether, when he wants you, you're still the person who reached first. While I watch I may go sour. If I go sour I'll say so. Don't act calm in order to make me comfortable."

"I won't act," Wu Ziyi said. "When he enters me, I'm not calm to begin with."

The water stopped. When Li Gan came back he had the box in his hand. His ears were red, and his eyes were checking whether, in the few minutes he had been gone, the two of them had turned into some other feeling. Zhang Xue reached for him. "Come here. Tonight isn't finished. I've had my first touch. The next inch, the way she said it in the daytime, doesn't have to be given to me anymore. Ask her."

Chapter 9 The Master Bedroom

They went into Wu Ziyi's master bedroom. The bed was the largest of the three. The sheets were gray. A book lay face-down by the pillow. After she came in, Wu Ziyi drew the curtains tight and turned the bedside lamp down to its dimmest. She stood at the side of the bed and looked at the box in Li Gan's hand, and at Zhang Xue, still bare from the waist down, the T-shirt pulled back down.

"Li Gan," she said. "I want you inside me now. Wear the condom. I want Zhang Xue beside me, if she still wants to be. Zhang Xue, you said you wanted to watch. You choose where you watch from. You can lean against the headboard, or you can leave. I won't take your leaving as the agreement failing."

"I'll stay," Zhang Xue said. She climbed onto the bed and leaned against the headboard, knees bent, not entirely back from the orgasm. "I'll watch. If you want me to touch your hand, say so."

Wu Ziyi undid the robe. There was nothing under it. The light showed her body honestly: breasts fuller than Zhang Xue's, a little softness at the side of the waist, the skin below her belly already shining with wetness. She did not cover any of it. She glanced at Li Gan, and in the glance was a fear the daytime had not been able to say all the way through. "Come here. Kiss me first. Don't, just because she just came, have nothing left for me but entering. I want you to want the person on this bed too."

Li Gan set the box by the pillow, took her face in both hands, and kissed her. This kiss was different from the ones in the car, because Zhang Xue was watching, and because the kiss itself had to be real or all three of them would taste the falsehood. Wu Ziyi kissed him back quickly. Her hand went down and held his cock, squeezed him through the trousers, then undid them. He sprang out, hard against her lower belly. She said, breathing, "Give me the condom. I'll put it on you. Zhang Xue can watch. I'm not afraid of her seeing my hands."

Zhang Xue did watch. She watched Wu Ziyi roll the condom down from the base. She watched her fingers pause once on his balls. She watched Li Gan's stomach tighten because of it. The sourness pricked her. She said it, as agreed. "I've gone sour. It isn't a red light. Go on. I only want you to know I'm sour."

"I hear you," Wu Ziyi said. She did not speed up because of it, and she did not stop. "Li Gan, you lie down, or I lie down. I want to lie down. I want to see you, and to be able to see her."

She lay in the middle of the bed. Li Gan knelt between her legs. The head, already covered, pressed at her entrance and rubbed there, and did not go in. "Ziyi, I'm going in. If you want it slow, say so."

"Slow first." Her legs opened. Her heels pressed the mattress. "Stop halfway. Let me adjust. And let me look at Zhang Xue. Zhang Xue, give me your hand. I want to hold it."

Zhang Xue put her right hand into Wu Ziyi's left. Their fingers did not lock at once. They only held. Li Gan pushed in. Wu Ziyi's brows drew together. Her mouth opened. A long sigh came out that she could not press down. He stopped halfway. Sweat stood on his forehead. "You're very tight. Relax a little. Or do I pull out?"

"Don't pull out." Inside, she took him little by little. "It's full, not pain. Come in farther. Zhang Xue, don't only look at him. Look at my face. I want you to see that I'm not directing forever."

He sank in to the root. Both of them stopped together. Wu Ziyi's chest rose and fell hard. Her cunt contracted in pulses, as if it were still learning his shape. Li Gan began to move, very slowly, almost pulling all the way out each time and then sending himself back. The sound of their bodies meeting was clear and wet in the quiet master bedroom. Zhang Xue held Wu Ziyi's hand and saw her breasts shake with the thrusts, saw her eyes slowly lose focus and then force themselves to focus on Li Gan's face.

"Faster," Wu Ziyi said at last. "I can take it. Harder. Hit that place inside. Yes. Zhang Xue, when I come I may pinch you. If it hurts, pull away."

"I'm not afraid of you pinching." Zhang Xue's other hand slid between her own legs. She touched her clit, still swollen, and caught her breath. "Watching you, I want it again. I'll touch myself first. Don't trouble yourselves to stop."

Li Gan saw her hand. His movement paused, and Wu Ziyi's legs urged him back. "You can look at her," Wu Ziyi said, panting. "Don't stop me. You're inside me now. Finish bringing me through first. Li Gan, say my name."

"Ziyi." He bent and kissed her. The thrusts went deep and heavy. "Ziyi, I'm here. You're so wet. You're gripping me until I can't hold on. I'm looking at you, and I'm looking at her. I haven't turned you into the background. Can you feel that?"

"I can feel it." Her voice broke. "Deeper. Don't come. I haven't yet. If you're close, slow down. I want us together, or me first. I don't want you clenching your teeth in pain in order to wait for me."

He slowed by half a beat. His hand went down. His thumb pressed her clit and matched the thrusts. Wu Ziyi's hips lifted at once. She cried out louder than she had in the meeting room, because this was her own bed, and because Zhang Xue had already said there was no fourth person in the flat. When she came, her cunt bit him hard. Her whole body arched. Her left hand pinched Zhang Xue's fingers white. She did not call a stop. She called Li Gan's name, and toward the end it became a soundless open mouth. Li Gan saw stars from being gripped, and still, as she had asked, he stayed at the deepest point and waited for the spasm to pass, and he did not come.

He pulled out carefully. The condom was covered in her wetness. He was still hard, hard enough to hurt. Wu Ziyi lay spread on the bed, chest heaving, eyes wet, and looked toward Zhang Xue. "Your hand. Did I pinch it too hard?"

"A little." Zhang Xue held the reddened fingers up for both of them to see, then put the hand back. "Worth it. The way you were just now, I'm not sour anymore. I only want it. Li Gan, change the condom. I want you inside me. Not this instant. After I finish this sentence. I want to be on top. I want to decide the depth myself. Ziyi, you can touch my chest if you still want to. If you don't, lie there and watch."

Wu Ziyi nodded. Her voice was still thin. "I want to. Come on. Li Gan, do as she says. You've already asked very diligently tonight. This time you just lie there. If she needs something else, she'll say it."

Li Gan turned onto his side, tied off the used condom, and dropped it into the tissues he had brought to the side of the bed in advance. His hands still shook while he opened a new one. Zhang Xue could not stand to watch. She took it and put it on him herself. Her hand was steady, and only after the steadiness did a little smile show. "You're quicker turning pages in a meeting than you are at this. What are you nervous about. I'm not going to eat you. I'm going to ride you. Those are two different things."

"That's exactly what I'm nervous about," he said. "I want it to be good for you. I want it too much."

"Then watch me be good." She swung a leg over him, knelt at the sides of his waist, held him with her hand, and rubbed him twice at her entrance. She was wet enough that she did not need much more opening, and still she sat down slowly. The entering made her mouth open and her brow crease. Li Gan held her waist at once and did not thrust up. "You set it. I won't move."

"You're too big. Don't look innocent." She swore at him and stopped halfway down, adjusting to the stretch of being opened. "Ziyi, come here. Kiss my back, or touch my chest. If I sit here alone I'll remember that I came later. I don't want to remember that word in this position."

Wu Ziyi knelt behind her and kissed the nape of her neck first, and asked, "Here all right?" She got a sound of yes, and only then brought her hands around to the front, cupped Zhang Xue's breasts in her palms, and passed her thumbs lightly over the nipples. Zhang Xue's waist went soft, and that made her take Li Gan deeper. All three of them made a sound. She began to move. At first it was only a small rocking, grinding her clit against his belly, sucking him inside, hot and tight. Then she lifted a little and sat back down, and each stroke was more practiced.

"Zhang Xue." Li Gan's hands gripped her thighs. His knuckles were white, and he still did not take the rhythm. "Look at me. You aren't the later one. You're on me now. I want to come. I'm holding it. You tell me when you want me to come."

"Wait a little more." Her voice was already unsteady. Wu Ziyi's fingers were pinching her nipples, not hard, and exactly enough. "Ziyi, a little harder. Yes. Li Gan, thrust up once. Only once, deep. Then it's me again."

He thrust up. She cried out, and her inner walls clenched hard. From behind, Wu Ziyi bit her shoulder, very lightly, like a question mark. Zhang Xue said yes. The tooth mark was still there the next day, covered by clothes. Her speed picked up. She rode him deep and urgent. The mattress made a dull sound. Li Gan felt his whole soul gathered in the length of him that she held. He still looked at her eyes. Her eyes were red. Her hair stuck to her face. The pride and the desire of thirty-six landed on him together, without reserve.

"I'm going to come," she said. "Touch me in front. Ziyi, don't leave. Li Gan, wait until I've come, then you come. I want to feel you jump inside me."

His thumb pressed her clit. Wu Ziyi's lips were at the root of her ear. "Go on. I'm behind you. Nobody is setting you down as a supplement."

When Zhang Xue came she almost lost her voice. She sat at the deepest place. Her whole body shook. Her cunt tightened in pulses. Li Gan could not hold on under the grip. His hands held her waist, and he asked a question that had shrunk to two words: "May I?" She nodded. Her forehead was against his. He came into the condom, long and hard, and each pulse made her hum, as if the aftershock were still pushing her higher. Wu Ziyi knelt beside them, her own hand caught between her legs, watching, her breath broken into pieces.

Zhang Xue saw her first. "You haven't," she said, panting. She lifted herself carefully off Li Gan. The condom slipped out with her, and she did not mind it. "Ziyi, may I use my hand on you? Now. You were behind me just now. I don't want you only being my cushion. If you don't want me touching you down there, do it yourself and I'll hold you."

Wu Ziyi's face was badly red. "I want it. Your fingers. One. I'm already very sensitive. Li Gan can kiss me. Don't come in again. I've had enough today. If you come in again I'll mix up wanting it with proving myself."

Li Gan dealt with the condom, turned onto his side, and kissed her mouth. Zhang Xue's hand slid between her legs and found her a soaked mess, the clit swollen, the place that had just been entered still opening and closing a little. She only circled the outside and did not push in at once. "Like this?"

"Inside," Wu Ziyi said. "One is enough. Slow. Both of you look at me. I want to come while you're looking. I don't want to hide in the pillow by myself."

Zhang Xue crooked her finger and sent it in. Hot, soft, still contracting. Her thumb tended the clit. The movement was not as urgent as she was at work. It was patient. Li Gan kissed Wu Ziyi's breasts, took one in his mouth, and his hand met Zhang Xue's hand on her lower belly. Wu Ziyi reached the edge quickly. She caught Li Gan's wrist and Zhang Xue's arm. "Don't stop. Just like this. I'm coming. I'm coming—"

This orgasm was shorter than the one before, and more obviously it let tears fall out of her eyes. Not from pain. It was the kind of release, caught by two people at once, that did not know what name to take. Zhang Xue's finger stayed inside until Wu Ziyi loosened, and then she drew it out. Nobody spoke. A car passed outside. Its lights swept a thin line along the edge of the curtain and disappeared.

Later it was Li Gan who went to the bathroom and wrung out a hot towel. When he came back the two women were already lying side by side, with a place left for him in the middle, left a little on purpose and a little shyly. He wiped their hands and their bellies, and before each stroke he looked at their eyes. Zhang Xue spoke first, her voice rough. "I didn't feel I was the later one. At least not in those few minutes. Don't rush me to promise I never will again. Later is later."

"All right," Wu Ziyi said. Her hair was a mess, messy enough to make her look young, and she was still herself. "I was jealous. I didn't call a stop. I want to sleep now. Whoever wants to go back to their own room can go. Staying is fine too. Whoever stays doesn't start another round in the middle of the night. I have a client tomorrow. My waist is already protesting."

Li Gan smiled once, and after the smile he looked at them. "May I stay? Not in order to go again. Because I don't want to run from this bed tonight."

Zhang Xue pulled the quilt up over the three of them, over their legs. "Stay. If you snore I'll kick you off. That's a supplementary clause. It takes effect now."

He lay down in the space they had left. On the left was Wu Ziyi's shoulder. On the right was Zhang Xue's hair. The two bodies were not the same temperature. He knew both of them now. After the light went down, nobody fell asleep at once. Wu Ziyi's hand found his hand. The top of Zhang Xue's foot lay against his calf. Three breaths slowly joined into a rhythm that was not very even.

When Li Gan was nearly asleep he said something very light. "Thank you for not treating me as a person who only knows how to run red lights."

Zhang Xue made a sound in the dark. "Don't thank us. If you run one, we'll make you stop. Sleep."

Wu Ziyi did not speak. She only held his fingers a little tighter, then loosened them, as if confirming she was still able to choose to let go. That tightening and that loosening filled his chest more than any vow.

Chapter 10 The Passenger Seat

In the week after that, the air in the flat changed density. In the mornings the three of them still queued for the bathroom. Whoever was late got cold toast. At the office they went on speaking by surnames and titles. The word red light was not used in bed, but Li Gan kept it in his mind, like the real lamp beside the steering wheel that actually lit.

On Thursday it rained again. A client kept Zhang Xue until seven. Wu Ziyi's meeting ran long too. Li Gan waited in the garage. The windows fogged. When the two of them came down, Zhang Xue did not reach for the back door. She pulled open the passenger door, then stopped herself and looked at Wu Ziyi.

"I want to sit in front today," she said. "Not to seize it. I want to sit there once. If that makes you uncomfortable, I'll go back to the rear. Say so now."

Rain hit the roof. Wu Ziyi looked at the open door. The jealousy came fast and clear. She did not hide it inside a smile. "I'm uncomfortable, a little. These past few days the passenger seat hasn't been a seat inside my body. But you said it isn't seizing. If I occupy this place forever because I'm uncomfortable, then I turn into the contract itself. You sit. I'll sit in the back. If I'm sour enough that I don't want to hear the two of you talk, I'll say I want music."

"Then you pick the song," Zhang Xue said. "Don't pick that deliberately relaxing instrumental stuff. I can't stand it."

Wu Ziyi actually laughed. She got into the back, set her bag beside her, and chose an old song with a steady drum. Li Gan started the car and glanced at Zhang Xue. There were raindrops on her skirt. Her knees were together. She overlapped with Wu Ziyi on many nights, and she was entirely herself. His throat was dry. "Seat belt."

"I know." She buckled it and turned her face. "Don't wear that look of a man about to cause trouble. I'm only sitting here. The road home is still long. I don't necessarily want to do anything in the car. I only want this car to remember that I've been in the front too."

The car left the garage. The wipers went back and forth. In the back, Wu Ziyi looked at the backs of their heads. Her hand rested on the top of the front seat and touched no one. A red light. Zhang Xue's hand suddenly covered Li Gan's right hand, covered it for one second, and took itself away. "That was me wanting you. Not a start."

"Received," he said.

Green. Traffic was slow. Zhang Xue looked out the window and said suddenly, "I want him to touch me before we get home. Ziyi, I'm asking you now. You're in the back. You can join, you can only listen, or you can say not in the car today. If you say not today, I'll take my hand back and we'll go home and eat."

Wu Ziyi was silent for a few breaths. The drum was still going. She said, "Yes. But not on the main road. Find a place you can stop, then stop. I don't want us in the news because of this. After you stop, I want to watch, and I want to hold you from behind. Li Gan, follow her pace. If all you can manage is driving, then drive with your whole attention. We aren't worth proving who wants whom more by means of a crash."

His palms were all sweat. "Two kilometers ahead there's a market that's already closed. The lot is almost empty at night. I'll drive there. Nobody unbuckles now."

Those two kilometers drove like a very long stretch of foreplay. Nobody spoke again. Rain, the drum, breath. The lot was indeed empty, only a row of dead lights and puddles on the ground. He parked at the innermost space, cut the engine, and the rain got loud at once.

He undid his own belt first and did not lunge. He turned to Zhang Xue. "Do you still want it?"

"I want it." She had already undone her belt and pulled her skirt up a little. "Put your hand over here. Pushing the underwear aside is enough. Don't take my skirt off. It's cold outside. Ziyi, come here. When you hold me from behind, say first where your hand is going."

Wu Ziyi leaned into the space between the two seats. The room was narrow. Her hair swept Li Gan's cheek. Citrus mixed with the rain. "I want one hand inside your clothes, on your chest. I won't use the other, so the two of you don't have your hands fighting down below. All right?"

"All right," Zhang Xue said. She pulled Li Gan's hand over and pressed it between her legs. The underwear was hot. The strip in the middle was wet enough to be nearly soaked through. The moment his fingers lay against it she bit her lip. He pushed the cloth aside, found her clit with the pad of his finger, and rubbed lightly. Her legs opened in the passenger seat as far as the seat allowed. Her knee was against the door. Wu Ziyi's hand slid in at the collar. Her palm covered one breast, and the nipple went hard in her hand at once.

"Li Gan." Zhang Xue was panting. "Look outside the streetlight and see if anyone's there. When you've looked, look at me. I want your fingers in. Two. Slow. Ziyi, pinch me. Today I want it a little clearer."

He looked once through the curtain of rain. Nobody. Then he looked at her eyes and sent two fingers in. She was wet and hot, and the angle of sitting let him go deep. Her head went back and landed in the hollow of Wu Ziyi's shoulder. Wu Ziyi kissed her temple. Her fingers pinched the nipple on a rhythm offset from his thrusts. Caught between the two, Zhang Xue finally could not keep her voice down.

"Like that," she said. "Don't be so gentle. I'm sitting in her place. I'm not here to be set up on an altar. Li Gan, do you want me to use my mouth? There's no room to turn around in this car. I'll use my hand. Undo your trousers. Ziyi, do you allow it? This is in the seat that used to be yours."

"I allow it." Wu Ziyi's voice had gone rough too. "Don't call it my seat. You're sitting in it now. I want to see your hand around him. I want to see him come apart because of you. I'm sour, and I still want to see."

When Li Gan opened his trousers his cock sprang out, the head already wet. Zhang Xue's hand closed around him. Her thumb wiped across that wetness, and his fingers paused inside her. She laughed once, soft and wicked. "Move. What are you stopping for. I'll grip your hand with me and work you at the same time. Is that fair?"

"It isn't fair." He was panting. "But I like it. Zhang Xue, a little tighter. Yes. Ziyi, if you want to kiss me, you'll have to come from the side. Don't bump her."

Wu Ziyi turned her face and kissed him. The kiss was awkward. Their teeth knocked once. Neither of them minded. Her hand was still inside Zhang Xue's clothes. The three of them were packed into that small space of the front seat. Rain had completely pasted the windows. Li Gan crooked his fingers, pressed the place inside Zhang Xue, and set his thumb against her clit. Zhang Xue's hand lost its pace and did not let go of him. Her hips twisted in the seat. The skirt bunched into a knot.

"I'm close," she said. "Don't stop. Li Gan, when I come, don't come on my hand unless you want to. I want you to wait until I've finished, and I'll bend down and take you in once. Just once. Then we go home. I don't want you to come all the way in the car. I want to leave the last of it for the bed. Is that demand too much?"

"It isn't too much." His voice had already broken. "You come first. I'll wait."

When she came she buried her face in his shoulder, bit his clothes with her teeth, and her cunt locked hard on his fingers. Her hand still gripped his cock without thinking. The grip whitened his vision. He stopped hard at the edge, panting as if he had just run up the building. Wu Ziyi felt her orgasm. Her own legs pressed together in the back seat. Her underwear was wet too, and she did not ask to be tended at once. She only held Zhang Xue steady and waited for the shaking to pass.

Zhang Xue took a few seconds, then really did bend down. The car was too narrow. She could only take the head in. Her tongue circled the ridge once and forced back up the edge he had just held down. Li Gan's hand went into her hair and did not push. "Zhang Xue, up. I'm really going to come. Say again what you want."

She came off. Her lips were shining. She looked at him, then at Wu Ziyi. "Then I'm changing my mind. Come in my mouth. Ziyi, if you don't want to watch this, say so. This feels more like a kind of possession than I imagined. I don't want to do something you hate while I'm still in your seat."

Wu Ziyi's eyes were very dark. "I want to watch. Not because I'm generous. Because I want to watch him break for you. Take him in. I'll be at your ear. Li Gan, you can come. This is what she wants now."

Zhang Xue took him in again, only the front half, and her hand worked the base fast. Li Gan lasted less than ten seconds. When he came he said her name, and his come poured onto her tongue. She held it. Her brow creased a little. She still swallowed most of it and wiped the rest away with a knuckle, then lifted herself, and she was a little unsteady. Wu Ziyi pulled a tissue from the box and gave it to her. The gesture was so ordinary it almost hurt Li Gan's chest.

The three of them breathed. The windows were all fog. Nobody straightened their clothes at once. Zhang Xue spoke first. "I've sat there. Next time you sit back. I don't need this seat every day. What I need is that I can sit in it. I got that sentence today."

Wu Ziyi tucked the hair at her forehead behind her ear, and only after she had done it did she feel the gesture was too intimate, and she did not take it back. "You got it. I'm done being sour. Now I only want to go home and change the wet underwear. Li Gan, can you still drive? If you can't, wait five minutes. Nobody is rushing you."

"I can." He rested his forehead on the wheel for two seconds, then pulled his trousers up and looked back at the two of them. "We don't have to talk before we get home either. I need to call my soul back. Otherwise I won't be able to stop at the barrier arm."

Zhang Xue laughed out loud. Wu Ziyi laughed too. After the laughter the rain was still in the car. Li Gan wiped a small clear patch in the fog, and the car eased out of the empty lot. The person in the passenger seat was Zhang Xue. The person in the back was Wu Ziyi. The thing had not thrown anyone out of the car. The rain was still falling. Red lights would still come on. Only, when they came on, all three of them knew the meaning of the light could be said by themselves.

Chapter 11 The Water Boiled

Sunday had nothing scheduled. Zhang Xue had meant to go to the supermarket, and the rain kept them in. Lunch was noodles Li Gan boiled. The water boiled twice. The first time he watched the pot. The second time he did not see it, because Wu Ziyi came up against his back, set her chin on his shoulder, and said, "Zhang Xue is on the phone on the balcony. She said ten minutes if it's short. She allows us to kiss in these ten minutes, and she does not allow us to get halfway through something so that when she comes in all she can do is watch the pot boil over. Do you want to kiss?"

"Was that her exact wording?" He turned the flame down.

"The original was meaner," Wu Ziyi said. "She said if you want to warm up, warm up, and don't boil the noodles into paste. My translation was the civilized one."

He turned and kissed her. The kiss had the taste of daytime at home and the heat of noodle broth. It did not have the all-or-nothing of night. Her hand went inside his sweatshirt and touched his waist. He got hard. She felt it, and when the pot was about to boil over again she pushed him off and lifted the noodles out. "Eat first. I'm thirty-eight. I can forget a meal for sex. I don't want to scrub a burnt pot for sex again."

When Zhang Xue came back the three of them still finished the noodles. By the end, anyone could see whose foot was touching whose under the table. Zhang Xue set her chopsticks down. "I don't want to go out this afternoon. I want to redo that light in the kitchen. Last time it was white light, a fright, sleep pants. This time I want all three of us knowing what we're doing. Do you want to?"

Wu Ziyi looked at the counter. Her eyes stopped on that stretch of surface. "I do. I think I still want to sit there. But this time not the big light. The range-hood light is enough. Li Gan, if you feel that doing it there will remind you of being cursed at, say so and we'll change places. I don't need the same location to prove we've passed."

"I want it there," Li Gan said. "Not to prove anything. I want to keep the two of you in the place where I once lost you. Zhang Xue, you decide who gets put on the counter first."

"Her first," Zhang Xue said. "Last time she was the one sitting there. I want to see that picture done again with my agreement. Then I want you to come in from behind. I'll bend beside her legs. The condoms are in the drawer. I put them there yesterday. Don't look shocked. I just don't want anyone running back to a room to look for one."

The range-hood light was warm. It only lit that one piece of counter. Outside, the rain tapped the kitchen window fine. When Wu Ziyi sat up, the surface was a little cold and she flinched. Li Gan stood between her legs, kissed her first, and went in under the hem of her house clothes to hold her breasts. Zhang Xue stood at the side and watched. She took her own underwear off, kicked it aside, and asked Wu Ziyi, "May I lick your chest? While he kisses your mouth."

"Yes," Wu Ziyi said. "Lick. Li Gan, your hand down. I'm already wet inside. You don't have to inspect it for anyone. Touch my clit directly."

His fingers parted her, found the point, and rubbed slowly. Zhang Xue took one nipple in and circled it with her tongue. Wu Ziyi's head went back against the cabinet. Her legs opened. Her heels pressed the small of Li Gan's back. Her voice in the kitchen sounded more wanton than it did in the bedroom. She heard herself. The roots of her ears went red, and she did not swallow the sound. "Like that. Both of you together. It's as if you're pulling me out of last time's light. Li Gan, fingers in. Zhang Xue, don't only lick one side."

Zhang Xue changed to the other side. Her teeth grazed lightly. Wu Ziyi shook hard. Li Gan's two fingers went in to the deepest, his thumb pressed her clit, and the rhythm was steady. She came close to the edge quickly. Her hands caught his shoulder and Zhang Xue's hair. "I'm going to come. Don't stop. Let me come once on this counter. Then you switch. I can watch her being fucked by you."

When she came she was not quiet. She cried out. Her cunt bit his fingers. Wetness marked a small patch of the counter. Zhang Xue lifted her head and kissed her mouth and caught the leftover sounds in the kiss. Li Gan drew his fingers out, opened his trousers, and put a condom on. His hands still shook, and after the shaking he did the thing seriously. Zhang Xue had already turned. Her hands braced the edge of the counter. Her waist dropped. She looked back at him.

"Come in," she said. "From behind. Go in only halfway first. Let me adjust to this angle. Ziyi, look at my face. I want your hand on my back. Don't talk so beautifully. Right now I only want to be filled."

He held her waist. The head pressed into her. This position went deep. Her fingers curled on the counter. He stopped at halfway. "Does it hurt?"

"It doesn't. Come in farther. All the way. Then move. Harder. I don't want slow and orderly today. Ziyi just came. I watched her come. I've been empty all morning."

He sank in to the root and began to thrust. The sound in the kitchen turned bodily: the dull knock of impact, the panting she lowered and could not keep down, a leftover of water in the pot shaken into a light sound. Wu Ziyi's hand moved from Zhang Xue's back to her hair and lifted her face. The two of them looked at each other. Zhang Xue's eyes lost focus under the thrusts, and she still looked at her. "You see. I'm not only like this in front of him. I can be like this in front of you too. If you want to kiss me, kiss me."

Wu Ziyi kissed her. While they kissed, Li Gan hit the deepest point, and Zhang Xue's hum went entirely into Wu Ziyi's mouth. Wu Ziyi's hand reached down, touched the place where the two of them were joined, then touched Zhang Xue's clit and rubbed lightly. Zhang Xue's legs went soft at once. Li Gan felt her clamp suddenly inside and asked, "Is this all right? She's touching you. I'll keep going."

"Yes." Zhang Xue was almost crying it. "Neither of you stop. I'm going to come. Li Gan, come inside, in the condom. I want you with me. Ziyi, look at me. Watch me come."

When she came her whole body went forward. Her forehead pressed Wu Ziyi's knee. Her cunt tightened in waves. Li Gan swore low under the grip, thrust deep a few more times, and came into the condom. He lay on her back and did not put all his weight on her. His hands braced the counter. He panted. Wu Ziyi's fingers were still between Zhang Xue's legs and only left when she flinched.

The three of them held that awkward shape for a good while. The range-hood light hummed. The rain was still falling. Li Gan pulled out, tied the condom off, and suddenly felt his own legs were soft too. Zhang Xue laughed first, and the laugh shook. "At least the noodles didn't get boiled into paste again. We've improved."

Wu Ziyi laughed too. Laughing, she helped Zhang Xue up off the counter, then jumped down herself. Her legs were too soft to stand steady. Li Gan put a hand out to hold her. Zhang Xue held her from the other side. The three of them bunched into a knot in the narrow kitchen. Each person's sweat had that person's smell. Nobody said love. The word was too big, too big for them to pick up in the moment just after sex had gone. Zhang Xue only said, "I don't hate that light from last time anymore. I'll still remember it. Remembering is all right. Remembering means this is home, not a hotel."

Li Gan put his forehead against the top of her hair, then turned and touched Wu Ziyi's temple. "Then I'll cook tonight. Really cook. Not boil noodles. You two go shower. I don't mind who goes first. I need ten minutes to pick my soul up off the counter."

"You said that in the parking lot last time too." Wu Ziyi patted his face, very lightly. "Go pick it up. When you've picked it up, wipe the counter. No getting hard again before it's wiped. That's the kitchen's new clause."

Zhang Xue made a sound, picked up her underwear, walked two steps, and looked back. "Clause invalid. If I see him wiping the counter I may want it again. But let him rest tonight. If his waist goes first, there'll be nobody to drive the car."

They went to shower. When the water started, Li Gan stood alone in the kitchen and wiped that stretch of counter clean. Halfway through the wiping he got hard, the way Zhang Xue had predicted. He did not call them. He took the clause as care underneath a joke, endured it, and started going through the refrigerator. Eggs, tomatoes, half a box of tofu left. Enough to make a hot meal.

The rain outside had lessened. He felt, with a sudden clarity, that this old three-bedroom was no longer only a solution to sharing rent. There would still be jealousy, red lights, sentences said wrong. But the kitchen light could be turned on again. After it was turned on, nobody had to hide in the dark.

Chapter 12 Who Made Him Laugh

The crack did not come from the bed. On the bed they had already learned to ask. The crack came from a laugh.

Tuesday's client call was long. On the phone Zhang Xue caught a line of the other side's obstruction and asked back, polite and vicious, and someone in the meeting room could not help laughing. Li Gan laughed too. After he laughed he sent a line to the internal chat: I'm putting Zhang Xue's sentence into the minutes. Wu Ziyi saw it while she was in another room revising a proposal. She stared at the line for a few seconds and set the phone face-down. Face-down did not mean unseen.

At noon in the pantry, Chen Qi from the project said something without using his brain. "Li Gan, you really have it too good. One car every day, two older sisters riding with you. How come I don't have that kind of luck." A few people laughed. Li Gan's face sank at once. "Not older sisters. And not a ride they're being given. We split the gas. Don't say that kind of thing again." Chen Qi still wanted to smooth it over. He saw the expression and swallowed the rest of the sentence.

Wu Ziyi was standing in the doorway and heard the second half. She did not go in to take his side. She turned and left. Zhang Xue came from the other end and only saw that Li Gan's face was still dark. "What happened?"

"Chen Qi made a joke," he said. "It was ugly. I told him to stop."

"What did he say?"

Li Gan repeated it. Zhang Xue's eyes went cold. "Next time I'll say it myself. You don't have to snatch the words older sister away for me, as if I'll shatter if I hear them."

"I don't think you'll shatter." He lowered his voice. "It's that the sentence set the two of you down as my benefit. I can't listen to that."

Wu Ziyi said very little in the afternoon meeting. When she revised Li Gan's page she revised it finely, finely to the point of almost no mercy. Even Zhou Heng glanced at her. After the meeting broke Li Gan followed her and called her in the fire stairwell. "Ziyi. Are you revising the proposal, or are you angry at me?"

She stopped. The stairwell smelled of dust. She looked at him, and her voice was kept very steady. "Both. That page of the proposal really was loose. The anger is real too. You said in the chat you were going to copy Zhang Xue's sentence. I wasn't there when you laughed. I'm not asking you not to laugh. I found that I still measure whether I've been set behind by counting the times she makes you laugh. That's ugly. I'm telling you first, so I don't turn it into coldness at night."

"Telling me is right," he said. "I copied her sentence because the sentence was useful. Not because she can make me happier than you can. But if I swear now that everyone is the same, you won't believe it either. We'll talk when we get home. This is a fire stairwell. I don't want you handling this in front of a concrete wall."

"All right." She nodded. "I'll say it tonight. Don't buy food ahead of time to make it up. I'm not a person who can be bought back with sweet things."

In the car that evening all three of them knew there was something to say. Zhang Xue sat in the back and spoke first. "Ziyi, he told me. If you're jealous, finish saying it at home. Don't revise a person's page numbers like that in a meeting. Page numbers are page numbers. You set that rule yourself."

Wu Ziyi held the seat belt. "You're right. I revised that page too hard. Tomorrow I'll add a sentence to Zhou Heng on my own, that my standard changed, not that Li Gan didn't do the work. As for the jealousy, I'll say it at home. If I say it now, I'll say it crooked in a red light."

At home, before the coats were fully off, Wu Ziyi stopped in the entry. "I'm jealous that she makes you laugh. Not jealous of one time. Jealous of that lightness. When Zhang Xue curses a client, your eyes light up. When you look at me, what's in your eyes is often seriousness, wanting, care. I'm greedy for those. But I also want you to laugh once for no reason because of me. I'm saying it under our tenth term. I'm not asking the two of you to spend tonight proving it to me."

Zhang Xue set her bag down and looked at her. "I heard you. I won't pretend to be generous either. When I heard Chen Qi say older sister, my stomach turned. I'm grateful Li Gan answered for us, and I'm also annoyed. What I'm annoyed at is that in other people's mouths I'm still an age. Making him laugh isn't my weapon. If you take my jokes as evidence that I'm snatching something from you, I'll hit back. I'm not hitting back now because you spoke like a person."

Li Gan stood between them and did not take either hand. "My mistake was that the line in the chat was too light. I didn't think it would land in you as a comparison. I'll still laugh after this. I won't strangle laughter for the sake of fairness. But anything that concerns the two of you, I won't send it in a chat where other people are. At home I can say again why I laughed. Listen if you want to. If you've listened and you're still miserable, we stay inside the misery. We don't cover it with sex."

Wu Ziyi looked at him. The rims of her eyes were red, and she did not cry aloud. "No sex tonight. I want to be by myself a while. This isn't a red light. It's that I need the room. The two of you can stay in the living room. Don't go silent on purpose in order to compensate me. I can hear a deliberate silence the moment it starts."

She went into the master bedroom. The door shut. Two people were left in the living room. Zhang Xue went to boil water. Li Gan followed her in and leaned on the doorframe. "I'm not going to touch you while her door is shut. I only want to ask if you're all right."

"I'm not," Zhang Xue said. "But I'm still here. Go knock on her door once. Tell her the water's boiled, and if she wants a drink she can come out and get it. Don't go in. She said she wanted the room."

He knocked. Wu Ziyi opened a crack. Her eyes were dry, dry with effort. "What is it?"

"The water's boiled. If you want some, come out and get it. I won't come over," he said. "Zhang Xue told me to say it this way. I think so too."

The person behind the crack was still for two seconds, then nodded. "In a minute. Just put the cup on the table."

That night nobody crossed into anybody else's quilt. After the three doors shut, the flat seemed larger than it had before they became lovers. Li Gan lay there and felt that this was the real cost of the relationship. Not the little endurance before coming. It was whether, when a person was miserable, you could keep from charging in and working her until she forgot her words. He sent both of them the same sentence: I'm here. I'll drive you again tomorrow. If you don't want to get in the car, say so.

Wu Ziyi answered: I'll get in. Only tomorrow I may still not be very able to laugh. Allow it.

Zhang Xue answered: Allow her. And allow yourself not to learn perfection overnight. Sleep.

He looked at the two lines and set the phone on his chest. The crack was still there. Nobody had used a body to smooth it flat. He felt, instead, that tomorrow's car could still be sat in.

Chapter 13 Hotel Curtains

Beiwan's headquarters briefing was on Thursday. The company booked the three of them three rooms in the same hotel, on the eighteenth floor, doors next to one another. Wu Ziyi's room had one large bed. Zhang Xue and Li Gan each had a twin-bed business rate. On the plane they did not sit together. Wu Ziyi revised the draft in the forward cabin. Zhang Xue aligned the process with the client on the wing side. Li Gan, in the back row, copied the backup slides three times. It was raining when they landed. The rain in this city was straighter than Linjiang's. It stung the face.

The briefing itself went smoothly. Zhang Xue spoke to the mood. Wu Ziyi spoke to the structure. When Wu Ziyi was asked about the data, Li Gan picked it up and did not seize the floor. The client's deputy general manager slapped the table and said this version finally sounded like something. After the meeting there was a dinner they could not refuse. When the wine was pushed over, all three of them only touched the rim of the glass. Wu Ziyi said she still had a version to revise for legal in the afternoon and could not drink. The sentence was true, and it was also a way out they had left for themselves.

They got back to the hotel at ten. The corridor carpet ate their footsteps. The three of them stopped at Wu Ziyi's door. Nobody swiped a card. Zhang Xue spoke first. "I don't know whether you're still miserable. If you are, we each go back to our rooms. The briefing is done. There's no duty to celebrate."

Wu Ziyi looked at the key card. "I'm still miserable. But I want to see you. Not to use seeing you as a cure for the misery. In this city I don't want to talk only to the shower. My bed is large. You can come in. Coming in can be only talking, or it can be sex. If it's sex, the red light is still there. Li Gan, you say first whether you want to come in. Don't feel you have to just because the two of us are already standing here."

"I want to come in," he said. "I'll shower first. I smell of the dinner. I don't want to touch you carrying that smell. If you change your minds while I'm showering, knock and tell me."

The curtains in the room were thick. Once they were drawn, the city was gone. There was only the low hum of the air conditioner and the minibar fridge. Wu Ziyi showered first. When she came out she was in the hotel's white robe, hair wet, face steamed red. Zhang Xue went in next. Li Gan went last. When he came out the two women were already sitting at the foot of the bed with an empty place between them. Nobody pretended they had only come for a meeting.

Zhang Xue patted the empty place. "Come here. Kiss Ziyi first. She walked through your data very steadily in the meeting today. I want to see you thank her with your mouth, not with a chat message."

Wu Ziyi glanced at her. "Don't use thanks as an excuse to get going. But I'll take this kiss. Li Gan, come here."

He knelt up onto the bed and asked first, "May I?" She said yes. The kiss started slow. Her lips tasted of toothpaste mint. The collar of the robe had fallen open a little. There was water not yet dry on her collarbone. His hand stopped on the tie. "May I undo it?"

"Undo it," she said. "Zhang Xue, if you want to watch, come to this side. If you want to touch me, ask. Today I want to be touched by the two of you. I thought it through before I opened the door."

Zhang Xue moved over. Her fingers touched the belt first. "I want to pull this open and then kiss your chest. May I?"

"Yes."

The white robe opened. Wu Ziyi had nothing on under it. The hotel light was more even than the light at home. It left her body nowhere to hide. Her breasts were soft and heavy from the warmth and the kiss. The nipples slowly hardened. Zhang Xue bent and took one in, and her hand held the other. Li Gan kissed her mouth. His hand went down along her belly and stopped between her legs. "Here too?"

"Yes." Wu Ziyi opened her legs. "Touch me. I've been wet since the second half of the dinner. Not because of the wine. Because I was watching the two of you sit diagonally across from me and still had to call you by your titles. I wanted to tear those titles off my body."

His fingers sank into the wet softness. She was already slick. Her clit trembled at a touch. Zhang Xue's tongue circled the nipple and now and then her eyes lifted. One of Wu Ziyi's hands was in Li Gan's hair. The other pressed lightly on the back of Zhang Xue's head. "Both of you are here. Both of you. Li Gan, don't use only your hand. I want your mouth. Zhang Xue, stay up here. I want both mouths at once. If that's too much, say so."

"I want to," Li Gan said. He kissed down her belly, lay at the foot of the bed, and set her legs over his shoulders. When the flat of his tongue met her clit her hips jumped, and Zhang Xue held her down. He licked slowly, licked the folds open, took that point in and sucked lightly. Wu Ziyi's voice changed pitch at once. Zhang Xue, with the nipple in her mouth, said thickly, "Cry out. This floor is thick. I want to hear it."

"Zhang Xue—" Wu Ziyi's thighs closed on Li Gan's head, then loosened. "Li Gan, use your tongue inside. Then go back. Yes. I'm close. Don't stop."

When she came she caught Zhang Xue's shoulder. The wetness below soaked Li Gan's mouth and chin. She shook a long time. Her head rubbed the hotel pillow crooked. When she came down she pulled both of them up and kissed them. She kissed Li Gan first and tasted herself. Then she kissed Zhang Xue, and this kiss was longer than any before it. Zhang Xue stiffened at first, then kissed back, her hand still on Wu Ziyi's waist. When the kiss ended their foreheads were together, and both of them looked a little stunned.

"This isn't a performance," Zhang Xue said first. Her voice was unsteady. "I kissed you because I wanted to. If it was only the inertia after an orgasm, tell me. I can treat it as if it didn't happen."

"It isn't inertia," Wu Ziyi said. "I've wanted to kiss you for a long time. Long before that kitchen light. I only didn't dare kiss you while I was still afraid of being compared with you and coming up short. I'm still afraid now. But I want to kiss you more."

Li Gan knelt to the side. His cock was hard against his belly. He did not put himself into anyone's mouth. He waited. Zhang Xue saw it, reached out, held him, and scraped the head with her thumb. "You should say what you want. Don't stand there as a prop."

"I want to be inside Ziyi," he said. "And I want to use my mouth on you. I'll take the order from the two of you. The condoms are in my case. I'll get them."

"Use your mouth on me first," Zhang Xue said. "I stood for an hour in the meeting today. My legs are still tight. I want to lie down and have you lick that tightness open. Ziyi, if you want to hold me, lie beside me. If you don't want to watch him only serve me, say so and we'll switch."

"I want to hold you," Wu Ziyi said. "Go get the condom. When you come back I want to see that you still want this, and that you haven't gone into work mode."

In the few steps it took him to get the condom, the two women had already lain down. Zhang Xue opened her legs. Wu Ziyi's hand rested on her lower belly and did not go down. Li Gan climbed up and kissed the inside of Zhang Xue's knee first. "I'm starting."

"Start," she said.

The way he licked her was different from the way he licked Wu Ziyi. Zhang Xue was more afraid of being tickled, and she needed the whole flat of the tongue to settle her before she would give him her clit. He remembered. He licked slowly from below upward, and only when her breath changed from dodging to meeting him did he gather on that point. Wu Ziyi turned her head and kissed Zhang Xue's temple, and her hand worked her breast. "All right? I'll rub you and watch him eat you at the same time."

"All right." Zhang Xue's hand caught the sheet. "Li Gan, two fingers. I want to be full. Ziyi, look at my eyes. I want to be licked by him while you're watching."

His fingers went in. His tongue did not stop. Zhang Xue twisted her hips quickly. She cursed his mouth, urgent and intimate, then her whole body went taut, and the orgasm came fast and hard. She pressed her calf onto his back, afraid he would leave. He did not leave until she pushed his forehead. "Too sensitive. Up. Kiss me."

He kissed her. Beside them Wu Ziyi looked at the shine on his lips and was wet again herself. She took the condom, tore it, and rolled it onto him. Her hand was steady. "Come into me now. Zhang Xue just came. Let her lie a while. If she wants to kiss me, she can kiss my mouth. Li Gan, come at me from the front. I want to see you. Don't turn the hotel light off. I want to see clearly whose body I'm under."

When he entered her, both of them sighed. She was hot and soft inside. She had just come, and she still bit him tight. He began to move, stroke by stroke, not rushing. Zhang Xue lay on her side, kissed Wu Ziyi's lips, and her hand met Li Gan's hand on Wu Ziyi's breast. For a while the three of them found the same beat. Wu Ziyi's eyes were open. She looked at Li Gan and she looked at Zhang Xue. She said, "I'm thirty-eight. Wanted like this by the two of you on a business-trip bed. I don't find myself ridiculous. That frightens me more. Because I want this kind of night many more times. Many enough to be a kind of later."

Li Gan's movement slowed, but he did not pull out. "We'll talk about later when we go back. Tonight I'll only say I want you. I want this you, the one who's shaking now. Not a concept of later. If you want to stop in front of that sentence, we stop."

"Don't stop." Her legs locked around his waist. "Faster. I want you to thrust me until I can't say this fear. Zhang Xue, if you're willing, touch my clit. When he goes deep I can't reach it myself."

Zhang Xue's hand slid down. The pad of her finger found the point and matched Li Gan's impacts. Very soon Wu Ziyi could not say the fear in whole sentences. There was only "there," "deeper," "don't stop." When she came she buried her face in the hollow of Zhang Xue's neck, and her cunt contracted violently. Li Gan was gripped until he nearly came, and still he clenched his teeth and drew back until only half of him was in, and waited for her to loosen.

"You haven't come," Wu Ziyi said, panting. "Go to Zhang Xue. Change the condom. I want to watch you come inside her. This isn't an allocation. This round is enough for me, and while she watched me come her hand was shaking. Zhang Xue, do you want it?"

Zhang Xue's eyes were bright, and her voice was clear. "I want it. Change the condom. I want to lie on my side and have him come in from behind, holding me. Ziyi, lie in front of me. I want to be looking at your face when I come. Not watching you direct. Watching you still here."

Li Gan's hands still shook while he changed the condom. He entered Zhang Xue from behind. The angle was deep and full. She caught Wu Ziyi's hand. Her back was against his chest. One of his hands rubbed her clit. The other held her waist. The thrusts gradually quickened. The hotel headboard made a very light sound. Zhang Xue turned her head and kissed him, broken kisses. "I'm going to come. Come with me. Ziyi, don't move your eyes away."

"I won't move them," Wu Ziyi said.

When Zhang Xue came she gripped Wu Ziyi's fingers until they hurt, and inside she locked hard on Li Gan. He came with her. His face was buried in the nape of her neck. The name he called was hers, and after he called it he reached for Wu Ziyi's wrist, as if he were afraid the name would push the other person far. Wu Ziyi held his hand. The three of them were stacked in the hotel's white sheets. Sweat had wrecked the robes and the quilt.

The phone rang then. Not a mobile. The hotel phone by the bed, the ring hard and old. All three of them went stiff. Wu Ziyi glanced at the number and said, low, "Front desk. Probably tomorrow's car." She cleared her throat and picked up, and her voice was actually able to return to the shape of work. "Hello, this is Wu Ziyi. Yes. Seven fifty in the morning, in the lobby. Three people. Thank you."

After she hung up, nobody moved at once. Then Zhang Xue laughed first, laughed aloud, laughed until Li Gan laughed too, and Wu Ziyi buried her face in the pillow and her shoulders shook. When the laugh ended she lifted her head. Her eyes were red. "I can take a call from the front desk while the two of you are still near my body. That means I'm frightening, and it also means we haven't lost the work. Seven fifty tomorrow morning. Who showers now? Together will be a squeeze. The shower in this room is actually large."

"Together," Zhang Xue said. "Let it be a squeeze. I don't want to wash the laugh we just had off by myself under the spray."

Chapter 14 Steam

The glass of the shower fogged quickly. The three of them were packed together. Hot water washed off the dinner and the sweat. The space was small enough that anybody's elbow hit somebody's waist. While Li Gan washed Wu Ziyi's hair, his fingers went through the roots, and she closed her eyes and said suddenly, "If you do this I'll mistake care for love. Be careful."

"If you mistake it, ask me," he said. "Right now I am taking care of you. And I want to love you. I want to love both of you. Saying that in a shower may be too slippery. But I don't want my courage, by morning, to be nothing but water stains."

Zhang Xue leaned on the tile. Water ran down from her collarbone. She did not laugh at him. "You said you want to love. You didn't say you already know how. I can hear that. If you said you'd already learned to love equally, I'd turn the water off. Ziyi, what about you? You said just now you were afraid of later. Do you want a later? Or were you only fucked into saying it?"

Wu Ziyi opened her eyes. Drops hung on her lashes. "I want it. The later I want isn't the kind with a marriage registration, at least not now. It's that I can still put my hand on his leg at a red light, and you won't feel the seat has been stolen because of it. It's that we can fight, and after the fight there's still a car to sit in. It's that my being twelve years older than he is won't, some day, be treated by him as a mistake he has to overcome. Li Gan, look at me. The only thing you can promise is what you think now. Don't promise an age you can't control."

"What I think now," he said, looking at her and at Zhang Xue, "is that the age is there. I won't pretend I don't see it. I won't use it someday to explain why I left. If I leave, it's because I no longer want to stay, or because the two of you no longer want me. When that time comes I'll speak like a person. I won't say something empty like we aren't suited. As for equal, I'm still learning. Today, while I was inside you, I said her name. Afterward I grabbed your hand because I was afraid. Did you feel it?"

"I felt it," Wu Ziyi said.

"So did I," Zhang Xue said. She reached and shut the water off. "I don't want to renegotiate every clause while we're soaked. I'll only add one sentence. I don't want to be only the person who understands either. Tonight you opened the door first, Ziyi. I'm grateful. But later, sometimes, I want to open it first too. Don't put yourself in the place of the steadier older one every time. When you're steady I want very much to lean. When you aren't steady, I want even more to stay."

Wu Ziyi's mouth opened and did not find a rebuttal. She nodded. A drop fell from her chin.

They went back to the bed wrapped in towels. The sheet had been pulled halfway off, showing the dry side. Nobody rushed to start again. Li Gan leaned against the headboard. On the left was Wu Ziyi's wet hair. On the right was Zhang Xue's knee. A long time passed. Zhang Xue's hand went down from his chest and stopped at the edge of the towel. "I want it once more. The very slow kind. If you're tired, say red light. I can go back next door by myself and sleep holding this wanting."

Wu Ziyi looked at the clock. Eleven forty. "I still can. But it really has to be slow. My waist is reminding me that tomorrow I still have to stand in front of the client. Li Gan, you?"

"I want to," he said. "This time I'll lie here. Whichever of you wants to be on top, come. If you don't want to be entered, we can only lean together. I don't have an assignment that says I have to come."

Zhang Xue undid the towel and swung herself over him, and she did not sit down at once. She looked at Wu Ziyi first. "You touch me. Lie beside us and reach over. I want your fingers and mine together, opening me, and then I want him. That way this round isn't something I snatched for myself."

Wu Ziyi turned onto her side. Her palm covered Zhang Xue between the legs. Their fingers stacked and rubbed slowly over the place that had been washed clean and had gone wet again. Li Gan watched. His breath grew heavy. His hands stayed on Zhang Xue's thighs and did not grab upward. Zhang Xue bent and kissed him. Water from her hair dropped onto his face. "Look at our hands. This is what I want you to see. I'm thirty-six. She's thirty-eight. We know how to touch ourselves. You aren't a young man who came to teach us. You're the person we want."

"I know." His voice was rough. "I'm looking. Tell me when you want to sit down. The condom is still by the pillow."

She opened one herself and put it on him. Then she held him and sat down little by little. The entering was slower than any time before. She stopped at each inch. Wu Ziyi's fingers stayed on her clit, very light. None of the three spoke. The air conditioner's wind moved over wet skin. When Zhang Xue sat all the way down her eyes were closed and her mouth was a little open, as if she were confirming this was not a dream after a dinner.

She began to rock. Slow, deep, almost without the sound of impact. Wu Ziyi kissed her shoulder. Her fingers followed the rhythm. Li Gan's hands moved from her thighs to her waist and only steadied her, letting her use him herself. He looked at her face, then at the side of Wu Ziyi's face against her back. This time he did not feel he had to perform emergency rescue between two names. He said Zhang Xue. He said Ziyi. Both names were answered.

When Zhang Xue came she was quiet. She only sat at the deepest place and shook, her forehead against his, her breath broken into small pieces. Wu Ziyi felt the tops of her thighs trembling. Her own fingers were squeezed until they ached, and she stayed with her lightly until Zhang Xue said that was enough. Li Gan was not allowed to sprint on. Zhang Xue lifted off, took the condom off, tied a knot, and dropped it in the bin beside the bed. Then she bent and took his still-hard cock into her mouth, only for a little while, and drew off and looked at Wu Ziyi.

"Do you want to take him? Together, or you. I want you to decide whose mouth he comes in. I've already gotten a lot today."

Wu Ziyi's ears went red, and she still moved over. She kissed the corner of Zhang Xue's mouth first, then bent her head. Her mouth was slower than on the first night. Her hand held the base. Her tongue only tended the head. Zhang Xue's hand covered hers. The two of them worked him together. Li Gan's fingers went into Wu Ziyi's hair and did not push. "I'm close. Ziyi, may I come in your mouth? Zhang Xue, don't take your hand away."

"Yes," Wu Ziyi said around him. The word was unclear.

When he came his hips left the bed and his come surged into her mouth. She took it, swallowed, and when she lifted her head her eyes were wet. Zhang Xue wiped a little from the corner of her lip with her thumb and then kissed her. The kiss had his taste. Nobody minded it. Li Gan pulled both of them into his arms. The three heartbeats struck together and only slowly separated.

After the light went off, Wu Ziyi said in the dark, "Tomorrow morning we're still colleagues. If we meet a client in the elevator, you can call me Teacher Wu. Call me that. Only, once we're out of the elevator, don't take the title to bed."

Zhang Xue made a sound. Sleep was already in it. "Done. Li Gan, if you snore I'll go back to my own room. The card is under my pillow."

"I'll try not to," he said.

He did not actually know whether he snored. That night he woke once, at ten past two. A line of the city's light came through the gap in the hotel curtains. Wu Ziyi's hand lay on his chest. Zhang Xue's forehead was against his shoulder. Both of them were deeply asleep. He looked at that thin light. He did not take a photo, and he did not send any message. He only pulled the quilt up a little and covered Wu Ziyi's bare shoulder. The movement was small. Too small to be a promise, and like the kind of tomorrow he was able to do.

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.

Chapter 16 The Night Drive

The rainy season did not end because they had spoken. On Wednesday of the next week Linjiang rained the whole day. Beiwan's contract had entered legal's slow tempo, and the project team had a little room to breathe. Zhou Heng told everyone to leave early. The sentence was rare in sounding like something a person would say.

At the revolving door Zhang Xue held an umbrella. Wu Ziyi stood outside the umbrella. Li Gan's car was in the old place. The order in which the three of them got in did not turn into a ceremony again. Zhang Xue got in the back. Wu Ziyi got in the passenger seat. The doors shut, and the rain went far. It was the same as the first night, and it was not. The same things were the wipers, the red lights, the citrus, and the sound of Zhang Xue typing. What was different was that inside the silence there had already been one another's bodies, and the right to tell one another no.

At the first red light Wu Ziyi looked at him. "When you reported today, the end of the sentence didn't fall."

He smiled. "You still listen for that."

"I listened when I sat off to the side and behind," she said. "Sitting beside you now, I hear it more clearly. This isn't a meeting. Zhang Xue, if our talking annoys you, say so."

"It doesn't annoy me," Zhang Xue said. The keyboard was still going. "Go on. I'm answering a letter that doesn't matter. When I've answered it I have a sentence too."

Green. The car went forward. The rain was lighter than the first night, light enough to read the plate of the car ahead. Li Gan's hands were steady. Wu Ziyi did not put her whole hand on his leg. She only touched the back of his hand with a knuckle, and took it back when she had touched it. This taking-back was no longer a brake after a fright. It was that she knew she could touch him again.

Zhang Xue finished the letter and shut the laptop. "My sentence is this. Friday night I want to open the door first. Not the hotel kind. I want Li Gan to come to my room, and Ziyi, you come too if you want to. My bed is small. It may be a squeeze. If anyone thinks it's a squeeze, say so and we'll move to the master. I don't want it to be that I'm only allowed on the largest bed."

Wu Ziyi turned and looked at her. "Yes. I'll come. If it's a squeeze I'll say so. I won't lie awake on a small bed until dawn in order to look generous. Li Gan, you?"

"I'll come," he said. "If halfway through you want to sleep, send me back to my own room. I can hear being sent away now. I used to be afraid of it. Now being sent away only means that night has reached its end."

Zhang Xue laughed once in the back seat. "Listen to him. The man talks like an adult now. Ziyi, you have to take part of the responsibility. And part of the responsibility for pulling me in. I won't thank you. I'll only admit it."

"Admitting is enough," Wu Ziyi said. There was a laugh in her voice, and under the laugh a little unsteadiness, the way any feeling that is still alive is unsteady. "Li Gan, in the garage you don't have to sit an extra minute to prove anything. If you want to sit longer, say so. We sit if you say it. If you don't, we go upstairs. I'll boil the noodles. This time they are not allowed to go soft."

"That night you were the one who said Zhang Xue boiled them to mush," he reminded her.

"I heard that," Zhang Xue said. "I've written the debt down. Tonight the noodles are hers to boil. If they go soft I have the right to laugh at her. That's a housework clause. Easier to enforce than the ones in bed."

The car went into the garage. Concrete cut the rain off. Nobody hurried to pull a door. Li Gan shut the engine off. His hands were still on the wheel. He looked at the concrete pillar ahead and said suddenly, "The first night, you asked me what it was because of. I couldn't answer then. I can answer now. Because I want you. Later I could answer the other half too. Because I want Zhang Xue. Both sentences are here. Neither of them is because I can't refuse. If someday you find I've started being unable to refuse, push me. At work you can't push me. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that I'm willing to be shaken awake by the two of you in the rest of life."

Wu Ziyi looked at him. Her thirty-eight-year-old eyes were clear under the garage light. "I heard you. I won't ask again whether it's because you're embarrassed. I'll change the question. Do you want to sit an extra minute tonight?"

"I do," he said. "Just one minute. Then we go up and eat noodles."

Zhang Xue leaned back in the rear seat and did not rush them. "Then sit. I'm here. I won't get out and be the one who leaves first, and I won't read this minute as me being shut out. When the minute's up, the three of us walk together. Whoever drags it out does the dishes."

In that minute nobody kissed. Wu Ziyi's hand covered his hand. Zhang Xue's hand came from behind and rested on his shoulder. The three hands were not the same temperature. Rain drifted in from the garage entrance and wet a few meters of ground outside. Li Gan looked at the rain and felt that the silence which had been called out that first night finally had a shape. It was not a secret. It was this small piece of time they had chosen to sit through together.

The minute was up. Zhang Xue spoke first. "Let's go. Sit any longer and the ending goes soft. I'm hungry."

In the elevator mirror all three of them were a little travel-worn. There was rain in Wu Ziyi's hair. Zhang Xue's umbrella dripped. Li Gan's ears, this time, did not go red for anyone to see. He only pressed the floor. When the doors shut, his eyes met theirs in the mirror. Nobody looked away.

That night the noodles were not boiled soft. Zhang Xue still laughed at Wu Ziyi once, laughed at the hesitant hand that put the salt in. Wu Ziyi picked up that too-bland mouthful and gave it to Li Gan and called it compensation. Li Gan ate it. He was the one who washed. When the water started, the two women were talking low in the living room about how exactly Friday's bed would be squeezed. The sound of the talk was ordinary. Inside the ordinary was a future he had once not dared to think of: not a future that never hurt, but one in which, after the hurt, there was still the next bowl of noodles, and the next car, and a person willing, when the red light came on, to take her hand back, and who knew that after the green light she could ask again.

He shut the tap off and stood in the kitchen listening to them laugh. The rain was still falling. The lights in this flat were warm. He no longer covered a sentence he wanted to say with the sound of water. He walked to the living-room doorway and looked at them.

"Friday I'll buy a thin mattress," he said. "So nobody falls off. That's all the preparation I can do ahead of time. The rest we ask when the day comes."

Wu Ziyi looked at him and nodded. Zhang Xue lifted her chin at him, like permission to sit down between them. He sat. The glasses on the coffee table touched other glasses. Rain outside the window washed the city blurred. Nobody needed a silence anymore to pretend nothing had started.

The night was still long. The car keys lay in the dish in the entry, touching the two door keys, and made one small sound. After the sound, the flat went quiet again. In the quiet were three people's breaths. This time, each of them could hear the others.