04 / 15
Chapter 4 Next Door
Chapter 4 Next Door
For the next three days they did not go to bed again. It was not coldness. Both of them had work, and Fang Qitong needed to confirm that she was not being pushed along by the rain. In the daytime she went to the studio on Anfu Road to look at materials. At night, when she came back to the apartment on the river, she would see the marks Zhou Yu had left in the corridor. The boxes were already sealed. The edges of the packing tape were cut perfectly straight, and the boxes stood in a row against the wall. He had not come inside. She had not given him her key. On the first night he sent a photograph of a track light, with only one line of text: Changed. Color temperature dropped one step, as you said. She replied: Looks good. Ten minutes later she replied again: There's porridge in the warmer. If you haven't eaten, you can knock on my door. He replied: I've eaten. Sleep early. She stared at those words and actually felt a little lost, then cursed herself for being unreasonable. She was the one who had said not to force it.
On the fourth night she worked until nine. She walked into the building entrance with her heels in her hand and saw Zhou Yu sitting on the public bench on the first floor. A cloth bag sat by his leg, bulging, as if there were a lampshade inside. When he saw her he stood up, a little ill at ease.
"I'm not blocking you," he said first. "I'm waiting for a same-city delivery. The courier wrote the address as the lobby. It hasn't arrived. I can go up and wait."
"Come up and wait," she said. "My feet hurt."
In the elevator the two of them stood side by side and did not speak. In the mirror her lipstick had already faded. There was dust on his shoulder. When they reached her floor she did not stop. There was no such thing as pressing for one floor higher. She looked at him and suddenly said, "Go to your place. I still haven't had a proper look at the lamp you finished adjusting."
Zhou Yu's apartment was small, one bedroom and one living room, turned with boards and tracks into half a studio. Light diagrams were pinned to the wall. There were wood samples on the table. The air held a faint smell of pine and solder. The sofa was old, but clean. He turned on the lights. Warm light fell from several different angles. None of it glared. Fang Qitong stood in the middle of the room, and the professional part of her woke first.
"You raised the angle of this wall-wash," she said.
"Otherwise the person on the sofa gets a shadow on the top of the head." He stood at her side, a little behind. "Do you want water, or wine? I only have beer."
"Water. I'm hungry. Do you have anything to eat? If not, I'll order delivery."
In his refrigerator there were noodles, eggs, a bunch of baby bok choy, and half a bottle of chili sauce that made her lift an eyebrow. While he cooked the noodles she sat on a high stool and watched him. This space did not have the designed perfection of her apartment. A length of wire showed here and there. But a person's life filled it. He cut scallion very fast. When the hot oil went into the pan he took half a step back, afraid the oil would spit onto her.
"Have you lived with someone before?" she asked.
"The last year of university, in Shenzhen. She was an exhibition assistant, two years older than me. Later she went to Berlin. I stayed. Nobody wronged anybody. The roads were different. We've been apart three years." He lifted the noodles into a bowl. "You asking this—are you building a file on me?"
"Yes. I'm in the habit of knowing where a material comes from."
"Then what's your source?" He pushed the bowl in front of her and ate standing up. "Duan Fei. How did the two of you start?"
Fang Qitong picked up a mouthful of noodles and blew on it. "A friend introduced us. I had just taken an interior project for a hotel. He worked at a fund next to that hotel. He was tall. He spoke cleanly. At gatherings he looked only at me. I thought being seen was love. Later I found out what he saw was a wife he could take out, a wife who would not embarrass him. I'm not saying he was vicious. He only never asked how I wanted to be held at night. When we did it, it was clean too, like completing an exercise both sides had agreed to. The agreement was there. The heat was not."
Zhou Yu listened. His chopsticks stopped. "Thank you for telling me. I won't live by comparing myself to him. But when I hear 'the heat was not,' I want to hold you a little tighter."
"Not yet. The noodles will spill." She said it, but the corner of her mouth bent.
By the time they finished it was nearly ten. She ought to have gone home. Instead she walked into his very small bedroom and looked at his bed. One meter five. A gray sheet. Only one pillow. The other he had taken to pad his lower back when he worked. Outside the window there was no river, only the kitchen light of the building opposite. She turned. He was leaning in the doorway. He had not come in.
"I can stay," she said. "Not because of the rain. The rain stopped a long time ago. I want to do it with you on your bed. If you have to get up early tomorrow, tell me the time. I won't make trouble for you."
"I get up at seven," he said. "You can make trouble. I've been waiting for you to come and make trouble."
She walked over and began to undo the buttons of his shirt. She did the movement slowly, like taking apart a model whose internal structure she wanted to look at carefully. He bent his head and kissed her. The kiss was more practiced than the first night, and deeper than the first night. His hand slid in from the side of her work skirt. His palm lay against the top of her stockings. His fingertips met the clasp of a garter. He stopped. His breathing grew heavy.
"You wore this today."
"I was seeing a client." She bit his chin. "Not for you. Now it is for you. Undo it. Don't tear it."
He went down on one knee to undo those small clasps, as serious as if he were repairing a lamp. The stockings were rolled to her knees. Her underwear was drawn down. His mouth followed and met her. This small room did not have the cold of the floor-to-ceiling window. There was only his mattress, meeting the bend of her knees when she stepped back. She fell onto his bed. He knelt up after her and set her legs on his shoulders. His tongue knew her rhythm better than on the first night. Slow first, then fast, and when she was close he slowed again, until she grabbed the pillow.
"Don't tease me," she said.
"I want you to come once first on my bed," he said, his voice muffled between her legs. "Then I'll come in. I want to hear you cry out in front of this wall. This wall isn't soundproof. If you're afraid, bite my hand."
"I'm not afraid," she said, and then he took her clit into his mouth and her waist jerked up. When the orgasm came she did cry out, short and clear, his name. He kissed the wetness off her thigh, got up, and went to the drawer by the bed. There was a new box there. The seal was still on it. Obviously bought in these three days. Watching him open it, that feeling of being treated seriously rose in her again.
When he entered she was lying on her side, one leg lifted in his hold. The angle was deep and wearing. Every stroke scraped her front wall. His chest was against her back. His hand kneaded her breast from the front. His mouth spoke at her ear. He said she was hot. He said she was tight. He said that for these three nights he had thought of her leaning on the glass. Thinking of it made him hard. Thinking of it, he still did not dare knock on her door. Listening, her eyes grew hot. She reached back, caught his ass, and made him use more force.
"Then use force now," she said. "I came here for you to use force. I am not porcelain."
He drove harder. The bed knocked the wall lightly. She was pushed forward, and he hauled her back. The second orgasm lasted longer than the first. She bit her own finger. Her walls spasmed and wrung him. He swore low. The thrusts lost their pattern. At the end he buried himself deep and came, his whole body covering hers, sweat dripping onto her shoulder blade.
Afterward they were crowded onto the one-meter-five bed and had to lie face to face, the tips of their noses almost touching. She felt this crowding was more honest than her big bed.
"My hair will fall on your pillow," she said.
"Let it fall." He gave her half of the only pillow. "Tomorrow when I smell it, I'll know it wasn't a dream."
"How old were you when you started making lamps?"
"Nineteen. First I learned in someone else's factory. Later I took small jobs myself. I moved here because I wanted to be closer to some good interior projects. I didn't expect to end up this close to your door." His finger drew circles on her waist. "Qitong, I know I'm younger than you. Younger does not mean toy. If one day you feel I'm a weight, say so. I'll walk back next door. I won't make you look bad in the corridor."
She kissed the tip of his nose. "Don't talk about leaving now. My feet are still on your legs. This position is not suited to talking about separation."
They tangled a while longer. They did not do the whole thing again. Only his fingers moved slowly in and out of the place that was still wet and soft, his thumb on her clit, bringing her to an orgasm that was very light and very long. She soaked his hand. She cursed him, embarrassed. He showed her the hand, then licked it clean in front of her eyes. The gesture almost made her ask for him again. In the end she only buried her face in the hollow of his neck and said, muffled, If you keep on like this I won't be willing to go home.
"Then don't go back," he said.
"There's no toothbrush."
"I have a new one. I bought it when I bought the condoms. You can curse me now for taking liberties."
She lifted her head and looked at him for a long time, then laughed out loud. When the laugh ended she said, "Zhou Yu, the dangerous thing about you is that you buy a toothbrush."
That night she slept in his small bed. In the middle of the night his arm woke her once by its weight. She did not push it off. The kitchen light in the building opposite went out. In the dark she listened to his breathing and suddenly thought that a person's home could be very small, small enough to hold only a bed, a bowl of noodles, and a promise not to put her to shame. She tucked her feet between his calves, satisfied as an ordinary person who steals the quilt. Before sleep she said, blurred, "Tomorrow I have to go home for a meeting. Put my earrings away. I left them on your sink."
"I'll put them away." He answered from the edge of a dream. "I want to put you away too. But you are not an earring. You are you. I only open the door."
She did not speak again. She set that sentence beside her heartbeat and carried it into the sleep of the latter half of the night.
