After Court, My Lawyer Wife Kept Me

Chapter 1 After Court

The lights in the hearing room were whiter than the lights in the corridor. Lin Xi signed the last page of the record and capped her pen. The click was soft, as if she were capping herself into a shape she could carry away.

Judge Liang Qiushi did not add a gloss on who had won and who had lost. The oral ruling was enough. The seal of Gu's Incense, the key to the formula room, and the three people Beicheng Investment had sent to take the files were not to touch any of it for seventy-two hours. The operating account would not be frozen. Zhao Heng, counsel for the other side, moved his lips and swallowed the words "the preservation order goes too far." His client sat diagonally behind him in a suit so new it shone. Only when the man heard that the account could still turn over did his shoulders drop by half a degree.

Lin Xi stood. Under the robe was her own dark gray skirt suit. She was thirty-two. The partner's nameplate was still new, new enough that she sometimes studied that small piece of metal in the elevator mirror, as if it might fall off on its own. Today the plate was not pinned to the robe. She returned the robe to the rack beside the clerk. The motion was steady. Only her knuckles were white from gripping the pen too long.

In the last row of the gallery, Xiaoyao was still sitting. Black shirt, no tie, sleeves rolled to the forearm. He was thirty. He had come to deliver the USB drive she had left in the car. The drive had arrived. It had not been used. He had not left.

People in the corridor were already making low phone calls. Zhao Heng passed her and stopped for half a step.

"Ms. Lin, until the written ruling comes down, my side will comply with the oral terms. We'll put a new lock on the formula room tonight. If you're notarizing overnight, don't bar my people from the door."

"The notary's slot is nine tomorrow morning," Lin Xi said. "No one goes in tonight. That is the ruling, not a negotiation."

Zhao Heng glanced at her, then at the man who had not come up behind her, nodded, and walked on. His shoes struck the floor in even time, as if he still wanted to leave his last sentence inside the rhythm.

Only then did Xiaoyao stand. He was half a head taller than she was. He smelled of paper and ink, a different world from the disinfectant and carpet dust of this floor. He set the unused drive into her palm. The plastic shell still held the warmth of his pocket.

"Did you win?"

"I won the half that was mine to win," she said. "The account isn't frozen. They'll use that half for a press release and say our application was excessive and interferes with operations."

"You don't look like someone who only won half."

Lin Xi looked at him. They had been married three years, and sentences like that had grown rare. He used to wait outside the courthouse. If she won, he kissed her temple. If she lost, he took her bag and did not ask about the process. Later, winning and losing became color blocks on the refrigerator: blue for hearings, gray for travel, red for the hours she herself marked "must come home." Red was rare. Rare enough that the corners of the magnet had curled.

"Why are you still here?"

"You told me to bring the drive. I brought it, looked at the time, and you weren't out yet. Nobody in the gallery told me to leave."

"You could have gone back to Hunan Road first."

"I know."

The elevator opened and closed. Zhou Ning came running with two archive boxes. Twenty-seven, an associate, bangs blown apart by the draft, the chain of her glasses jumping against her collarbone.

"Ms. Lin, Judge Liang had the clerk add an oral note. They've received the original of the guarantee letter. The written ruling should be posted tonight at the earliest. Mr. Gu called the firm and asked whether to issue a notice now. PR has a draft ready. The headline is 'Time-Honored House Keeps Its Formula.'"

"Don't issue it," Lin Xi said. "Tell Gu Chengyan not to speak, and don't let PR write 'great victory.' Send him the points of the ruling in six lines. The last line: the formula room stays as it is. Until the notary's seal goes on the door, Gu Wan keeps the key herself. It is not to be handed to any investor, including people who claim they are here to help."

Zhou Ning wrote fast, the nib scratching paper. She looked up, saw Xiaoyao, startled, then folded her smile into a professional curve.

"Mr. Jiang is here too. Is tonight's car still in the garage? I can call one for Ms. Lin—"

"Don't call one," Lin Xi said.

Zhou Ning's pen stopped.

Lin Xi heard, herself, how fast that had come out. She took one of the box handles from Zhou Ning. Her knuckles touched the younger woman's and let go.

"Go back to the firm first. The materials go into my office, not the shared drive. If Beicheng calls to discuss a settlement framework, you take notes and you don't answer. If Zhao Heng calls you himself, have him call me."

"All right." Zhou Ning glanced at Xiaoyao. The look was not dirty with gossip. It was only the caution young people have about other people's marriages, as if afraid of stepping on a line that had not been marked. "I'll go, then. Congratulations, Ms. Lin. Good night, Mr. Jiang."

"Good night," Xiaoyao said.

The elevator opened again. The boxes were heavy. Xiaoyao reached. Lin Xi did not let him. She carried a box in herself, and he followed. In the mirror the two of them were separated by a brown archive box, as if by an animal that would not make a sound. The floor numbers dropped. She looked at her own face. The courtroom makeup was still there. The lipstick had worn thin. Her eyes were bright in a way that was not normal. When she won, she was usually colder. Cold was her armor. Today the armor had a seam, and her husband was standing in it.

Downstairs the wind was late September. The heat of Lujiazui had not fully left. Light off the river was cut by the towers into strips. Her car was in the courthouse garage. She did not drive it. She stood at the curb, watched a taxi pass, and said, suddenly:

"Don't go back to Hunan Road first tonight. Come to the firm."

Xiaoyao turned his face. The streetlight laid his jaw clean. The stubble was one day's length, not sharp, only deepening the line.

"The firm? It's almost eight."

"I'm keeping you there. Some things, said at home, turn into tomorrow's schedule. In the office, at least the light is one I turned on, and the door is one I locked."

He was silent for a few seconds. Traffic filled the gap. A bus dragged its brakes out long. Then he asked:

"Do you want to talk, or do you want me to keep you company while you work late?"

"I don't know," Lin Xi said. It was the first unprepared sentence of her day. Once it was out, she even wanted to withdraw it, the way she would withdraw a promise she had not been authorized to make. "I only know that if you get in a car now and go back to that apartment, we'll each brush our own teeth. I'll read the draft ruling one more time. You'll turn off the light with your back to me. Tomorrow will feel as if nothing was won, and as if we were never married."

Xiaoyao looked at the hand gripping the box. In court that hand could take apart the other side's timetable and match it, line by line, to the clock. Now the knuckles were tight. The metal clasp had printed a small red mark into her palm.

"Then I'll stay," he said. "Lin Xi, you have to say stay out loud. Don't carry me off with work. You're very good at carrying people off with work. Including me."

Her throat moved. In three years she had given many orders. Rarely had anyone required her to turn an order into a request. Wind came off the river and lifted a strand of hair against her mouth. She did not brush it away.

"Stay," she said. "Xiaoyao, I want you to stay. Tonight we go to my office first. Not overtime. I want you there."

Only then did he take the box. The moment the weight left her, her shoulders went soft, soft enough that she despised herself. She pressed the contempt down. Contempt was also a kind of schedule, slotted between feeling and dinner. She had been slotting it for too many years.

In the taxi he sat on her right, the box at his feet. The driver looked at them twice in the mirror, probably guessing whether they were a couple who had just finished a fight. Lin Xi gave the address of Hengshi Law Firm on West Nanjing Road. Her voice had already returned to the steadiness she used with clients. Xiaoyao heard it. The corner of his mouth moved. He did not expose her.

The car crossed the river. Lights outside the window fell backward. Her knee touched his knee, and neither of them moved it. The point of heat through stocking and wool was small enough to be ridiculous, and yet it disordered her language more than the whole hearing had. She looked ahead and said:

"In court today, Zhao Heng said we had a mom-and-pop mentality, that we turned control of a family company into emotional blackmail. I answered him. After I answered, I thought of you for two seconds. That wasn't professional."

"Which sentence about me."

"Whether, if you were sitting on the other side, you would also think I turn everything into a hearing."

Xiaoyao turned his head. The taxi's small light made his eyes a very deep brown.

"I would," he said. "That's why I wasn't sitting on the other side today. I was in the last row, watching you win. Lin Xi, you look very good when you win. I just haven't been allowed to see it in a long time."

She did not answer. Her hand, though, met his fingertips in the middle of the seat, and then held. She held tight, as if afraid an oral ruling could be amended in the night.

Chapter 2 Glass

Hengshi occupied the forty-second floor of a glass building on West Nanjing Road. Old Ding, the night guard, knew Lin Xi, and he knew the man who did not appear often. In the register, at the column for purpose, she paused, then wrote: family.

Old Ding turned the pen around for Xiaoyao to sign. "Mr. Jiang, it's been a long time. Ms. Lin has practically been living upstairs this month."

"I know," Xiaoyao said.

The elevator went straight up. When the doors opened, the only lights on the floor were the sensors coming on one by one under their feet. The workstations were empty. The monitors were black. The air smelled of coffee-machine dregs and paper. Lin Xi's office was at the corner, glass on two sides, one toward the street, one toward the firm. She went in first, set the box on the side cabinet, and did not turn on the main light. She turned on only the lamp on the desk, the shade a little yellow. The city was under their feet. Car lights were a statement without a sentence.

Xiaoyao stood inside the door. She turned, pulled the door shut, and the latch made a small sound.

"Zhou Ning will bring the materials up," she said. "After she drops them she'll leave. There's no one else on this floor."

"You kept me here to tell me the floor is empty?"

"I kept you here because if I go on like this, we will become two calendars that sync with each other." Lin Xi leaned on the door. The cold of the metal came through her shirt into her back. "You leave at seven to buy paper, if there's a proof to deliver that day. I leave at seven-forty. Your dinner is on the second shelf of the refrigerator. Mine is the club, or nothing. The longest we spoke last week was when you asked who was taking out the trash today. I said you. You said all right. Then we each lived until eleven."

Xiaoyao listened. He did not interrupt. Among the few habits of his she was still grateful for, this was one. Other people interrupted her to seize the floor. He did not interrupt because he was waiting for the sentence she actually meant.

She could not say it. The real sentence stuck behind her teeth, like a claim with no evidence under it.

He walked two steps toward her and stopped an arm's length away. He did not touch her.

"Then what do you want now. Say it specifically. In court you hate it most when people say 'taking everything into account.' At home that's all you give me."

Lin Xi's breath missed a beat. The yellow lamp made her cheekbones hard and her mouth soft. She looked at his throat, at the button he had not done up, and suddenly hated herself for still hunting for words.

"I want you to touch me," she said. "Here. The door is already locked. I don't want to go back to the apartment and queue again. Xiaoyao, I haven't properly asked for you in three months. Last time the light was off too. You came in, I made a sound, and when it was over you went to shower. I didn't even look at your face."

The air sank. Far below, a horn sounded once and was filtered out by the glass.

Xiaoyao lifted his hand. The first place he touched was not her mouth. It was the small patch behind her ear. His fingers were dry, warm, with the thin callus a person who works paper carries on the pads. Lin Xi closed her eyes. She hated how fast she closed them, like a concession. But when that callus scraped her skin, her knees actually went weak.

"Look at me," he said.

She opened them. His face was very near. Three years ago he had asked the same thing, before the first time they went all the way, before she was a partner and before he was the person who put dinner on the second shelf. Then she had laughed at him for putting on airs. Now she looked at him and suddenly wanted to cry, and felt that crying would be an even worse statement.

She kissed him. The kiss was fierce. Their teeth knocked once. The lipstick smeared completely. He took the kiss, his palm cupping the back of her head so she could not retreat and turn the kiss into another kind of work. When his tongue pressed in, she made a very small sound that was strange even to her. Xiaoyao's other hand was on her waist. The suit skirt was between them, but the heat felt as if it were against skin.

"The light," she said, muffled. "The building across—"

"Leave it," he said against her lower lip. "If you go pull the curtains tight now, you'll be managing risk again. This floor is high. The nearest lit window across is at least a street away. What you're afraid of isn't being seen. What you're afraid of is not managing."

Lin Xi swore, a short dirty word. She rarely swore. After she swore, she herself drew the inner blinds to half height. The outer glass stayed open. The city was still there. Her office was still there. When she turned, he was already sitting on the edge of the narrow sofa, knees apart, watching her, as if waiting for a sentence he could rebut.

She walked over and straddled his lap. The skirt bunched up. The edge of the stockings cut into her thighs. She had meant this position to take the high ground. The moment she sat, she felt that he was already hard, pressing up against her through his trousers. Hot, hard, the shape clear. Her breath broke.

"If you feel it, say so," Xiaoyao said, low. "Don't hand in silence and call it done."

"You're hard," she said. Her ears burned. "Pressing into me. I'm already wet inside. I've been reacting since our knees touched in the taxi. It's absurd. I was just signing papers in a hearing room."

"It isn't absurd." He put her hand on his belt buckle. "Undo it. If you want it, take it yourself. Look at me while you take it."

The metal opened. The zipper was too loud in the quiet office. Her fingers went in and closed around his cock. Hot, heavy, the pulse against her palm. The head was already wet in a small patch that got onto her thumb. Lin Xi looked down once, then forced her eyes back up. His eyes were dark. His mouth was calm, as if he had temporarily lent her the initiative on a note written very clearly: you may move, you may not run.

She stroked him twice. His stomach tightened. At last his breath was unsteady too. That unsteadiness excited her, and it softened her. She pushed the skirt higher and ground against him through her underwear. The cloth soaked through quickly, sticking to her labia, and every pass rubbed the clit that had already swollen. She set her teeth and still let sound out.

"Take the underwear off," she said, and only then realized she was giving orders again.

Xiaoyao was not angry. He only stopped her at the waist.

"Ask me."

Lin Xi stared at him. A lawyer's instinct lined troops up on her tongue: was this play or a charge, what happened if she answered wrong, should the definition be written clear. She withdrew every one of those troops. Her hand shook while she did it.

"Xiaoyao, help me take my underwear off. I want your cock against me with nothing between us. I want to sit down on you. May I."

"You may," he said.

He did not move at once. He kissed her first, slowly, so slowly that she herself pushed her hips forward and performed the request a second time. Then his hand went around behind her, found that small piece of cloth, and dealt with the stocking in the way. He did not take the stockings all the way off. He pulled the crotch aside, decided that was not enough, and simply had her lift one foot so he could peel that stocking and the underwear down to the bend of her knee. The shoe still hung on her foot. The heel knocked the wooden leg of the sofa, one dull sound.

When bare skin met his cock, both of them stopped. Wet, hot, the mouth of her cunt opening and closing against the head. Lin Xi held his shoulders. Her knees sank into the cushion. She wanted to sit all the way down at once and end this slowness that would not let her make a sound. Xiaoyao held her ass and would not allow it.

"An inch at a time," he said. "You were fast enough in court today. Here I want you to feel that it's me."

She cursed him. Her voice came out soft. The head pushed her open, stretched her, went in by the length of the head. Her walls clenched at once. Her forehead rested against his. Her breath broke against his mouth.

"It's too big. Go slow. No. Like this is just right. Xiaoyao, look at me. I'm taking you in. I'm sitting down on you myself."

"I see you." His thumb settled on her clit, not hard, only held there, tapping in time with her sitting down. "Lin Xi, your face is red. Court never had this color."

Halfway down, her legs failed. She stopped there, filled and not filled, stretched until her eyes went hot. Xiaoyao did not rush her. He kissed her eyelids. He kissed the bridge of her nose. His hand was bad. The thumb drew a very small circle. Pleasure burst from that point and climbed her spine. Lin Xi lost her voice and at last sank, taking the whole of him. Both of them made a sound at once. She was hot and tight inside, biting him until it hurt. His fingers sank into the flesh of her ass and left red marks that would certainly show later.

"Move," she said, then corrected herself. "Please let me move. I don't want to just sit here and endure it."

"Move," he said.

She began to ride. At first there was still a rhythm, the way she handled anything that needed control. Up, down, letting the head drag each time over the soft place on her front wall. The skirt was piled at her waist. The shirt was still neat. Only one button at the collar had been pulled open. Her nipples were so hard inside the cups that they ached. Through the cloth Xiaoyao took one in his mouth and let his teeth graze. A small patch of fabric went wet. Lin Xi's rhythm broke. She caught his hair, not to push him down, but because she was afraid she would float away.

Headlights swept the glass outside. A band of light crossed their bodies. For a dazed second she felt the whole city could see a partner at Hengshi with her legs apart, taking her husband as deep as he would go. The thought ought to have stopped her. It did not. It made her wetter. In the quiet office the sound of her became distinct. Every time she sat down it brought a small sticky sound.

"Listen," Xiaoyao said. "This is you. Not a schedule."

"Don't talk." Her voice came apart. "If you say anything else I'll cry out. This floor echoes."

"Then cry out. Old Ding is on the first floor. Zhou Ning has left. If even calling my name requires an application for leave, we stayed tonight for nothing."

She cried out. Not loudly. It was pressed through her teeth. Xiaoyao, Xiaoyao, there, harder. His thumb pressed harder. His other hand gripped her waist and pulled her down, and he began to thrust up. Their rhythms stacked. The sofa knocked the wall, lightly. The metal clasp on the archive box shivered once, like a piece of evidence produced at the wrong time.

Lin Xi came first. The orgasm arrived fast and deep. Her walls bit in waves. Her mouth was open and there was no sound, only tears that suddenly fell onto his collarbone. Xiaoyao did not stop. He held her and kept thrusting through the sharpest contractions, until she started to pull away and he pressed her back.

"I'm not done," he said at her ear. "Watch me come. Come inside you. You said that time at home you didn't look at me. Tonight you look."

She looked. Her eyes were wet. Her makeup was ruined. Her lips were swollen. She nodded. The nod was very small, and it was real.

"Come in me. Xiaoyao, come inside. I want to feel you finish. Don't pull out onto a tissue. That looks like cleaning a scene."

He swore under his breath, held her tight, drove in to the deepest point, and stayed there. His cock pulsed. Heat struck into her in surges. The pulse of it made Lin Xi clench again, and out of the aftershock a second, lighter tremor rose. She held his head. Her face was buried against the side of his neck. She smelled ink, sweat, and her own perfume after body heat had gone through it.

For a long time neither of them spoke. On the glass their shadows were blurred, laid over the sea of lights along West Nanjing Road. Her legs were still open. He was still buried in her. What he had come inside her slowly spilled, wetting his lower belly and the edge of the sofa. Lin Xi reached down, wiped a little onto her fingertip, looked at it, and wiped it back onto the inside of her thigh. The gesture was so obscene that her ears burned. She did not explain it.

Xiaoyao kissed her temple. It was the same kiss as years ago, outside a courthouse door.

"This doesn't count as a talk," he said quietly. "This only counts as you still wanting me. Lin Xi, you want me, and I'm glad. But we can't hand in only this. You cried just now."

"I know." Her voice had gone rough. "I didn't cry because it hurt. I cried because I found out I'm still here. I thought that part of me had been scheduled out of existence."

He did not smile. When he pulled out, both of them flinched, oversensitive. His come followed, running down her leg. He took tissues from the coffee table and knelt. He did not wipe her off in a rush. He held her knee and cleaned her carefully, almost with respect. When he reached her clit she drew a breath. He stopped.

"More, or enough."

"Enough," she said, and then told the truth. "My body still wants it. The person ran out first. Get up. Hold me for a minute. Don't talk. One minute is enough."

He stood and pulled her in. A minute passed. Two minutes passed. The yellow lamp was still on. The city was still running below them. For the first time the corner office at Hengshi did not feel like a place where someone could win. It felt like a place where two people had at last not put each other on tomorrow's list.

Chapter 3 Hunan Road

They left the firm after eleven. Old Ding was eating instant noodles in the monitor room. He saw that Lin Xi's lipstick was gone and that she had changed into a spare white shirt the firm kept, and he asked nothing. Xiaoyao still carried the archive box. The box was lighter, because the thing that actually weighed had not been put inside it.

Night wind tangled Lin Xi's hair. She did not tie it back. In the car she leaned against the window. Between her legs there was still the leftover ache and wet of having been filled. At every red light the feeling came back. She pressed her knees together, then felt that pressing them together was a pretense.

"Go to your place," she said, and only then heard the wording. "Go to our place. Hunan Road."

"It has always been our place," Xiaoyao said, looking ahead. "You just sometimes say 'go back and sleep a little,' as if it were a hotel you rent by the hour."

The apartment was behind a plane tree on Hunan Road, third floor, an old house renovated once. The walls were still thick. The floors still creaked. The elevator had been added later and was small enough for two people and one box. When the door opened, the corridor smelled of a neighbor's soup, white radish and ginger. Lin Xi stopped and breathed it in deep. The smell was more like home than any welcome, and it made her more ashamed. She had not smelled it at this hour in many days.

The apartment was dark. Xiaoyao hooked the door shut with his foot, set the box on the bench in the entry, a bench he had repaired himself from old elm. The legs were still a little uneven. He turned on the entry sconce. The light was dim. The schedule on the refrigerator lit up at once, like another court.

Lin Xi stood in front of it. Blue, gray, red. This week the only red was one hour on Sunday night, marked "eat together." The handwriting was hers. After the two words for eating there was no place and no content, like a judgment that could not be enforced.

"I put this up," she said. "You didn't tear it down."

"If I tore it down you'd print another," Xiaoyao said behind her, changing his shoes, his voice flat. "And the chart itself isn't wrong. What's wrong is that the chart became our only format for talking. Lin Xi, you even drafted sex onto it. You deleted it. I saw the trash. Thursday, ten-thirty, the note said 'if there's no hearing.'"

Her face heated. Not the heat of wanting. The heat of being struck by evidence. She turned, ready to argue. The argument was already ranked on her tongue: that was proof I wanted to come closer to you, not coldness. The words reached her mouth. She saw his eyes and withdrew them.

"I'm sorry," she said. "That was awful. Writing you down as if there's no hearing."

"It was awful." He nodded, and did not press the advantage. "Are you hungry?"

"No. I ate half a sandwich before court. I only want a shower now."

"You first. I'll lay out what's in the box on the left side of the dining table, the way you like it. You won't have to hunt in the morning."

She looked at him. The sentence was considerate, and it was also a wall. He knew her habits so well he did not need to ask. He did not ask because he had asked, and the answer had been "use your judgment."

"Shower together," she said.

The bathroom was not large. They had chosen the tile the year they married: white, with a narrow band of celadon at the waist. Once the shower was on, steam fogged the mirror fast. When Lin Xi took off the white shirt she found the wet mark where he had mouthed her still on the old shirt, and the old shirt was stuffed in her bag like a piece of evidence that had never been filed. She stepped naked into the water. Xiaoyao followed. In that narrow space their bodies could not keep a polite distance. His chest was against her back. The water took down the perfume left from the day, the sweat, and a little of the smell of sex.

He washed her hair. His fingers went into the roots at just the right pressure. Lin Xi's eyes were closed. A very small sigh rolled in her throat. The sigh was more dangerous than the cries in the office. In the office she could still say desire had knocked her over. Here there was only an ordinary that Tuesdays did not have. Ordinary was the thing she had lost.

"Xiaoyao."

"Mm."

"You came inside me today. My ring is still in. There's no risk. I only want to say I knew. I wasn't muddled when I told you to come."

"I know you weren't muddled." His fingers paused, then went back to working the shampoo. "You are rarely muddled. You are often not present. The person is there. The decision is there. You yourself are not."

She turned. Water struck between them. She looked at his body. His shoulders were a little thinner than when they married. His collarbones were clear. On his lower belly were the red marks she had left by sitting on him. His cock was half-soft in the hot water, quiet, and still she wanted to reach. She did not reach at once. She set her forehead against his chest.

"Tomorrow at nine I have to be at the notary. Gu Wan will hand over the key. In the afternoon the other side may send a letter. If nothing blows up in the evening, I want to come home for dinner. Not the kind on the schedule. The kind you cook. You don't have to. I only want to say that I want it."

Xiaoyao's arms tightened. In the steam his voice was a little hoarse.

"I'll cook. If you come back after ten, I'll have the noodles done and left in the pot. I won't write it on the chart to blame you. But Lin Xi, don't buy a whole week of peace with one meal. One meal is one meal. Tonight is tonight. We take the days back slowly. Not with one settlement agreement."

"You just called a marriage a settlement agreement."

"You called it a calendar first."

She laughed once. After the laugh the tip of her nose stung. She tipped her face up and kissed him, lightly, no tongue, only mouth against mouth, water running between them. Xiaoyao answered. The kiss did not grow into a second time. Both of them were tired, and tired honestly. He shut off the shower and wrapped her in a large towel, the way you wrap a thing just picked up out of the rain. For once Lin Xi did not say "I'll do it myself."

The bed was old. The frame creaked. When she lay down, her body still remembered being opened. Something twitched between her legs. Xiaoyao fitted himself against her from behind. His palm rested on her lower belly and did not go lower. They used to sleep like this every night. Later it became back to back. Later still, he was already asleep when she got home, and she read two emails and lay down carefully, so that even back to back counted as intimacy.

"Sleep," he said. "I'm here. Not the kind of here that gets written in a family register. Actually here."

Lin Xi held his hand. Outside, the plane tree threw its shadow, beat by beat. The streetlight put the leaves on the curtain. She wanted to say I love you. The three words turned once in her mouth and came out too heavy to say. She only said:

"Thank you for not leaving first today."

"Tomorrow, don't call me only when you win." Xiaoyao's mouth touched the back of her neck. "Call when you lose. Call when it's a draw. There are more drawn days."

She did not promise. For a lawyer, a promise was too easy to write into a clause. She shifted her body farther into his arms until their breathing slowly lined up. The schedule was still on the refrigerator in the dark. It had not been torn down. It had only, for the first time, not been treated as the last word.

Chapter 4 Friday

At six-forty in the morning Lin Xi woke. Xiaoyao was still asleep, his arm across her waist, heavy and hot. She looked at that arm for a long time and did not move it to reach for her phone. The phone was in the living room. Last night she had actually left it in her bag. The fact made her a little unable to recognize herself.

She got up anyway. The notary would not change the time because she had suddenly learned how to live a day. She started the coffee and kept the sound low. On the left side of the dining table the papers from the box were indeed stacked in order. The draft of the ruling points was on top, weighted by a note in Xiaoyao's hand: I didn't touch the page numbers. I only lined up the edges. Under the note he had drawn a very small, badly proportioned cat, the kind he used to leave in the corner of her notebook. Lin Xi folded the note and put it in her shirt pocket, against her heart. She did not know whether the gesture counted as sentiment. She allowed herself thirty seconds of it.

Xiaoyao came out while she was putting on her second earring. His hair was a mess. T-shirt, bare feet. He glanced at the coffee, poured himself a cup, and added no sugar.

"Nine," he said.

"Nine. Gu Wan arrives at eight-forty. Zhou Ning is already on the way." She paused. "I may not make it back at noon. I'll try for the evening. Don't wait until the food is cold before you start being angry. If it gets cold, eat first."

"I said yesterday I wouldn't write it on the chart to blame you." He came up to her and fastened the back of the earring. His fingers brushed her earlobe, and her body remembered the office at once. "But now you're managing my feelings in advance again. Lin Xi, go to work first. Work isn't the offense. The offense is using work to close the case on both of our feelings."

She nodded. The nod was harder than any argument. She kissed the corner of his mouth and tasted sleep, toothpaste not yet on it. After the kiss she picked up the box and looked back at the door.

"I want noodles tonight. Hot. If you eat first, leave me a mouthful of the noodle broth. Sometimes that's all I want."

"I know," he said. "Go win your morning. In the afternoon, don't arrange other people's lives while you're at it."

The notary's office was in a building with no expression. The key to the formula room sat in a metal tray. Gu Wan handed it over herself. She was forty-eight, hair cut short, none of the excessive rings the Gu family wore, only one old plain band. When the seal went on, her eyes reddened, and then the red withdrew, cleanly.

"Ms. Lin," she said in the corridor, "my brother will want to celebrate. Don't let him. Beicheng hasn't lost. They just can't come through the door this week. Pei Song was still asking around last night, saying he could play white knight and take over Beicheng's share. I heard 'white knight' when I was young. The people who come to ride all want the saddle in the end."

"So Monday's dinner, Pei Song coming, that was your brother's invitation," Lin Xi said.

"Yes. I objected. My brother said if you don't meet, how do you know how many faces the other side has." Gu Wan looked at her. "Will your husband come? My brother is old-fashioned. He thinks a person whose home is unsteady can't keep an old shop. I told him that's prejudice. He heard half of it."

Lin Xi's fingers tightened on the edge of the folder. "He'll come. Not as an exhibit. If Mr. Gu treats my marriage as a quality-control item, I'll write that boundary into a supplement to the engagement letter."

Gu Wan smiled for the first time in earnest. "Good. I like the way you refuse someone a step down and still sound polite. See you Monday. Don't dress too much like court. In the private rooms on that street, people who look too much like court get pressed to drink."

At noon Beicheng's lawyer's letter reached the firm. Zhao Heng's wording was courteous and the content was not. He argued that the oral ruling restricted personnel too broadly, and he demanded an exception for the daily maintenance of the formula room. At the same time he released a willingness to settle, proposing that the files be moved to a third-party warehouse under joint custody in exchange for their not applying for reconsideration. Zhou Ning set the letter on Lin Xi's desk and lowered her voice.

"The third-party warehouse is the trap in the annex to their original investment agreement. Easy to go in. Getting out takes the board. Ms. Lin, this isn't a concession. It's changing which way the door faces."

"I see it." Lin Xi circled that paragraph with her pen. "Give me a draft reply before tonight. Cold tone. Do not use a sentence like 'we are willing to consider on conditions.' We are not considering it. Maintenance can be done under the notary's supervision, one person at a time, names given to the court and to us twenty-four hours ahead."

Zhou Ning finished her notes and did not leave at once. She pushed her glasses up.

"Mr. Jiang brought soup at noon. It's in the pantry. I said you were on the phone. He said he'd wait five minutes, and if you weren't out he'd leave the soup and go. It's four and a half now."

Lin Xi went still. She looked at the clock and stood up at a speed she herself found unprofessional. The pantry door was half open. Xiaoyao leaned on the counter. No flowers, no showy bag, only a thermal box. Over the T-shirt from the morning he had put on a thin jacket. There was a little paper lint at his collar.

"Chicken soup," he said. "Not a ceremony. You didn't eat lunch. I had to go to the print shop anyway to match a cover's spot color. It was on the way. When five minutes are up I'll leave. I won't give your colleagues a soap opera."

"Come in," she said, then changed it. "Here is fine. Leave the door open. Zhou Ning knows you're my husband, not an emergency."

She opened the box. A very thin layer of oil floated on the soup. The scallion had been added late and was still green. She took a mouthful. Hot, fragrant. The empty place in her stomach was suddenly called by name. She drank several more mouthfuls. Her eyes actually heated.

"It's good," she said. "Xiaoyao, this looks more like good news than any announcement."

He smiled. The smile was short, and it reached his eyes. The pantry light was white, not like the sconce at home, but standing in that white light he was real enough that she wanted to shut the door. She did not shut it. She only reached, under the counter, where no one could see, and pinched his fingers.

"Monday night there's a client dinner. Julu Road. Gu Chengyan is hosting. His sister will be there, and a man named Pei Song. I need you to come. Not as a spouse sample. I hope you'll be there. They'll look at you. I'll be uncomfortable. But if you aren't there, I'm more likely to perform myself as a person with no private life. People like that get fed clauses at a table like this."

Xiaoyao looked at her. "Are you asking, or notifying."

Lin Xi drew a breath. Steam from the soup blurred her lower lip.

"Asking. You can refuse. If you refuse I'll go alone, and I won't punish you with silence. I only want you to know that I want you beside that table."

"Then I'll go," he said. "I have clothes. I won't dress like someone who came to sit in the gallery. Lin Xi, if someone jokes about us at the table, you don't have to rescue the scene until you've lost yourself. Look at me once. I can take a joke. I can't take you telling other people, in front of them, that everything is fine."

"I'll try," she said. "You know what fraction a lawyer's try is."

"I do. That's why I want to hear you say try, not guarantee."

The five minutes were up. He did not drag it out. He put the lid on the box. His fingertip tapped the back of her hand once, like a very small seal.

"See you tonight. I'll leave the broth with the noodles."

After he left, Zhou Ning pretended to look at a cup, but her ears were red. Lin Xi finished the soup, rinsed the box, and put it in her own cabinet. She went back to her desk and opened the draft reply. When the first character came out, her hand was steady. Steady was not because she had turned back into a calendar. Steady was because the note with the ugly cat was still in her pocket, the chicken soup was still at the root of her tongue, and on Monday night someone had promised to sit beside her, not as evidence, as her person.

She circled Zhao Heng's four characters for "third-party warehouse" again, and beside them she wrote: do not enter.

For the first time today she felt those two words could be used somewhere else. Do not enter the sentences that turn days into annexes. Do not enter the kind of night where you win a hearing and lose the way home. She capped the pen. Sunlight came in slantwise off West Nanjing Road. On the glass was her shadow. Beside the shadow a space was empty. Before Monday, a person would come and stand in it.

Chapter 5 The Record

Friday's noodles were brought back to a boil at nine forty-two. When Lin Xi came in, the entry light had been left on. She kicked her shoes crooked and did not set them straight. Xiaoyao saw that detail. Before, no matter how late she came home, she lined the toes with the door, as if even coming home had to satisfy an invisible rule first.

"Wash your hands. Sit. The noodles are in the pot. The broth is separate," he said from the kitchen. He did not come out to meet her, and he did not interrogate the hour.

Half the table had been cleared. The other half still held her folders, the edges bound with a rubber band and shifted toward the window, as if jurisdiction had been yielded to dinner. Lin Xi washed her hands and sat. The scallion was freshly cut. The smell hit her, and only then did she notice she was hungry enough that her temples were tight.

They ate for a few minutes and spoke very little. The alkali in the noodles was exactly right. After the first mouthful of broth, her shoulders came down from beside her ears.

"I finished Zhao Heng's letter," she said anyway. "We can't go into the third-party warehouse. Zhou Ning's draft was still too soft. I made it hard. It goes out tomorrow. Before Monday's dinner, the other side will know we aren't changing the door."

"Mm." Xiaoyao picked up a strand. "What did Gu Wan say."

"She doesn't trust Pei Song. Neither do I. A white knight wants the saddle. That's her sentence. I plan to borrow it. I won't say it at the table, of course."

"Are you eating noodles with me right now, or walking me through an oral report."

Lin Xi's chopsticks stopped. Steam rose off the broth. She looked at him. She wanted to say she was only in the habit of sharing, and she knew that sentence was itself the shape of the habit. She set the chopsticks down.

"I don't know how to only eat noodles," she said. "The moment I sit, the case sits in the third chair. Xiaoyao, can you not catch me at it every time. I came back today. I'm eating the noodles. The person is here."

"The person is here. The mouth isn't." He did not dodge either. "From the door until now, you haven't asked what happened to me at the print shop today. The spot color missed twice. My day is not the interlude in your case. You can talk about Zhao Heng. When you're done you have to come back. Coming back means asking me one human sentence, or telling me you're tired, not filing those five minutes in the pantry as progress."

Her face heated. The heat of being hit was harder to swallow than spice. She looked at her bowl. On the rim was a crack in the glaze she had not noticed that morning, fine, old, still able to hold broth.

"What happened at the print shop," she asked, voice lowered. "Why did the spot color miss."

"The gold ink was unstable. They wanted a coat of varnish to make it look expensive. I refused. That book of poems shouldn't shine. The cover is night, not a gift box." He looked at her to be sure she was listening. "The author is Chen Mai, forty, writes about plane trees and receipts. I pressed the title into matte black. One gold line only, thin as a sentence that wasn't finished. The second proof finally matched. I was standing by the machine and I suddenly thought our marriage is only missing that coat of varnish. You always want to add a little shine, so it still looks unbroken."

Lin Xi's eyes stung. She took the sentence and did not rebut it.

"I almost cried in the pantry," she said. "That isn't progress. That was the least professional moment of my day. The soup was too good. Zhou Ning was outside pretending to look at a cup. I was afraid that if I cried, on Monday no one would believe I could hold the formula room. But the reason I wanted to cry was simple. You came. You stayed five minutes. Five minutes was exactly right. One more and I might have pulled you into the office, shut the door, and hated myself."

Xiaoyao pushed his bowl aside a little. His hand covered hers. In the palm was a faint shadow of ink that would not wash out.

"This is allowed," he said. "This is you. Not a report."

She held his hand back, then let go, stood, came around the corner of the table, and sat on his lap. The chair made a sound. She was still in the skirt suit, the stockings, her hair loosened. The move was too much like yesterday's office. She knew that. She needed a language that did not use paragraphs.

Xiaoyao took her waist and did not kiss her at once. He looked at her eyes.

"You sat down to end the talk, or to go on."

"To go on. Go on some other way. I want you to touch me. I want that coat of varnish off. Xiaoyao, tonight you set the speed. The moment I get control, I'll turn this into a project that can be closed."

"All right." His thumb passed over the bone of her wrist. "Then answer first. Besides almost crying, did you think of me today. Not the kind of thinking that happens in a gap in the work. Thinking of me, the person."

"I did." Her forehead rested on his. "When they sealed the door at the notary, Gu Wan's eyes reddened and then the red went away. I suddenly wished you were at the end of the corridor. Not to protect me. I wanted to turn and see a person I wouldn't have to explain a seal to. I thought of you again while I was revising the letter. Thought of your hands. Thought of the feeling of you inside me. I thought it hard enough that I pressed my legs together, in the office. Absurd."

He kissed her. This kiss was slower than yesterday's. No teeth. Only mouths and breath. Lin Xi's hand went into his hair. Xiaoyao stood with her ass in his hands and set her on the half of the table that had been cleared. The top was cold. She sucked in a breath. At the other end the folders sat like a witness who had been asked to step out.

"Lie down," he said. "You can hold the edge of the table. You may not direct where my tongue goes. If you direct me, I stop."

"Is this a punishment."

"It's practice." He knelt on the chair and pushed her skirt to her waist. His fingers stopped at the edge of the stocking. "Lin Xi, do you agree. I only do it if you agree. If you don't, we go back and sit and finish the noodles."

Her chest rose and fell. Cold from the tabletop seeped into her shoulder blades. She looked at the watermark on the ceiling she knew, and nodded.

"I agree. When you stop I'll hate it. I agree anyway. Xiaoyao, take them off. Don't just pull them aside. I want you to see all of me today."

He undressed her carefully. Shoes, stockings, underwear. The skirt stayed bunched at her waist. The shirt was undone to the fourth button. The bra was pulled down. Her nipples were bare under the dining-room light, already hard. Lin Xi wanted to close her knees, then opened them herself. There was no audience for the opening. Only him. She felt herself change from a partner back into a person who could get wet, and the distance between the two was short enough to make her dizzy.

Xiaoyao's mouth kissed the inside of her knee first, then went up. Stubble scraped tender skin. She shook. His breath was on her labia. He did not take her in his mouth at once. He parted her with his thumb and looked. The place he had come in yesterday and then cleaned was bright with wet again tonight. The mouth of her cunt tightened once, like a please with no sound.

"Already this wet," he said, low. "And I haven't licked you yet."

"Because you're looking." Her voice went thin. "When you look I get more—ah."

His tongue came up against her. Not a token pass. From the bottom upward, licking her open slowly, taking her labia into his mouth, letting them go, pressing the flat of his tongue to her clit. Lin Xi grabbed the edge of the table. Her knuckles went white. She wanted to say faster, harder, take that in your mouth. The words reached her teeth and she bit them. Practice. She was going to practice not turning a bed into a hearing.

He felt the effort of her biting the words back, and as if in reward he sucked her clit into his mouth and flicked it fast with the tip of his tongue. Lin Xi cried out. Her legs wanted to clamp his head, and she was afraid clamping was an order, so her legs shook in the air. Xiaoyao held the tops of her thighs, steady, keeping her open, but not holding an object down. His thumb drew circles at the root of her thigh, reminding her: the person was still there.

"You can clamp," he said, lifting his head. The corner of his mouth shone with her. "Clamping isn't an order. Pulling away is. If you can't take it, say stop. Stop and an order are two different things."

"Don't stop." She was nearly crying it. "Xiaoyao, I'm here. I haven't run. Keep going. Please keep going."

He went back down. Two fingers pushed in slowly, curled, found the place on her front wall. His tongue did not leave her clit. Lin Xi's waist left the table and came back down. The orgasm was not as violent as the one in the office, but it was longer, wave after wave. She held his hair. This time she held. She did not push. She called his name until her voice broke. Her walls bit his fingers. Wet soaked his palm and the table. She saw it. She did not close her eyes all the way to the end. She wanted to see that it was him.

Xiaoyao kissed her belly, kissed up to a nipple, took it in his mouth, and waited until her breath went from broken to whole. Then he opened his trousers. His cock sprang out, hard against his stomach, the head wet. Lin Xi reached to hold it. He let her hold it once, then pressed her hand back to the edge of the table.

"Tonight I do it. You hold the table. Watch me go in."

"Come in," she said. "Please come in. I'm still clenching inside. I want you to fill me."

He set the head at her entrance and pushed in slowly. The salt cellar on the table touched the pepper mill with a small sound. When all of him was in, both of them went still for a second. Yesterday's ache was still there. Tonight's wet turned it into another kind of taking, full, and exactly enough. Xiaoyao began to move, not fast. Each stroke pulled back until only the head was left, then drove to the deepest point. Lin Xi was pushed up the table and gathered back by his hands. Her nipples trembled with the motion. He bent and took one in his mouth, and below he did not lose the line.

"Look at me," he said.

She looked. There was a little sweat at the center of his brow. His eyes were black. His mouth still tasted of her. The picture was obscene, and it was careful. Her second orgasm was ground out of her slowly, her clit rubbing his stomach, her walls suddenly tight. She did not give an order. She only said, I'm coming, Xiaoyao, I'm coming, don't stop.

He did not stop. He waited until the clenching eased a little, kissed the wet from the corner of her eye, and asked, low: "Inside you, or on you. You choose. This time the choice isn't you managing. It's me asking what you want."

"Inside," she said. "I want to sleep holding what you left in me. It'll run out tomorrow. Let it run. I want to remember, in the daytime, that you were here."

His rhythm finally broke. A few strokes, deep and heavy. A table leg shifted an inch on the old floor. He buried himself at the deepest point and came. Heat struck inside her, pulse by pulse. Lin Xi held his back. Her hands left the edge of the table. That leaving was allowed, because the thing was done, and holding was not directing. She felt his heartbeat, fast, then slowly a speed she could count.

Afterward he lifted her down off the table. Her legs were weak. The skirt was wrinkled past looking at. Her chest was still open. Xiaoyao wiped her with a warm towel. Halfway through, her phone buzzed in her bag. Both of them heard it. Lin Xi's body had an almost automatic lean toward the sound. She stopped.

"Before eleven," she said, "it doesn't belong to this table. Zhao Heng doesn't either. I said it myself. Take the bag to the bedroom door for me. Don't bring it in. If I go back on this, remind me of the sentence. A reminder, not a confiscation. My work isn't your prisoner."

Xiaoyao looked at her the way he would look at a very short document he was willing to sign.

"All right," he said. "I'll remember the sentence. It's good for tonight. If you want to change it tomorrow, we talk again. It doesn't renew itself."

"You do know how to write a term." She laughed, and laughing, a little more of him ran out at the top of her thigh, hot. She clenched. Her face went red. "Get the bag. Then carry me to the shower. I may not be able to stand. That isn't a strategy of looking weak. It's a fact."

"I accept facts." He put the towel over her shoulder and kissed her forehead. "There's a mouthful of noodles left. Do you want to finish it before you wash. Finishing it isn't a schedule. It's that you're still hungry."

She really did sit down again, legs bare, wearing his shirt, and ate that mouthful. The salt was right. Outside on Hunan Road someone rode past on a bicycle. A bell rang once. The chart was still on the refrigerator. Tonight it had no new block of color. Lin Xi felt that this, too, was a kind of ruling: some things take effect orally, and do not have to be posted.

Chapter 6 Old Floorboards

Saturday it rained. The rain was not heavy. The plane leaves caught the water and then dropped it, whole drops, onto the sill. When Lin Xi woke, the phone was not beside the pillow. It was on the stool outside the bedroom door, like an animal temporarily adjourned. Xiaoyao was awake. His fingers counted down her spine, vertebra by vertebra, and stopped at the hollow of her waist.

"Saturday morning, don't let this hand go get it yet," he said. "Not forever. This morning. If there's an emergency, Zhou Ning will call the landline. The landline is in the living room. If it rings, we run. Running is fine too."

"When did you decide the landline."

"While you were showering. I found out I'm not afraid of your work. I'm afraid of it climbing onto the bed without a sound, through the crack of the door, and taking your eyes."

Lin Xi turned over to face him. Rain-light was gray, and his face was softer for it. She put her hand into his palm, of her own accord, the way you hand a piece of evidence to a person you trust.

"The morning is yours," she said. "At noon I need to look at email once. After I look I'll tell you whether anything has to be answered. If nothing does, the afternoon is yours too. The evening I'm not sure of. If I'm not sure, I'll say I'm not sure. I won't turn it into a guarantee."

"I like that sentence." He kissed her palm. "Then this morning's hearing is mine."

She had not finished laughing before he turned her under him. The bed frame sounded twice, old, familiar, as if the building were nodding. Xiaoyao did not enter her at once. He pressed her wrists to either side of the pillow. The pressure asked. It did not lock.

"Is this all right. If you want your hands back to touch me, pull them back whenever you want. I'm holding them because I want you to make fewer decisions."

"All right." Her voice was already rough. A body just awake heated fast. "I like that you ask. After you ask, do it. Don't ask too many times. Too many times and I'll think you're taking evidence."

He bent and took her nipple in his mouth. His tongue was wet and hot. His teeth touched once. Lin Xi's waist lifted. His knee opened her legs. His cock slid along her labia and did not go in, only let the head drag across her clit again and again until it swelled. Her wet soon slicked him. The rain made her sounds small, and clear.

"Come in," she said, and added, "That's a request. Not an order. Xiaoyao, I want you in me now. Slow is fine too."

"Received." He actually used the word, and then laughed at himself. "Would a lawyer deduct points."

"She'd add them. Hurry."

When he entered, neither of them was laughing anymore. A morning body was tight. He was hard. The push in was full and sweet. Lin Xi's nails went into his shoulder, not to point the way, only to hold. After he was all the way in he stopped, forehead to forehead, and waited for her breath to adjust. Then he moved. The frame sounded with his rhythm, almost shamefully. Lin Xi did not want a quieter method. She buried her face in the side of his neck, and he brought her back out to look.

"Look," he said. "Saturday you have no makeup. I want this."

She looked. When she came, her legs locked around his waist, her heels pressed into his back, pulling him deeper. She did not cry out loudly. The tail of the sound was long. Her walls sucked in pulses. Xiaoyao swore low at the grip of her and still waited, waited for her nod, then went faster, and at the end came as deep as he could. When the heat poured in, Lin Xi felt a strange fullness that almost wanted to become tears. Not the tears knocked out of her in the office. The tears of someone staying inside her on a rainy day.

They lay for a long time. His come, mixed with hers, slowly ran out and marked the sheet. She did not get up at once to clean it. Xiaoyao's hand covered her lower belly. They listened to the rain.

"The wedding where we met," Lin Xi said suddenly, "that line on the invitation, 'a modest token, respectfully prepared,' that was me talking too much. You revised it overnight and sent it to the firm. I still have the note. In the drawer. Sometimes I don't dare look."

"Why not."

"Because the person on the note treated me as someone who would make a sound. Not someone who only issued rulings. Later I got busy, and making a sound sounded more and more like appearing in court. I was afraid that if I saw the paper, I'd have to admit I was the one who left the conversation first."

Xiaoyao did not say it was all right. He kissed her hair.

"It's good the paper is still there. It's better that the person is still here. Before noon today, we go out and walk. If the rain doesn't stop, we take an umbrella. Walk to the corner and buy food. No talk of warehouses. If you can't help talking, when you're done you kiss me once, as a toll."

"What kind of bad custom is that."

"Household customary law. Just established. You're a partner. You should respect soft law."

She laughed out loud. That laugh had not appeared in this bedroom for a long time. When it did, the rain seemed to lessen a little.

At noon there really was one email. Zhao Heng confirmed receipt of their refusal. The wording was colder. He said they would evaluate reconsideration and a complaint that the preservation order was excessive. Zhou Ning added a line: Mr. Gu had not posted on his social feed. Gu Wan was watching him. Lin Xi showed Xiaoyao the screen. She did not hide it.

"The only thing that has to be answered is one sentence," she said. "Tell Zhou Ning, let them reconsider if they want. We don't supplement it with feeling. After I send it, the phone goes back on the stool. The afternoon is still yours. I can do it. Watch me do it."

She did it. The reply was two lines. The phone lay face-down on the stool.

In the afternoon they really went out. The rain had stopped. The plane trees were still dripping. The ground of Hunan Road was dark. The old French-style walls had drunk the water, a color as deep as aged ink. Lin Xi wore his coat over a dark green dress, not a suit. Her hair was not pinned up. Xiaoyao walked on the side nearer the cars, an empty grocery bag in his hand. Someone passed with a dog. The dog sniffed at her feet. She crouched and touched its ear. The gesture was too small for anyone to write into a judgment. Xiaoyao watched it for a long time.

In the market she did not know how to bargain. He did. She stood beside him and watched him choose a bunch of water caltrops and a fish, and suddenly Monday's dinner felt far away. Far was not gone. It only could not cut in line for the moment.

On the way home she still mentioned Pei Song. When she finished she stopped of her own accord, under a plane tree, and kissed him as the toll. She kissed him seriously. A person on a bicycle rang a bell and laughed. Lin Xi did not hide. It was her second piece of unprofessional conduct today. She wanted to keep it.

At night the floor dried and then went damp again. They ruined the fish. Too much ginger. Both of them drank water from the heat. After the laughing, the living room went quiet. Once quiet arrived, the old silence tried to flow back. Lin Xi felt it the way she felt a familiar program about to start on its own: she would go look at the papers, he would go into the second room and draw a cover, and between the two points there would be no bridge.

She did not start it. She sat on the sofa. He had repaired the sofa when they moved. The arm had a streak of wood worn bright.

"You said practice yesterday," she said. "Continue tonight. I slip back to work easily when it's quiet. If you want me now, I hand you the decisions. You set the rules. I only have a veto. A veto doesn't need a reason."

Xiaoyao sat across from her. Only one floor lamp was on. The light came in at a slant.

"Both hands on the arms of the sofa. I don't allow you to direct my pace. I don't allow you to say 'fast,' 'hard,' 'there.' You can cry out. You can swear. You can say stop. You can say I want to see you. Any other sentence, if it's an instruction, I pull out and wait for you to ask again. When you ask again, use a complete sentence. This is harsh. You can veto it now."

Lin Xi's throat was dry. She wanted to veto, because it was like being stripped of the tool she was best at. She also wanted to agree, because that tool had already pared them down into two calendars.

"No veto," she said. "If I can't take it, I'll say stop. You have to hear it. If you hear it, you actually stop."

"Of course."

She knelt, her upper body on the sofa cushion, hands on the arms to either side. The dress was pushed to her waist. Yesterday's underwear was already in the hamper. She had worn a pair out today. Now it was taken down to her knees. In this position she could not see his face. She could only see her own fingers sinking into the old cloth. Xiaoyao's palm covered her ass first, kneaded, parted her. Cool air touched the wet. She shivered.

His fingers went in to test. Very slick. He laughed once, low, with no mockery in it.

"An afternoon of not talking about the warehouse, and you're still wet. At the market?"

"When I kissed you under the tree," she said. "The dog and the bicycle were both there. I got wet anyway. Come in. That sentence is a request."

He came in. The angle from behind was deep. The head found, easily, the place that made her go soft. Lin Xi's forehead pressed the back of the sofa. The first stroke pulled a sound out of her. On the second she shouted by instinct: harder.

Xiaoyao actually stopped. He pulled out. The emptiness came fast and mean. Her entrance opened and closed on nothing. She swore, and after the swear she knew she had broken the term.

"I'm sorry," she said, panting. "I gave an instruction. Come back in, all right. If I do it again, you stop again. I'm willing. Xiaoyao, please put it back in me. I'll leave my hands on the arms."

"All right."

The second time he was slower. Every stroke ground. Her nipples rubbed the sofa cloth. The cloth was coarse. It rubbed until it hurt, and the hurt turned into pleasure. She bit her lip and bit the word "fast" to pieces. Sound still leaked. All of it was his name and the fact of what he was making her take: too deep, I'm here, I'm not directing, don't leave. Xiaoyao bent over her. His chest was against her back. His hand covered the hand on the arm of the sofa, fingers laced. The lacing suddenly heated her eyes. The rule was not there to humiliate her. The rule was so her hands would have somewhere to go.

The third time she still broke it. Close to coming she said, touch me in front, please touch me. The instant the words were out she went rigid. Xiaoyao pulled out. His breath was unsteady too. His cock slapped her ass, soaked. He was clearly not comfortable either.

"That was a request," she rushed to add. "I said please. Not an order. You rule on whether I crossed the line. I'll take your ruling. But I'm close, and being empty really is hard to bear. Xiaoyao, I'm practicing. I'm not running."

He was silent for two seconds. In those two seconds she heard the rain start again, hitting the sill.

"The request stands," he said. "What crossed the line was that 'touch me in front' sounded too much like a bullet point. I'll give you one chance to rephrase. Say it complete."

Lin Xi's face burned. Her face was pressed into the sofa. Her voice was muffled, and clear.

"Please touch my clit with your hand. Please touch me while you do it. I want you to touch me until I come. You set the pace. I'll leave my hands here."

"That's you." He kissed her shoulder blade, pushed back in, and at the same time brought his hand around to the front. Two fingers settled on the bud that was already swollen hard.

She came almost at once. The orgasm locked down hard. The sofa arm creaked in her grip. Her walls spasmed around him. She called his name until there were no other words. Xiaoyao could not stay slow inside that grip. He held her hand and drove deep a dozen times, and came as far in as he could go. He did not ask again when he came, because she had already said in the afternoon that she wanted to keep it. He remembered. Remembering was itself a kind of being present.

They collapsed on the sofa. The old floor was ice-cold. Her knees had gone numb from kneeling. Xiaoyao picked her up, laid her flat, and rubbed her knees. While he rubbed, neither of them spoke. This time the silence was not a gap between schedules. It was the body still echoing.

"I love you," Lin Xi said.

Once it was out, she startled herself. Three words with less protection than any clause. Xiaoyao's hand stopped on her knee. Rain filled that small blank.

"I love you too," he said. "Not because you obeyed just now. Because you were willing to change an instruction into a request. Lin Xi, I won't write this sentence on the chart. You aren't allowed to either. It stays in this night."

"All right." She buried her face in his palm. "All right. Before Monday we still have to take this mouth to a dinner table. I'm a little afraid. Fear is fear. I still want you sitting beside me."

"I'll sit beside you." He pushed her sweat-damp hair aside. "Shower first. The fish was ruined, but the soup can still be heated. After it's hot, if the phone rings, we look together. If we look together, it isn't climbing onto the bed. It's us opening a small door, looking, and shutting it again."

The landline did not ring. Later the phone lit once. Zhou Ning had sent the court's receipt. No new disaster. Lin Xi looked, turned the screen toward him, and set it face-down. The sound of setting it down was very light. The old floor creaked twice as they walked to the bathroom, as if the building had recognized them again.

Chapter 7 The Drawer

Sunday had no rain. The wind was dry. One or two plane leaves had started to yellow, not yet enough to be written into a poem. Xiaoyao was working in the second room, the door open. Lin Xi had meant to bring her outline preparing for a reconsideration reply to the dining table. She stood in his doorway for a while, then carried the computer into the second room and sat on the floor, her back against his worktable.

"I'll be typing," she said. "If the noise bothers you, send me out. If you send me out I'll go to the living room. I won't leave in silence."

"Type." His ruler held down a sheet of black paper. "Only this one gold line. Don't set your cup on this sheet. There's a ring of coffee on the bottom. It would become another design."

She smiled, and set the cup outside her own knee. There were not many emails. Zhao Heng was working on Sunday too. He had sent a supplement "to avoid misunderstanding," writing the warehouse plan as if it were a favor: twenty-four-hour temperature and humidity, two people, two locks, the Gu family free to inspect at any time. The right to inspect was written in front. The right to decide was hidden behind it. A board majority could transfer the thing. Lin Xi highlighted the paragraph, then lifted the screen.

"Look once. With the eyes you use on varnish."

Xiaoyao leaned over. He did not read law. He read structure. After two minutes he drew a door on his scrap paper with a pencil.

"The handle is on the outside," he said. "They let you feel as if your hand can touch the door. If you actually want to open it, the key is with the board. After Beicheng came in, the Gu family isn't a single majority anymore, is it."

"No. Once Beicheng was in, the equity sat right around the veto line. So they want to make 'custody' look like a harmless change of address. Move it once, and control changes bodies."

"Then on Monday don't discuss with them whether the warehouse is good or bad." He set the pencil down. "Discussing good or bad is admitting it's a door that can be evaluated. You only say this door is not on the table at this dinner. A dinner is a dinner. If the case is to be discussed, it goes by letter. You already know that set. I'm only afraid Pei Song will paint the door a polite color."

Lin Xi looked at him. Wanting arrived with no warning. Not because his body was close just then. Because one sentence of his had hit what she had been preparing to write three pages about. She reached, caught the hem of his shirt, and set her forehead against his side.

"When you talk like that, I want to shut the computer."

"Shut it for ten minutes, or shut it for the afternoon. Ask it clear."

"Ten minutes isn't enough. I want forty. Then I'll write the bone of this letter as one paragraph, not three pages. You keep drawing your line. If I touch you, I'll say so first."

"You can say so now." His voice had dropped. "Your eyes already don't look like they're on a letter."

She shut the computer, pushed it aside, and knee-walked to the front of his chair. He carefully moved the black sheet up out of the way. The care made her want to kiss him more. She opened his house pants. His cock was still soft, lying between his legs. She did not take it in his mouth at once. She pressed her face to it first, breathed on it, and watched it lift, little by little, under her gaze. She used to find this slowness impatient. Today the slowness felt like a luxury she was allowed.

"I want to use my mouth," she said. "You don't have to push my head. If you want it deep, tell me. I have a veto. Same if you only want me to hold you. Tell me. Don't force yourself to accept a service. I used to turn this into a service. Today it isn't."

Xiaoyao's hand went into her hair and only rested there. He did not push.

"I want it. When it's deep I'll say so. Lin Xi, look up. Look at me once while you're taking me. Once is enough. I'm not training you to look forever."

She took him in. Between soft and hard, his cock grew harder in her mouth. The head met her tongue. The taste was clean skin and a little of his own salt. Her tongue circled the rim of the head. Her hand held the base. She slowly took him to the opening of her throat, drew back, kissed down the shaft with her lips, kissed his balls, and came back to the head to lick away the wet that had beaded there. Xiaoyao's breath went heavy. He did not direct the speed. Only when she swallowed too fast and the corners of her eyes reddened did he say, "Slow. Look at me."

She looked. Eyes wet, mouth stretched open. That one look made his fingers tighten and then loosen at once, as if he were afraid of becoming the kind of force he hated. Because of that, Lin Xi wanted to give him more. She used her mouth until he was fully hard, took him as deep as she could bear, and her throat tightened once. Xiaoyao hummed, low. His stomach went tight.

"Up," he said. "I don't want to finish only in your mouth. I want to be inside you. Unless you want me to come like this. You choose."

She took her mouth away. A thread of wet broke on her lip. She wiped it. Her face was red, and she smiled.

"Inside me. The floor is fine. The bed is too far. If the forty minutes have to start being counted, the floor is more honest."

He got down from the chair and lay with her on the old wood. The floor was cold. The moment her back touched it she shivered, a fine rash of a shiver. Xiaoyao put his outer shirt under her. When that was done he caught both her wrists, lifted them over her head, and pressed them to the floor. Before he pressed, he stopped.

"May I hold them. Yesterday you said you liked making fewer decisions. If you don't like your wrists held, say so now."

"You may. A little tighter is all right too. Don't make it hurt so much that my signature shakes tomorrow. I don't have anything to sign tomorrow, but I still have hands that need to type."

"I know."

He entered her. She was already soaked. There was almost no resistance. He went deep enough that both of them made a sound at once. With her wrists held she could not hold him. She could only use her legs. They locked around him. The tops of her feet went taut. Xiaoyao's pace was steady. Each stroke made the wood give a very light sound, as if the room were counting for them. Lin Xi watched his face, watched him lose a little of the calm he had when he was designing, because of her. That loss made her clench wildly.

"I'm here," she said, to herself and to him. "I'm not performing a service. I want you. Xiaoyao, hold me down. I'm not going anywhere."

He kissed her until she could not make a whole sentence. He did not keep both hands on her wrists. He changed to one hand holding both, and the other went down to rub her clit. All three places at once, and she came apart fast. When she came, her wrists strained once in his palm, not to escape, a bow the body made by itself. She cried out. Her cunt bit him hard. Wet soaked the shirt under her. Xiaoyao let her wrists go so she could finally hold him, and then he came too, deep and long. She felt every pulse. She recorded every pulse, the way you record evidence that does not need to be filed.

Forty minutes was of course not enough, and should not have been enough. They used longer. Long enough that the sheet with the gold line stirred lightly on the desk in a draft of air, and was not stained by a cup. Later Lin Xi sat back on the floor in his clothes and used twenty minutes to write the bone of the letter as one paragraph: the place of custody does not change; maintenance follows the list permitted by the court; the dinner does not discuss alternatives. She read the paragraph to Xiaoyao.

"Like you," he said. "Hard, short, the handle not left for anyone else."

"This afternoon I want to look at that note," she said. "I'll open the drawer myself. If you're beside me I may cry. If I cry, don't hand me a solution. A tissue is enough."

The drawer was the bottom one of the bedroom chest. Inside were the property papers, an expired passport, and a flat tin. In the tin there was only a piece of paper the size of a business card. The paper had gone soft. The writing was his, six years ago, the ink a little bled: Legal comments absorbed. The paper is still mine. And then a smaller line: If you agree, dinner is mine too.

Lin Xi set the paper on her knee. The crying came without sound. Xiaoyao sat on the edge of the bed, pulled one tissue, and set it by her hand. He did not wipe her face. She wiped it herself. When she was done she held the paper out to him, as if he might have forgotten.

"I didn't agree to the dinner line," she said. "At the time I only answered you with one word. All right. Later dinner really was often yours. And I wasn't at the table. The note didn't say if there's no hearing. I added that condition myself, later. Xiaoyao, I ruined your sentence."

"A sentence can be changed back," he said. He put the paper back into her palm and held her fingers with it. "Not changed back to six years ago. Six years ago you were twenty-six and I was twenty-four, and we both thought revising an invitation overnight could revise the days too. Now you're thirty-two and I'm thirty. We'll be tired. There will be Zhao Heng. There will be varnish. Changing it back means dinner is ours first. The paper is still mine. You, the person, are not my property. If you're willing to sit at the table, that's your decision."

"I'm willing," she said. "I'll sit tonight. Don't put so much ginger on the fish again. I can cut vegetables. While I'm cutting, no Pei Song. If I talk about him, I kiss you. The rule was set yesterday. Sunday it remains in force."

The food at night was in fact a little better. Less ginger. The fish was still a bit old. They drank with the old flesh. The wine was half a bottle of huangjiu left in the cabinet, not much, one cup each. The rims touched. Lin Xi's phone lit. A text from Gu Chengyan: Monday night, Wutong Hall on Julu Road, six-thirty. Please bring Mr. Jiang. A family meal. No official papers. Only how to keep the old shop's door.

She showed Xiaoyao the text.

"He says no official papers," Lin Xi said. "That kind of sentence needs the most defense. I'll go. Are you still going. There's still time to back out. I won't punish you."

"I'll go," Xiaoyao said. "I'll choose your clothes. You choose mine. We choose each other, so you don't dress yourself for court and I don't dress myself for the gallery."

"Then you wear the dark blue shirt. Not black. Black looks like you came to fight, under those lights. I'll wear the dark green. Hair down. Underwear—"

She stopped. She stopped because a more private thought had grown out of yesterday's rules. Xiaoyao looked at her and waited.

"Say it," he said. He did not hurry it into an interrogation.

"I want you to decide whether I wear underwear," Lin Xi said. Her ears went completely red. "This is too far. The dinner is a client. If something happens, it's my professional risk. So the veto stays. But I want to practice one thing: before I walk into that room, one decision isn't mine. If you think this is taking sex into a place where it doesn't belong, refuse. If you refuse, I won't be undressed for other people to see. I'll only know it myself."

Xiaoyao thought. His finger tapped the rim of the cup. The tap was rhythm, not impatience.

"Wear them," he said. "Wear them. Not because I'm conservative. Because half of why you're offering this now is that you want to prove you're changing by obeying something more extreme. Proof isn't what I want. That table on Julu Road will be looking at you. I want you comfortable. I want you able to stand up and speak. Wear the underwear. I'll make the other decisions. You drink one glass. I'll block the second. If Pei Song turns the warehouse into politeness, you look at me once, and I'll interrupt by pouring water. That's our signal. If you don't agree, veto it now."

Lin Xi went still. She had thought he would enjoy the dirtier decision. He did not. He made the decision into protection, and he did not gather her up into a child. Her eyes heated again. She stood, came around the table, sat in his lap, buried her face, and said, muffled:

"No veto. This decision of yours is much worse than not wearing underwear. It makes me want to be held by you more. Xiaoyao, how are you like this."

"Because I love you," he said. "And because I've seen what you look like when you aren't present. Tomorrow you have to be present. Being present is harder than any secret. We keep the hard part. The sex we do when we get home. Home is Hunan Road, not the washroom of a private dining room."

She nodded against him. The sweetness of the huangjiu was still at the root of her tongue. She had put the note back in the tin. The tin was not locked. It was unlocked because she had decided she would dare to look, after this. Outside, someone was bringing a bicycle in. The chain sounded, and sounded again. Sunday ended like that. No color blocks. No varnish. Only a door with the handle on the inside, and a night when both of them were still willing to put a hand on it.

Chapter 8 Julu Road

Monday evening came fast. At the firm Lin Xi checked the reconsideration plan one more time, and at the end she deliberately left the folder in her office and did not take it to dinner. Xiaoyao came downstairs to collect her at five-forty. Dark blue shirt, one button open at the collar, jacket over his arm. He did not look like the gallery. He looked like a person who knew how to walk on a street like this.

The car was hers. He drove. West Nanjing Road to Julu Road was not far, but there were many red lights. Lin Xi looked at her dark green dress. Her hair really was down. The underwear was on. Silk against her skin, reminding her that someone had made, for her, a decision she had been ready to hand over.

"If I look at you," she said, "you pour water. What do you say while you pour."

"I say I'm changing this glass for tea. Then I ask Gu Wan which scent in the shop smells best right now. Pull the talk off the door. If you want to take it back yourself, you take it. The signal is help. It isn't stealing your mouth."

"All right." She put her hand on his thigh for a while, then took it back. "Xiaoyao, I want you a little. Right now. It's not appropriate. I'm saying it so it doesn't turn into an accident in the private room."

"Received." The corner of his mouth moved. "We deal with it at home. Eat first. You can redo your lipstick once. I could also kiss it off after, but then walking in would be too obvious. Bear it."

Wutong Hall was on the second floor of an old house. There really were plane trees outside the windows. Inside was a round table, the lamps a little yellow. Gu Chengyan was already there. Fifty-five, complexion well kept, voice large. He shook Xiaoyao's hand first, and he shook it hard.

"Mr. Jiang, I've long heard of you. In this little matter of ours, Ms. Lin is the pillar that keeps us steady. You have to let her come home now and then. Of course, tonight we are not allowed to settle the account of coming home. Family meal."

"Mr. Gu." Xiaoyao's smile was shallow. "She didn't bring a folder today. That's a fact I saw. The other accounts we'll do ourselves. They don't go on this table."

Gu Chengyan blinked, then laughed out loud, and after the laugh he looked at Lin Xi as if he were pricing her again. Gu Wan arrived two minutes late, a little wind in her short hair. She sat and said the dishes were already ordered, don't add any, adding would turn it into a banquet and not a meal. Pei Song arrived last. Forty, a very thin watch, a smile that was not thin. He wore a good, restrained wood scent, exactly enough to show he had studied the Gu family, and not so heavy as to be rude.

"Ms. Lin, I heard about your manner in court," Pei Song said. The handshake was exactly long enough, not so short as to be discourteous, not so long as to occupy. "Mr. Jiang makes books. I saw the binding you did for The Paper Edge. The black was very clean."

Xiaoyao looked at him. "That set was two years ago. You remember it, which means you did the homework. I'll accept the homework. Tonight I only came to eat."

Under the table, Lin Xi's hand loosened a little. He did not need her to rescue the scene. That both settled her and made a heat she did not know. The dishes came. Eel in sizzling oil, plain stir-fried shrimp, a pot of soup. The huangjiu was warmed. Gu Chengyan poured for her. Xiaoyao naturally offered his own empty cup and took the place of the second glass.

"Ms. Lin holds her drink. Let her drink," Gu Chengyan said.

"Tomorrow she still has to see whether Zhao Heng actually files for reconsideration," Xiaoyao said. "I'll take this glass. After I've taken it, if the food is salty, pour her tea. Mr. Gu, this is looking after your own counsel, not pressing her to drink. I understand. So I'm not polite about taking it."

Gu Wan tapped her bowl with her chopsticks, which counted as praise. Pei Song smiled and slid the subject toward where the spices came from, toward the temperature and humidity of warehouses. He slid so smoothly that Lin Xi could almost hear the track.

"Speaking of preservation," Pei Song said, "the story outside about Beicheng's warehouse plan is very crude. In fact, if it's only two people, two locks, and the Gu family free to inspect at any time, it may not be a bad thing for an old shop. Ms. Lin, you're a professional. A professional doesn't look only at hostility. Custody offered in good faith can sometimes make reconsideration unnecessary. What do you think."

The heat of the huangjiu was still in her stomach. The lamp over the round table made every face gentle. Gentleness was the easiest way to soften a sentence. Pei Song looked at her. Gu Chengyan looked at her too. In Gu Chengyan's eyes was the expectation that if she only nodded, tonight could become easy. On the tip of Lin Xi's tongue the dangerous word had already appeared: could. Could discuss. Could look at the text. Could be not tonight, but leave a crack in the door.

Just then Xiaoyao's knee touched her knee. Not sex. A reminder. One touch, then it stayed. She cut her eyes sideways. He had already picked up the teapot. Tea ran into her cup. The sound was light.

"I'm changing this one for tea," he said, in the tone of someone only looking after a person who had to be up early tomorrow. "Ms. Gu, if the shop kept only one scent for autumn, which would you keep. I'm an outsider. I've only smelled the one at your door. Like wood after rain."

Gu Wan caught it fast. "Camphor wood and aged tangerine peel. Not the sweet ones that try to please. Sweet sells fast. What it leaves behind is a smell return customers don't want to smell again."

The talk was pulled off. The door was not discussed into a door that could be evaluated. Lin Xi's word "could" died behind her teeth, and it died hard enough that a thin sweat came up on her back. She lifted the tea. The tea was hot. The heat put her back inside her own mouth.

"Mr. Pei," she said. Her voice was half a degree lower than usual. She heard it, and she still finished the sentence. "A change in the place of custody is not on tonight's table. We have answered Zhao Heng's letter. If Beicheng or any investor has a proposal, it goes in writing. If, in the writing, the key sits with the board, then it isn't custody. It's a move. A move is not good faith. I've said that. Next I want to hear Ms. Gu on camphor wood. I actually want to hear it."

The room was quiet for a second. Pei Song's smile was still there, thinned by a layer. Gu Chengyan's expectation cracked, and Gu Wan caught it with one line: "My brother is most afraid of camphor wood. He says it smells like medicine." The table turned again. Under it, Lin Xi's hand was shaking. Xiaoyao's hand came over it and covered it. He did not rub. He only covered, the way you cover a seal so it will not be smeared before it dries.

She knew where the danger was in her voice having dropped half a degree. That was not her voice in court. That was the voice from Saturday's sofa, after she had finally changed an instruction into a request. If Pei Song's ear was sharp, he would hear that this was not weakness. It was another kind of private. He looked at her once, looked at Xiaoyao once, and raised his glass only to Gu Chengyan. He did not push that door again.

Halfway through she went to the washroom. In the mirror the lipstick was still there, but her eyes were too bright. Gu Wan pushed the door in, stood beside her to wash her hands, and did not look at her.

"The tea was changed well," Gu Wan said. "It wasn't your husband taking the words. It was you swallowing that 'could' yourself. I saw you swallow it. Pei Song saw it too. He'll change strategy. He won't change the target. After you go back, don't drink, and don't explain to my brother for too long. Explaining will make him feel the door is still there."

"I almost said it," Lin Xi said to the mirror. She did not dodge. "Not because of the wine. Because the light was too warm, and his sentence sounded too much like care. My husband touched me once. Then I came back. This is private. Ms. Gu can treat it as unheard."

"I heard it." Gu Wan shut off the tap. "I'll take the private talk with me. Your person is outside. Go back and sit. I can say two more sentences about camphor wood, and leave your breath somewhere to go."

Back at the table, Pei Song had switched to his collection of old books. He asked Xiaoyao what cover was in his hands now. Xiaoyao said a book of poems about plane trees and receipts, one gold line only, no varnish accepted. Pei Song praised it as restraint. After the praise he turned to Lin Xi, and the smile was tender.

"A person like Ms. Lin, with someone at home who makes books, that's good. Outside they all say a lawyer's marriage is hard. Seeing the two of you, it doesn't seem so hard. Everything stable, and then the case is stable."

This was the trap that wanted her to say everything was fine, laid with velvet. Lin Xi's back tightened. She looked at Xiaoyao. This look was not the signal to pour water. The water had already been used. This look said: you told me you couldn't take everything is fine. You say it. I'm giving this sentence back to you. Not because I can't say it. Because this sentence belongs to both our mouths.

Xiaoyao set his cup down. He did not look at Pei Song for long, but every word arrived.

"It isn't stable," he said. "We only recently pulled our talk out of a calendar. The rescue was average. The people are real. Whether the case is stable depends on Ms. Lin's work and the court's ruling. It doesn't depend on us performing affection at this table. To Mr. Gu. To Ms. Gu. If the old shop's door is to stay, don't tie it to someone else's marriage."

Gu Chengyan's smile stiffened, then truly loosened. When it loosened he looked a little older, and a little truer.

"Mr. Jiang is frank," he said. "I'm old-fashioned. Old-fashioned people sometimes look at a person and see a memorial arch. I won't make anyone drink a forfeit. Gu Wan would scold me. Come, eat the shrimp. The shrimp is about to go cold."

Pei Song did not offer that cup again. His watch flashed once under the lamp, thin, expensive, and it lit nothing. When the meal broke up he left first. The handshake was still exactly right. He left one sentence: "Written things will always have writing." Gu Chengyan walked them to the head of the stairs, started to speak, stopped, and in the end only said, Ms. Lin, today's tea was very good.

In the car, the door shut, and only then did Lin Xi's shoulders drop. Her palms were all sweat. Xiaoyao did not drive at once. The shadow of a plane tree lay on the windshield.

"I almost talked the case away," she said. "By a little. The word 'could' was already on my tongue. If you hadn't touched me, I would have left a crack in that door. If I had left the crack, we would have lost the structure before reconsideration. Xiaoyao, this isn't sweet talk. It's a fact. You pulled me back out of one sentence. I'm grateful, and I'm afraid. Afraid that later I'll use your knee to make legal judgments."

"You didn't use my knee to judge," he said. "The judgment was what you said yourself. A move is not good faith. That sentence was yours. I only poured tea and asked about camphor wood. Gu Wan was the one who caught the camphor wood. Don't write a pull-back that belonged to three people as me saving your profession."

She turned to look at him. The streetlight laid a thin line along the side of his face. She suddenly wanted to cry, and wanted to laugh.

"You never take the credit."

"If I take the credit it becomes varnish." He started the car. "Home. At home you can shake however you want. In the car, drink some water first. The water is in the cup holder on your side. I put it there before we left. Not a schedule. I knew you'd be afraid afterward."

She drank. The water was warm. The flask had sat in the car overnight and was somehow still right. Julu Road fell back toward Hunan Road. Her legs were together. The silk underwear was still on. Her body, though, was quietly heating from the afterfear and from the memory of that knee. She did not deal with it in the car. She remembered what he had said. The sex they would do at home.

"When we get home, don't shower first," she said softly. "Let me look at you first. I want to tell you how much, in that room, I wanted to say that request to you alone. I held it. After holding it, I want a reward now. The reward isn't because I performed well. It's because I still want you. If you're tired, we only hold each other. If you aren't—"

"I'm not tired," Xiaoyao said. His eyes stayed on the road. "The reward starts when you open your mouth. Open it with a complete sentence. We're almost home. The elm bench is still crooked. When the door opens, you leave Julu Road outside. Leave Zhao Heng outside. Leave Pei Song's watch outside. The only person who comes in is the one you want."

"I want you," she said.

The car stopped under the plane tree. They had forgotten to turn off one light on the third floor before they left. There was a little yellow in the window. It did not look like a schedule. It looked like light someone had left on, and it was not expensive. Lin Xi undid her seat belt, leaned over, and kissed him once before he got out. The kiss was short. Short as a private seal, set on this evening that had nearly slipped, proving they had still come back.

Chapter 9 The Entryway

The key turned louder than usual. Lin Xi came in, and leaving Julu Road outside the threshold was not as easy as she had thought. Pei Song's watch still flashed once at the bottom of her eye. She bent to take off her shoes. Xiaoyao took them and set them on the elm bench with the uneven legs. The bench rocked.

"A complete sentence," he said. The door shut behind him. "In the car you said half of one."

The entry light was warm. Her dark green dress still carried a little of the food from the private room, and the leftover smell of camphor wood. She leaned on the door and looked at him, and set down what was left of the lawyer's frame.

"I want you to touch me in the entry," she said. "Not because I performed well today and I'm here to collect a prize. Because I almost said the case wrong, and my legs are still soft now that we're back. I want you to put me against this door, push the dress up, and come in. Fast is all right too. I want to cry out. What I cry is your name. If the neighbors hear, I'll be embarrassed tomorrow. Tonight I want it first. If you don't want the entry, we go to the bed. You choose the place. I choose the fact that I want you."

Xiaoyao listened, then kissed her forehead, then her mouth. The kiss was deep. It took that long request into the body. His palm pressed the small of her back, turned her, and put her chest to the door. The door was cold. Her nipples went hard at once. He did not tear anything. He pushed the dress up from behind. His thumb hooked the edge of the silk underwear and drew it down to the middle of her thighs. When his fingers went in, both of them knew how wet she was.

"Like this since I poured the tea?" he asked behind her ear.

"Since you said it wasn't stable." Her face was against the door. Her voice was muffled. "You admitted in front of them that we aren't fine, and that the people are real. I clenched once, right then. It was too much. That was a client's table. I clenched anyway. Xiaoyao, don't use only your hand. I want your cock. Please come in now."

The sound of his belt in the entry was especially clear. The head set against her entrance, rubbed twice through her wet, and then all of him pushed in. Lin Xi's forehead hit the door. She made a short cry that was actually let go. Too full. Standing, the angle drove him deep. Every stroke sent her into the door. The elm bench beside them gave a small sound, as if it meant to count. One of Xiaoyao's hands covered her lower belly so the handle would not strike her. The other came around to the front, onto her clit, not light and not heavy, rubbing in time with the thrusts.

"Cry out," he said. "You said you wanted to. This isn't the forty-second floor. It's the third. You decide the volume. I won't cover your mouth. Unless you want me to."

"Don't cover it." She called his name in pieces. Called that it was too deep. Called don't stop. Next door, a chair seemed to move. She went rigid for half a second. Xiaoyao stopped for half a second too.

"Do you want the bed," he asked. His cock was still buried in her, the pulse jumping. "This is a question. Not a retreat."

"The bed," she said, panting. "I want to cry out more clearly. In the entry I'll split my attention listening for the neighbors. If I split it, I'm not present. Carry me over. Don't stay out of me too long. I'll be empty."

He really almost did not leave her. He pulled back a little, lifted her across his arms, and on those few steps slid half of himself back in. Both of them laughed and both of them swore. When the bed took them the frame cried out once, loud. Xiaoyao set her on the edge of the bed, on her back, her legs up on his shoulders, and drove deep again. In this position she could see all of him. The dark blue shirt still hung on his arms. The collar was a mess. His hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat. He was good-looking, and he was hard, hard in the way of refusing to move his eyes.

"Watch me do it," he said. "Julu Road is over. Now there's only Hunan Road. You're hot and tight inside. You're gripping me so hard I can barely stand. Lin Xi, touch your own nipple. That sentence is a request. If you don't want to, hold the sheet."

She chose to touch. Her fingers pinched her nipple. Shame and pleasure together. Her cunt tightened with it. Xiaoyao's thumb stayed on her clit, drawing circles. Below, the thrusts went from fast to deep and slow. When it was fast she only felt filled. When it was slow she felt every line of him, and how much she needed him. The orgasm was cooked out on a low fire. She arched. Her calves shook on his shoulders. The sound she made was long and straight, and not one word of it was a ruling. The grip of her broke Xiaoyao's breath. He said, low, that he was about to come.

"Come inside," she said. Her eyes did not dodge. "I want to feel it. Then hold me. Don't talk first. Let me hear your heart. A heartbeat is more honest than a review."

When he came he covered her completely, his face in the side of her neck. Heat struck the deepest place. Lin Xi's legs slid from his shoulders and locked around his waist, keeping him in. Sweat against sweat. Next door made no more sound. Maybe they had not heard clearly at all. Maybe they had, and tomorrow on the stairs they would only nod. She found she could accept that uncertainty. Accepting it made her hold him more softly.

After a good while he pulled out, padded her with a tissue so the sheet would not take it at once, and still held her. Lin Xi's ear was against his chest. The heartbeat went from urgent to the kind a person could follow with breath.

"The review is one sentence," she said later, quietly. "I can't use your knee to judge. Today, 'a move is not good faith' was mine. It has to be mine after this too. You can pour tea. You can't appear in court for me."

"I don't want to appear in court," Xiaoyao said. "All I know how to do is refuse the varnish. You close the legal doors. We close the doors of living together. Lin Xi, tomorrow morning I decide breakfast. After I decide, you have a veto. It's a very small test of who is in charge after we come home. Not a permanent constitution."

"A test of what."

"Of whether, on a morning that isn't an emergency, you can let the first decision go. If you have something at court at seven, the test voids itself and you leave first. When it doesn't void, you don't revise my decision while you eat. Fried or boiled, you eat the eggs first. You can say they're bad. You can't turn it into you doing them over."

She laughed once against his chest, and after the laugh kissed that piece of skin.

"No veto. Xiaoyao, this is harder than being put against the door. I'll try. If I fail the try, tell me. Don't store it up. Stored up, it turns back into silence."

"Done," he said. "Sleep now. You haven't taken your makeup off. I'll get the cotton. You lie there. This isn't treating you as a patient. Your legs are still shaking. I saw."

She was shaking. After the shaking she took the makeup off, and her face went back to having no armor. In the mirror a woman of thirty-two had eyes a little red, and a mouth that was soft. She said a very small sentence to the mirror. Xiaoyao heard it from the doorway.

"The person is here," she said.

"Here," he answered.

The light went off. The plane tree's shadow came back onto the curtain. The yellow lamps of Julu Road, Pei Song's thin watch, the "could" that had almost left her mouth, all stayed outside. Inside there was breath, a little wet that had not dried, and a test about breakfast. Lin Xi held his hand. Holding it, she finally slept. That night she did not dream of putting herself on trial.

Chapter 10 The Call

On Tuesday the shadow of reconsideration became more concrete. Zhao Heng did not file at once. He applied to communicate with the clerk of the handling judge about "a maintenance exception in the enforcement of the preservation order." The clerk turned him back and told him to go in writing. Being turned back was not a victory. It was a buffer. A buffer was the most wearing thing in a lawyer's days, because it did not give you a hammer you could bring down. It only gave you waiting. At the firm Lin Xi wrote the waiting into three lists: if they filed for reconsideration, if they complained, if the other side turned and went to Gu Chengyan in private. The third list was the most dangerous. Gu Chengyan ate softness, and he also ate sentences like "close enough will pass."

At noon she ordered a salad herself and did not wait for Xiaoyao to come. She messaged him: Don't bring soup today. It isn't a refusal of you. I need to practice finishing the third list without you in the corridor. See you tonight. Seven to seven-thirty. If I'll be late, I'll say so ahead.

He answered: The list is yours. The door before seven-thirty is mine. If you're late, say so.

She read the sentence three times before she set the phone down. Zhou Ning was binding documents beside her. At the third copy she finally could not hold it.

"Ms. Lin, your messages today don't seem to be giving orders."

"They're making a date," Lin Xi said. Her ears heated on their own. "Bind them. Don't get the order of the third one wrong. The private-chat list goes on top. If Mr. Gu calls, transfer him to me first. Don't block him with 'Ms. Lin is in a meeting.' The moment he's blocked, he'll go find Pei Song."

The afternoon did come. Not a phone call. A long voice message from Gu Chengyan, a shop bell in the background. He said that tomorrow Beicheng wanted to invite him to tea, with Pei Song accompanying, just to listen in private, no commitment. The voice message Lin Xi sent back was short: Don't go. Listening in private is the waiting room of a commitment. If they have something to say, and if the court arranges a communication on Thursday, they say it in a room where there is a record. Tonight she would write him the reasons. After she wrote them she looked at the clock. Six-twenty. She could make it.

She reached Hunan Road at six fifty-eight. The time was so exact she wanted to laugh at herself. When Xiaoyao opened the door there was a little flour on him. He clearly had not meant to be caught in the act.

"I thought you'd be seven-twenty," he said. "The noodles aren't in the pot yet. Do you want to veto tonight's noodles and eat something else."

"No veto. I'll wash my hands and help you wash dishes. I won't help you decide the salt. You're already deciding the salt."

Dinner was tomato noodles, simple, sour in the right degree. She told him about Gu Chengyan's voice message, and when she was done she kissed him once, by the rule, the toll. After the kiss she put the phone on the stool outside the bedroom door and announced it herself: she would not look before nine, unless the landline rang. Xiaoyao nodded. He did not applaud. Not applauding made it more like life, and less like a certificate.

The time before nine had been arranged as a shower and a look at his cover proof. She broke the arrangement herself. She hugged him from behind. Her hand went in under the hem, palm on his stomach, and slowly down.

"I want you," she said. "You choose the place. Who leads tonight, I'll say it: you lead. I want to stand or to be on my front, whichever you want. I don't want to process the list while we do it. If I start talking about Zhao Heng, remind me. The way you remind me is to stop and say my name."

"The living-room sofa," he said. "Leave the light on. I want to see whether you've gone somewhere else. Going somewhere else isn't a crime. If you go, we stop, call the person back, and then continue. Do you agree."

"I agree."

Clothes came off to the necessary degree. She knelt on the sofa, hands on the arm that had been worn bright. This time he did not have to read the rules again. She swallowed the instructions herself and left only sound. Xiaoyao entered her from behind, very slowly, one hand locked on her waist. The other hand went looking for her clit only later. Lin Xi turned her face so he could see her eyes. The eyes were clear, wet, and had no list in them.

Just when the rhythm had become the deep one both of them knew, the phone at the bedroom door rang. Not a vibration. She had forgotten to silence it. The ringtone was the default, clean, hateful, echoing in the old apartment. Xiaoyao stopped. He was still inside her. Both of them listened.

"It may be Gu Chengyan." Lin Xi's voice was already not her courtroom voice. She tried to find it. "I want to answer. I want you to stay inside me and not move yet. That's too much. If you don't want to be that kind of background, pull out now. I'll call back. Not answering is also allowed. I already said his business once, in the voice message. Xiaoyao, you choose. I'll take it."

His hand tightened on her waist, then loosened. The silence was only a few seconds. In those seconds the ringtone went around again.

"I'll stay," he said. "I won't move. You answer. If, on the phone, you turn your voice into a voice from bed, or if you use me as a tool to steady your nerves and don't look at me, I'll pull out. That's my condition. You can still change your mind."

"Condition accepted," she said. "Please hand me the phone. After you hand it over, look at me. I'll look at you too."

The screen was Gu Chengyan, as expected. She answered and held the phone at her ear, and tried to keep her voice steady. Xiaoyao stayed at the deepest point. His cock jumped once from holding still. Her walls, disobedient, sucked once. She bit the tip of her tongue.

"Mr. Gu. I'm here. Go ahead."

"Ms. Lin, Pei Song called again." Gu Chengyan's voice was large, with the emptiness of a shop after closing. "He says if the court organizes an informal communication on Thursday, he can sit in as a friend and help us see Beicheng's real bottom line. As a friend, listening shouldn't hurt. Don't be so tense. I didn't agree to the tea."

"If an informal communication has no record, we don't attend," Lin Xi said. The tail of her voice was a little too soft. She bit the words clear at once. "Pei Song is not attending as a friend. He is a potential transferee. Sitting in means he is in the room. One more person in the room, and he takes the bottom line. Tomorrow morning I'll send a written opinion to you and to Gu Wan. We don't unfold it on the phone tonight. Mr. Gu, right now you only need to promise me one thing: don't answer him tonight."

On the sofa, Xiaoyao's thumb touched the side of her waist, lightly. Not a movement. A question: is the person still here. She turned her face, looked at him, and nodded once. The nod was not for the client. Gu Chengyan was still saying how well Pei Song understood incense, how many resources he had. Lin Xi held her husband inside her and listened to a client turn a white knight into a resource. It was absurd enough that she almost wanted to laugh. She did not laugh. She also did not clench hard enough to make herself sound. She put the urge to twist her hips into her eyes and gave it to Xiaoyao to see. Xiaoyao understood, and still did not move. Sweat fell from his temple onto her back. That one drop made her feel he was a person, more than any thrust would have. He was not background.

"Mr. Gu." She cut in, polite, and hard. "Don't answer tonight. If you receive anything from him before nine tomorrow morning, forward it to me. Don't answer so much as a punctuation mark. This is the engagement. It isn't a discussion. If you think I'm being too cautious, you may change lawyers before Thursday. Changing is cheaper than handing over the bottom line on a phone call."

The other end was quiet for two seconds, then sighed, and agreed. The call ended. The busy tone was ridiculously short.

Lin Xi threw the phone to the other end of the sofa. Only after she threw it did she find that her arm was shaking. Xiaoyao still did not move. He was waiting.

"The call is over." Her voice split. "Move. Please move. I need you. But hear one sentence first: just now, for an instant, I thought this was exciting. That makes me sick. I don't want to keep you inside me in order to take a client call. Excitement is not a reason. If you don't want to go on now, we stop. If we stop I'll still hold you. I apologize first. The apology isn't in exchange for you continuing."

Xiaoyao pulled out. The withdrawal was slow, and it still brought a wet sound. The emptiness blacked Lin Xi's vision for a second. She did not chase it. She turned, knelt on the sofa, her shirt hanging in the crook of her arm, and looked at him. His cock was still hard, gleaming wet. He brushed the hair off her face first.

"I received the apology," he said. "I was willing to stay. I chose that myself. So it isn't only you using me as a tool. But when I heard you say exciting, I was uncomfortable too. The discomfort isn't to punish you. It's that I don't want to do it once more. Tonight ends here. I'll hold you. As for my cock, it'll go down on its own. You don't have to be responsible for finishing it. Lin Xi, if you continue in order to compensate me, that is the calendar."

Her tears fell, cleanly. She went into his arms. Her bare chest against his clothes. She cried until her shoulders shook, and she did not wail. Xiaoyao held her. His palm went down her back, and down again. At the other end of the sofa the phone's screen had gone black. The smell of tomato noodles was still in the air, so ordinary it almost did not match this tear.

"I'm afraid this person I am only has two states left," she said into his shoulder, muffled. "Either I manage everything, or I use the person closest to me as adrenaline. The middle kind, eating noodles with you, walking with you, I don't know how long I can hold it."

"You've held it for several days," he said. "Failing once isn't going back to the start. The new information tonight is: a call can be answered, and the body stays separate. We have that information. The price was that both of us were uncomfortable. The price is paid. We don't pay for that lesson a second time. Lin Xi, go wash your face. I'll heat milk. Not talking is fine too. If the not-talking is together, it isn't the old silence."

The milk had a little skin. She drank it. Afterward they lay in bed and did not finish what they had started. Xiaoyao's arm was on her waist. His cock had gone soft, resting against her quietly, like a thing not in use for the moment and still belonging to the life. Lin Xi thought she would lie awake and retry Gu Chengyan's sentences a hundred times. She did not. She fell asleep inside his breathing. The last thought before sleep was light: tomorrow morning, finish the written opinion, and then tell him that tonight's right to lead is void. Not because someone lost. Because both of them were still here.

Chapter 11 Terms

Wednesday morning's test was not voided by the court. There was no new emergency. Xiaoyao made fried eggs, a little scorched at the edge. Lin Xi ate them. She said they were good first, and then that the scorched edge was exactly right. She did not pick up the pan and do them over. The tiny success left both of them a little at a loss in the entry, as if a sentence that was too easy still needed practice.

"About last night," she said while she tied her shoes, "I won't take it to the firm and whip myself with it. If I whip myself, at noon I'll send you a long message. If you get a long message, you can answer 'it's enough that the person is here.' You don't have to analyze me. Tonight we talk terms. Who leads in bed. Who leads at home. While we talk, we don't do it. If we talk while doing it, I'll use my body as argument."

"Agreed." He handed her the bag. "Go write the opinion. Pei Song is not a resource. You already know how to say that sentence. Go say it where Gu Chengyan can see it. Paper is harder than a voice message."

The written opinion was a page and a half. Zhou Ning read it and changed only two marks of punctuation. Gu Chengyan replied with one word: good. Gu Wan replied: If my brother goes back on it, I'll stop him. Lin Xi sent both lines to Xiaoyao with no annotation. He replied with a period. The period made her smile once. After the smile she went back to work. The work had not grown less. What had changed was that when the work ended she remembered an evening waiting, not an empty refrigerator.

At night they took every file off the dining table. A pot of water sat on the stove. No vegetables went in. The terms came before dinner. Out of habit Lin Xi took a sheet of blank paper. Xiaoyao looked at the paper.

"Paper is allowed," he said. "Keywords only. Don't write 'Party A and Party B.' Don't write liability for breach. If you write breach, I stop talking. Once a marriage has damages, we start collecting evidence on each other. That's your profession. It isn't our home."

"No damages." She set the pen down and picked it up again. "But if I don't write it down, I'll be afraid. Afraid that one day when we're busy, these words will be as if they were never said. Xiaoyao, let me record keywords. When I'm done I'll read them once. They count when you nod. That's my concession. Your concession is allowing the paper to exist."

"Done."

They talked for a long time. The water boiled and was turned off. First: on work nights, before eleven, both phones go outside the bedroom door, unless both of them decide together to bring them in. An emergency is the court, a hospital, the notary, or a machine failure at the print shop. It is not "I want a look." Second: whoever gets home first decides what dinner is. The other washes the dishes. If it's bad, say so directly. No raking up old accounts. No keeping score. Third: the chart on the refrigerator keeps only hearing days, preservation deadlines, and his press dates. Whoever's day it is, that person writes it. Lin Xi no longer pre-writes his, and she no longer sticks a red "must come home" on herself. If coming home happens, it happens. It is not a magnet. Fourth: whoever speaks first in bed and asks does not automatically get the lead. The person who speaks says "tonight, you" or "tonight, me." The other may refuse to lead, and may refuse to do it. A refusal does not have to be written as a statement of reasons, but silence is not to be used in place of refusal. Fifth: instructions become requests. If either person says stop, they stop at once. After stopping, they hold each other first, and then decide whether to go on. Sixth: they do not use the other's body within earshot of clients, colleagues, a phone call, or the neighbors at the entry. If they want the entry, they first confirm the soundproofing of an old house like the one next door, and only when both of them feel they can bear it. On the phone clause, Lin Xi's ears were still red while she wrote it. She did not turn the red into an avoidance.

There were few keywords. On the paper only a few lines: Outside the door. Dinner. Whoever's day, that person writes it. Tonight you, tonight me. Request. Stop. The phone stays separate.

She read them once. Xiaoyao nodded. After the nod he folded the paper and did not put it on the refrigerator. The paper went into the tin, with the note from six years ago.

"Not posted outside," he said. "Outside, it becomes a new schedule. It lies in the box. If we forget, we open the box. Forgetting isn't shameful. Treating what was forgotten as if it never happened, that is."

Lin Xi looked at the tin and felt something land. The sound of landing was very light. Her body, in that moment, suddenly wanted him. She held the want down. No sex while they talked. She had said it herself.

"And dinner," she asked. "The terms are done. I'm hungry. This hungry isn't a metaphor."

Only then did he put the water back on to boil. Dinner was the simplest greens and rice. While she washed the dishes she deliberately used too much soap. He laughed at her, and after the laugh he reached from behind and rinsed the foam off her wrist. The rinsing was too much like a caress. Both of them paused. Lin Xi shut off the tap.

"This isn't the talk anymore," she said. "This is me wanting. Tonight, you. Please lead. The place is the bed. If you want to tie my wrists, use your tie, loose, the kind I can pull out of. Ask once more before you tie them. I'm not writing this as a permanent clause. It's only that tonight I want to make fewer decisions, and I trust you. If you don't want to tie them, hold them. I'll take either."

"Wait on the bed," he said. "I'll get the tie. If you change your mind before I bring it, call me. My name is enough. You don't have to finish the argument."

The bedroom light was on its warmest setting. Lin Xi took her clothes off herself and lay down, then felt that lying ready was too much like waiting for an inspection, so she turned onto her side. When Xiaoyao came in he had only his shirt left, and the dark blue tie. The tie had not been worn on Julu Road. Tonight it was finally given a use. He sat on the edge of the bed and let the silk sway in front of her eyes.

"Wrists crossed, over your head. I'll tie a slipknot. If you pull hard, it comes open. Coming open equals stop. If you want me to untie it, say untie. I'm asking now: tie them?"

"Tie them," she said. "A slipknot. I try that I can pull free, and then we start."

He tied it. She pulled once. The silk gave half an inch. She really could get out. She put her wrists back herself, so the knot would stay. The gesture made her blush to see it, and it darkened Xiaoyao's eyes. He bent and kissed her, from mouth to throat, to her nipples, to her belly, to between her legs. When his tongue licked her labia open, her hands instinctively wanted to press his head, and the tie stopped them. With that way out closed, the pleasure had nowhere to go but her throat. She cried out, soft and urgent.

He did not let her come at once. The tip of his tongue sucked her clit until it swelled, then left, kissed her thigh, waited for the sharpest wave to pass, and came back. Twice like that. The corners of Lin Xi's eyes were wet. Not crying. Being held on the edge. She did not shout for fast. She remembered requests.

"Please let me come," she said. Her voice was in pieces. "Or please come in, and let me come after you're in. If I can't choose, you choose. I trust you to choose. Xiaoyao, I'm here. I haven't gone off to think of something else."

"Then I'll come in," he said. "You come once after I'm in. Not a punishment. I want you to come while you're holding me. If you can't bear this kind of waiting, say stop."

"Don't stop."

When he entered she was already soaked. Her fingers tightened inside the slipknot. All of him went in, and both of them felt burned. Xiaoyao knelt and thrust. His thumb settled on her clit and this time did not leave. Lin Xi's orgasm came fast and full. Her walls bit wildly. Her wrists strained in the silk, and they did not pull free. She called his name until the whole bed heard it. Inside that grip Xiaoyao could not keep it slow. He bent and kissed her, swallowed the sounds, and below he still drove, stroke by stroke, to the deepest point. Her second came shorter and sharper, almost on a sob. Only then did he let his own pace go, caught up, and came inside her. When he came he said her name. Not Ms. Lin. Lin Xi.

He was the one who untied the slipknot. He rubbed her wrists and checked the red marks. The marks were faint. They would fade in a little while. He kissed the two pale lines, and the kissing made her want to cry again. This time the crying did not fall. She only pulled him into the quilt.

"You led well tonight," she said. "I'm not scoring you. I'm telling you my body knows it's you. If you have time in the daytime tomorrow, you can come to the firm and pick up the thermal box. Leaving after you pick it up is fine. Not leaving, sitting in my office for ten minutes, is also fine. The door stays open. I won't do it with you in the daytime glass. Doing it would teach yesterday's phone call the wrong lesson. Ten minutes of sitting is because I want to see you in daytime clothes."

"I'll come," he said. "Around eleven. The print-shop proof has to be picked up at ten. After I pick it up I'll come over. Ten minutes. When they're up, I leave. I won't turn your day into another bed."

"All right." She buried her face in his shoulder. "The terms are in the tin. The person is here. Xiaoyao, I think I'm not as afraid of sleeping as I used to be. Sleeping used to feel like handing time to a program I couldn't control. Now the time is on your arm. It's heavy. I like the weight."

Outside, a car passed. Its lights swept the ceiling and were gone. The tin was in the chest. It did not glow, and it did not make a sound. It did not need to. Their breathing slowly matched. Wednesday was changed, by the two of them, from a set of terms into a night a person could sleep through.

Chapter 12 Daylight

Thursday morning, Hengshi at eleven was bright. The glass no longer reflected only a yellow lamp and bodies, the way it had that night. It gave the whole floor's white light back to people. Lin Xi was in her office with a young assistant, finishing the format of the maintenance list. She looked up and only then saw Xiaoyao standing outside the glass. He kept the courtesy she had named: he did not push the door. He waited for her nod.

The thermal box was in his hand, washed clean, together with an eyebrow pencil she had left at home. An eyebrow pencil delivered to the firm by a husband was so slight it almost did not make sense. Slight was exactly right.

"Ten minutes," she said, and let him in. The door, as she had promised, was left a crack open. "Sit. I'll get a cup from the pantry. Or you drink nothing and only sit. Sitting counts too."

"Sitting," he said.

He sat on the narrow sofa. In daylight the sofa looked perfectly clean. Only she knew which seam had once held their wet. The knowing heated her ears once. She did not lock the door. She sat back in her own chair and looked at him across a desk. Both of them suddenly resembled people being introduced for the first time. Paper lint from the print shop was still on his cuff. On her desk the maintenance list was spread out. Names, times, the notary's supervisor, column after column, perfectly clear.

"Did the proof match," she asked.

"It matched. The gold line is finally that one line, not a smear." He picked the lint off his cuff. "Your list looks like a bridge. It's enough if the bridge can be crossed. Don't build the bridge into scenery."

"I'll try." She smiled. "In the ten minutes I won't talk about Pei Song. I'll say one private thing. Yesterday morning's eggs, I really did like the scorched edge. Not to soothe you. A fact. You can scorch them now and then after this. You don't have to succeed every time."

Xiaoyao looked at her. In his eyes was a softness rare in daylight. He was about to answer when someone knocked. Zhou Ning put half her body in, saw Xiaoyao, and stopped. She held a folder to her chest as if it had temporarily become a shield.

"I'm sorry. The door was open and I thought I could come in. Notice from the court. Friday at three in the afternoon, the handling judge will have both sides' lawyers and the parties communicate once on enforcement of the preservation order. Not a hearing. There will be a record. The place is still the original conference room. Zhao Heng has confirmed he will attend. If Mr. Gu attends, you need to decide."

"Mr. Gu attends. Gu Wan attends too," Lin Xi said. "We attend. Beicheng's legal representative may come. Pei Song is not on the chain of engagement. He can't come in. Reply to the clerk now, copy the other side. Neutral tone. Write 'informal observation will not be arranged' as a fact. Don't write it as a feeling."

Zhou Ning took it down. Her eyes were still careful not to rest too long on the sofa. Lin Xi felt an old impulse rise out of her spine: to say to Xiaoyao, in a cold voice, "You step out first," so the assistant would see a partner with no private parts. The impulse was very concrete. Concrete enough that the sentence was already composed. She saw Xiaoyao's eyes. He did not beg her. He only looked at her, to see whether she would let that sentence out.

She tore the sentence up.

"Zhou Ning," she said. The voice was a work voice, and it was not the kind that had gone cold. "Mr. Jiang will sit another five minutes. Put the materials on the desk. Draft the reply first. When it's written, don't run it over to me. Send it to my email. If Pei Song calls the firm, have him find Zhao Heng. He is not a person in this case."

"All right." Zhou Ning set the folder down. Before she backed out she finally looked at Xiaoyao once, and nodded. "Mr. Jiang."

"Thank you for the work," Xiaoyao said.

The door went back to that crack. White light came in through it. Lin Xi's palms were a little damp. She did not hide it.

"I almost sent you away just now," she said. "The sentence was ready. Very polite, and very dirty. Dirty because I wanted to buy five minutes without a husband, in exchange for looking professional in a colleague's eyes. I didn't say it. Not because I'm noble. Because you were looking at me. I still have to tell you the impulse is there. It may be there again. If you hear me speak to you in that voice, say my name on the spot. If you say it, I'll know I've fallen in."

"Lin Xi." He said it now, lightly, like a sound check. "This is a rehearsal. Not catching you. Does the rehearsal work."

"It works." She stood, walked to the sofa, and with the door open bent and kissed his forehead. She did not kiss his mouth. "The forehead is allowed. The mouth waits until we're home. Your ten minutes are up. I have to go write the preparation for Friday's record. You go eat. Tonight, seven to seven-thirty. The communication is Friday afternoon, so tonight we need to sleep. Sleeping can also be an arrangement. Not the chart. The body needs it."

"Tonight, me," he said, standing, picking up the thermal box he no longer needed. "Leading means I decide we're in bed before eleven, and we don't go all the way. We hold each other. If you want to, you say so, and we change it. Advance notice isn't an order. I want your voice still there on Friday."

"No veto," she said. "How do you make even restraint sound like something a person wants to violate."

"It can be violated." He smiled. "We vote again at home. I'm going now. I'll pull the door to a normal crack for you. Not a lock. A lock is a night thing."

After he left, the office was still white. Lin Xi sat down. Her fingers paused on the keyboard for a few seconds, and then she began to write. While she wrote, the warmth at the corner of her mouth was still there. Friday's conference room, Zhao Heng's wording, the softening that might come from Gu Chengyan, all went back into her profession. The profession had not been damaged by a kiss. It only no longer required her to wipe the warmth off her forehead.

That night she was home at seven-ten. The time was beginning to turn into a kind of normal she herself found extravagant. Xiaoyao had not made a complicated meal. Congee, a few small dishes, a plate of fruit already cut. While they ate they talked about Zhou Ning's knock, and about the gold line. They did not talk through a full strategy for court. She left strategy at the firm. He asked once whether Pei Song would be kept outside the door. She said he would. After she said it she kissed him, the toll, and then put the phone on the stool.

Before eleven they were in bed. The light was off. He held her from behind, palm on her lower belly, and did not reach lower. Lin Xi's body wanted him, of course. It wanted him for about ten minutes. She spoke in the dark.

"I want to. But I also want to hear your notice. Tonight we don't go all the way. So we kiss, and when I react we stop, and after we stop you hold me and we sleep. That's my request. If you already want to change the notice, say tonight me, or tonight you. We use the words in the box."

Xiaoyao turned her over and kissed her for a long time. He kissed her until her legs wound up on their own, until he was hard against her stomach, until both their breaths were a mess. Then he stopped. Forehead to forehead. He laughed once, and the laugh was hoarse.

"Stop," he said. "Not refusing you. I'm keeping the notice. On Friday you need this voice. I also need to see that we can stop. Lin Xi, sleeping hard once won't kill anyone. You sleeping wet once won't either. We keep this discomfort, and we keep it for after we come back tomorrow. Who leads tomorrow, we say tomorrow."

"This stop of yours is hateful," she said, and kissed his chin. "And lovable. I accept it. Xiaoyao, if I climb on you in the middle of the night, you can push me awake and remind me of this sentence. A reminder isn't killing the mood. It's what we agreed."

"I'll remind you." He pressed her into his chest. "Sleep. Whether I come on Friday afternoon. You haven't asked. I'll answer now. If you want me in the last row, I'll go. I won't sit with the parties. I'm not a party. I'm the person you can see when you've won, or when you've gotten through it."

"I want you to go," she said. "The last row. Seeing is enough. You don't have to hand me water. I can pour my own. If you're there, my sentences will come back into my own mouth. I believe that now. Not relying on your knee. Relying on the fact that you're present. Presence and substitution, I can tell them apart."

"Good that you can."

The night was very quiet. Now and then the old floor sounded, the building contracting, not someone pacing. When Lin Xi fell asleep in his arms, her body still held a little unfinished heat. The heat did not become resentment. It became a very concrete Friday: a conference room, a record, a black shirt or a dark blue one in the last row, and then home, and then the decision, tonight you, or tonight me.

Chapter 13 The Conference

Friday afternoon's conference room was more crowded than the night of the hearing. Judge Liang Qiushi was not in his robe. The clerk turned on the light of the recording equipment and said, "There will be a record." The sentence pulled everyone's back a little straighter. Zhao Heng's folder was thinner than last time. Thin was often more dangerous. It meant he had brought only the page he meant to hit with. Sun Qiming, Beicheng's legal representative, sat beside him, early forties, his volume arriving ahead of his reasons. Gu Chengyan's light gray suit was buttoned neat. Gu Wan turned her plain band once, and then it stopped.

Lin Xi's place was on their side. Zhou Ning was behind her on the right. In the last row, the chair by the door, Xiaoyao wore the dark blue shirt and held no papers. He nodded at her once. After the nod he put his gaze on the gray daylight outside the window. He did not look like someone who had come to supervise. He looked like someone keeping an appointment he had already made.

Zhao Heng spoke first. Maintenance required professionals. The constant temperature of the formula room could not rely only on the experience of the Gu family. A third-party warehouse had records, insurance, two people and two locks. This was enforcement of the preservation order, not resistance to the ruling. When he said the word "enforcement," he looked at Judge Liang, not at Lin Xi. Sun Qiming followed with a plainer sentence. The account had not been frozen, but suppliers were already asking whether this was an internal war. If the door stayed sealed, the old shop's Mid-Autumn window would pass.

Gu Chengyan's fingers moved once. Lin Xi saw it. That was the sign before a softening, like a handle being tested with pressure from the outside. She did not look at the last row at once. She set her own pen flat, and then she spoke.

"We agree to maintenance," she said. "The list, the number of times, the notary present. We can fix it today. The place does not change. What the ruling preserves is the status quo of the formula room and the seal. It does not find the status quo a new address that looks more advanced. If, under two people and two locks, the key is in the end decided by a board majority, that is not custody. That is a move. A move is not within the scope of today's record. Mr. Sun's Mid-Autumn window can be protected with the operating account. The account is not frozen. That was written in the oral ruling. It does not need to be marveled at again today."

Sun Qiming's face sank. Zhao Heng smiled. The smile lasted only until Gu Chengyan actually opened his mouth.

"If it's only going to look at the conditions of the warehouse," Gu Chengyan said, "with no commitment of any kind, does that still count as a move. Ms. Lin, I'm not trying to change your plan. I'm afraid we'll look as if we aren't being reasonable at all."

There was a very short vacuum in the room. Pei Song was not in it. His sentence still was. Look. Don't commit. Be reasonable. Lin Xi felt that there was a person in the last row. She did not hand her eyes to him to ask for an answer. She only turned her face, confirmed that the dark blue shirt was still by the door, and brought her gaze back to her own client. The person was here. The sentence was hers.

"Mr. Gu, looking is allowed," she said. "You privately visiting any warehouse in Shanghai is your freedom. It cannot be written into this record. It cannot become a condition for lifting or changing the preservation order. And the other side cannot designate the place or the people who accompany you. The moment it is written into the record, looking becomes an obligation. Obligations grow up. If what we sign today is a maintenance arrangement, then it is only maintenance. If you think this is unreasonable, we can recess for five minutes. You and Gu Wan can go out and decide whether to change lawyers. Changing is cleaner than turning 'looking' into a concession in a room that is being recorded."

Under the table Gu Wan stepped on her brother's foot. Not hard. Enough to make him swallow the second half of the sentence. Gu Chengyan's ears went red. After the red he actually smiled, like a father whose hand had been taken back in public. Annoyed, and also relieved.

"We won't look," he said. "We'll listen to Ms. Lin. Maintenance can be signed. The warehouse will not be looked at. Pei Song messaged again this morning. I didn't answer. Can that sentence stay out of the record. Leaving it out is fine. I'm saying it for myself to hear."

The clerk's fingers paused. Judge Liang looked up. His tone was level.

"Private communications unrelated to enforcement of the preservation order are not recorded. The number of maintenance visits, the personnel, the method of supervision, those are recorded now. If the two sides can form a written arrangement today, this tribunal does not encourage repeated applications to communicate on the same matter. Reconsideration is a party's right. If the right is to be exercised, follow procedure. Do not turn procedure into a dinner."

Zhao Heng's thin folder was finally opened. He did not push the warehouse again. He contested, word by word, the qualifications of the maintenance personnel. In the end the list was Gu Wan, one old technician, and one engineer from the other side. The engineer had to give twenty-four hours' notice before entering. If the notary's person was not present, the door did not open. Twice a month. The seal would still not be handed over. Lin Xi had Zhou Ning read those lines aloud, slowly, slowly enough that Sun Qiming could not paint the sentences out with a sigh.

When she signed, Lin Xi's hand was steady. After it was steady she capped the pen. The sound of the cap made her think of the night the hearing ended. The difference was that this time she knew who was sitting in the last row outside the door, and she knew she had not used his knee to judge.

After the meeting broke, Zhao Heng stopped for half a step in the corridor. It was still a relative of the same sentence. "Ms. Lin, my side will evaluate whether to seek reconsideration. Evaluation is not a threat."

"Evaluation is your work," Lin Xi said. "Send it in writing. I don't drink tea."

The light in the stairwell was dimmer than the corridor. When the people had mostly gone, her hands began to shake. The shaking was something she looked down on, and she could not finish looking down on it. Xiaoyao came up from the last step. He did not ask whether she had won. He took both her hands into his palms and gave the shaking an edge.

"The sentences were yours," he said. "I heard them. The warehouse is not in the record. And you didn't look at me for words. You only confirmed that I was there. I received the difference."

"I'm still shaking," she said. "Shaking isn't failure. I only want you to see it. After you've seen it, we go home. In the car I won't review more than three sentences. If I still want to talk after three, remind me. The word you use to remind me is my name."

Gu Wan came up from below the stairs. She saw them holding hands and was not awkward. She only put a paper bag like an envelope into the crook of Lin Xi's arm. "My brother's thanks are too loud. I changed them for this. Not a gift. A little pack of aged tangerine peel, not even as much as a mothball. Steep it. If your husband says it's bitter, that means our family hasn't infected him yet." She looked at Xiaoyao. "Not many people can sit still in the last row. Today Pei Song is at the coffee seats by the courthouse door. I had my brother leave by the side door. Don't you two run into him at the front and turn it into a pretty story."

"The side door," Lin Xi said. "Ms. Gu, that foot today isn't in the record. I'll thank you in private."

"A foot is housework," Gu Wan said. She had already turned. "The case is yours. Don't mix them. If you mix them, next time my brother will be inviting people to dinner again."

Out the side door, there was osmanthus in the wind, faint, as if someone had sent it from very far away. Pei Song's coffee seat was on the other side. They did not see his watch. In the car Lin Xi said three sentences. Maintenance was signed. The warehouse did not get in. Gu Chengyan himself said they would not look. Then she closed her mouth. Xiaoyao waited a few seconds and called her. "Lin Xi."

"I wasn't going to say a fourth," she said, and laughed. "I was only deciding tonight. Tonight, me. Not doing it in the car now. After we get home, after we've eaten, after I've washed today's conference room off, I lead. If you refuse, say refuse. Don't use tired in its place. Tired can be said directly."

"I don't refuse," he said. "I'm tired, and I want to. Both can be true at once. Whoever gets home first decides dinner. We'll arrive together. So this time you decide what we eat, and I decide the temperature of the bath. Do you think that's fair."

"Fair." She set her forehead against the headrest. "Don't make the water too hot. I've already been hot once today. The heat was here." She touched her temple. "What the body wants is to be soaked soft by you in warm water. After it's soaked soft, the person leading is still me. You are not allowed, because I look soft, to take the lead back. Unless I say 'tonight, you.'"

"I'll listen to you." He started the car. The shadow of the side door stayed behind them. "Home. The tangerine peel goes in your bag. Don't put it on my paper proofs. The smell of the peel gets into paper. The gold line will look as if it has been steeped."

Chapter 14 Tonight, Me

The lights on Hunan Road came on a little earlier than the lights at the court. They came in together. They changed their shoes together. The elm bench was still uneven. Lin Xi set the pack of tangerine peel in the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and saw the blue-gray-red schedule still stuck there, corners curled, like a summons that had already lost effect and was still occupying the courtroom.

"I want to tear it off," she said. "The keywords are in the tin. If this chart stays, I'll write today's victory on it. The moment I write it, the victory becomes a new magnet. Xiaoyao, tear it with me. Whoever's day, that person writes it. We start from an empty refrigerator door."

They tore the chart down. Glue marks stayed on the door. Xiaoyao wiped them slowly with a towel and hot water, patient about it. Lin Xi watched the blocks of color crumple in her hand. She suddenly wanted to keep a photograph as a memorial, and then felt that a memorial was also filing. She threw the wad of paper into the trash, then picked it back out, smoothed it, folded it small, and put it in the tin. Not to stick it back up. To keep it, and see how much she had once believed in blocks of color.

"The press date is next Tuesday," she said. Her hand had already picked up a pen, ready to write on a fresh sheet. "I'll note it on the door for you. Just this one line. Not managing you. I remembered."

"Whoever's day, that person writes it." Xiaoyao's voice was not high. "Next Tuesday is mine. I'll write it myself in a minute. If you write it now, you're taking minutes for both of us again."

The pen stopped in the air. Lin Xi's face heated, and inside the heat was a grievance. She had only wanted to help, and help had also been ruled a violation. The old silence rose out of the hum of the refrigerator and nearly occupied the kitchen. She heard it. This time she did not let it sit down.

"I'm unhappy right now," she said. Every word was clear. "Not silence. Unhappiness. I feel caught on a word. I also know you're right. Both things are true at once. Let me put the pen down. You write it. If I'm still angry after you write it, I'll say I'm still angry. I won't take this anger and do something else with it."

Xiaoyao looked at her. His eyes softened once. He took the pen and wrote only his own line on the white paper: Tuesday, to press, a night shift is possible. Then he held the paper with an ordinary magnet. No red. None of her blue.

"I received your unhappiness," he said. "I won't rebut it. If, when the anger is done, you want to touch me, say so. If you don't want to, I decide dinner. After I decide it, you can say it's bad."

"The anger is still here. The person still wants to touch you." She capped the pen, lightly. "You decide dinner. After dinner, tonight, me. That sentence is in effect now. It stays in effect until I say stop, or until I say tonight, you."

Dinner was soup and rice. The tangerine peel was not steeped into the soup. It was steeped on its own into two very pale cups of tea. Bitter. Xiaoyao drank a mouthful, frowned, and still finished it. Lin Xi watched him frown, and half the anger actually scattered. What remained in the scattered half was desire, the clean kind, not the kind used to press a quarrel out. She could tell them apart. She was surprised, herself, that she could.

In the shower the water temperature was his to set. Warm, not scalding. In the steam she washed his hair first. Her fingers went through his hair. She did the motion clumsily, and she did it with care. Xiaoyao's eyes were closed. His throat moved once. He did not take the lead back. After the washing, the bedroom light stayed on its warmest setting. Lin Xi had him sit, against the head of the bed. She straddled him. Her knees sank into the mattress. She had not sat down yet.

"Tonight, me," she said again. Her forehead was against his. "I want to see your face. I want to decide the speed myself. Your hands can touch me. Wherever you touch, you tell me, and you use a request. If you think I'm scoring you, say my name. If you say it, I'll stop and kiss you. I won't analyze. Before we start I'm asking: do you want to be wanted by me like this."

"I do," he said. "Please sit down. Slow. I want to see your eyes not run when you take me in. Lin Xi, I'm not a prize. If you turn this into a demonstration that you can lead too, I'll say stop."

"It isn't a demonstration." Her hand closed around his cock and set it at the mouth of her cunt, already wet. "I want you. I want you now. Watch."

She sat down. An inch, and another inch. Her walls were stretched open. She controlled it herself, not running, and not swallowing him all at once. Xiaoyao's breath broke. His hands held her waist and did not press. When all of him was in, both of them stopped. Lin Xi's eyes were open. She was soft and hot inside, holding him at the deepest point. Her clit met his stomach. She ground, lightly, and ground a sound out of herself.

"Please touch my nipple," she said, and then smiled once. "This is me requesting you. Leading doesn't mean you can't use your hands. Using your hands isn't you taking the rhythm away. If you want me to go faster, say it. If you say it, I decide whether I listen."

"Please go a little faster." His thumb rubbed her nipple. His voice was rough. "I like watching you move yourself. I also like it when you tighten and don't talk. Lin Xi, like this. No commentary."

She went a little faster. Up, and down, letting the head drag again and again over the place that softened her most easily. The bed frame sounded. She was no longer ashamed of the sound. Her hands were on his shoulders. The pressure was to borrow force, not to give an order. Xiaoyao tipped his head and took one nipple in his mouth. His tongue was hot and slow. Below, she had the pace. The mismatch made it nearly impossible for her to think. She rode until her legs were weak. The rhythm broke. Her forehead was against his. Sweat dropped onto his collarbone.

"I'm going to come," she said. "Hold me. Please hold me tight. Don't speed me up for me. I'll do it myself."

He held her tight. In his arms she ground in a small range, her clit against him. Her walls suddenly tightened in waves. When the orgasm came she called his name, short and true, and not one word of it was a closing argument. The grip of her reddened the bottoms of Xiaoyao's eyes. He still did not take the rhythm. He only kissed her temple. The way of kissing was old, and it was new.

Lin Xi panted, still holding him inside her, and did not get up. Her hands cupped his face.

"What do you want," she asked. "A complete sentence. I want to hear it. After I hear it I'll decide how to do it. This isn't an interrogation. I'm leading, so I need to know what you want."

"I want to come inside you," he said. "Please keep moving until I come. When I come, look at me. Don't say I'm good. Don't say I performed well. Those words would turn me into your work. Saying my name is enough."

She almost said you are very good like this. The words reached her mouth. She swallowed them. The way she swallowed them was by kissing him, and then moving again. This time the pace was for him. Deep, steady, every stroke sitting all the way down. Xiaoyao's hands finally tightened on her ass, and the force was still like a request. When he came his whole body went taut. Heat struck into her. His eyes were open, looking at her. Lin Xi looked too. She did not score him. She only said:

"Xiaoyao. I see you."

Later they lay side by side. Outside, the plane tree cut the streetlight into pieces. She was still wet between her legs. She did not get up at once to clean herself. Cleaning could wait a minute. In that minute she buried her face in his shoulder and laughed out loud.

"Leading was harder than that conference room this afternoon," she said. "Hard because I couldn't use the words that come most smoothly to me. I almost said you were very good. If I had said it, I would have been closing a case again. Thank you for forbidding it in advance. The forbid was very dirty. And very necessary."

"You also didn't write my press date on the door." He stroked her back. "That unhappiness in the kitchen, we didn't use it as fuel. Fuel goes cold when it's used up. This is different. This is hot. Lin Xi, next week I'll be very busy. When I'm busy I may forget the words in the box. Remind me. If I forget your hearing day, you remind me too. A reminder isn't management. It's that we still talk."

"I'll talk," she promised. "Shower first. Do you still set the water the second time. I can veto it down to a little warmer-no, a little milder. The veto isn't taking dinner and the press date back. It's only my skin."

"The veto stands," he said, and laughed. "You go adjust it. When you've adjusted it, call me. If, when you call me, you want it once more, say so straight. If you say it straight I may agree. If I agree, we open our mouths again about who leads. It doesn't renew itself into a second time."

In the bathroom she set the water milder and looked at herself in the mirror for a while. Thirty-two. A little blue under the eyes. Her mouth was red. On her collarbone, one very faint mark of his teeth. She did not cover the mark. She called his name. This time she did not want it again. She only yielded the direction of the spray. The two of them stood in the same temperature, and neither led the other. The sound of the water was ordinary. They cherished the ordinary the way a person cherishes a thing just won back.

Chapter 15 Home Does Not Close

The next Wednesday, Zhao Heng's letter was so short it was almost polite. Beicheng would not seek reconsideration of this preservation order. The maintenance arrangement would be carried out according to Friday's record. Attached was one page of a draft settlement: the equity would remain as it was; the formula room would not be moved; the other side's engineer's right to enter would shrink to once a quarter, and notice would have to be given in advance; each side would bear its own legal fees. The last line of the draft did not say "taking everything into account." Lin Xi finished reading it, sat in the firm for two minutes, then marked the page numbers and sent it to Gu Chengyan and Gu Wan.

Gu Wan answered first: Sign. If my brother wants to add a banquet, I object. Gu Chengyan answered after: Sign. The banquet is canceled. Ms. Lin, go home and eat. Coming out of his mouth, the sentence actually had no thorn.

The signing was not arranged on Julu Road. It was arranged in Hengshi's small conference room, four in the afternoon, the daylight very white. Sun Qiming did not come. He authorized Zhao Heng to sign for him. Pei Song appeared on no copy list. When Lin Xi handed Gu Chengyan the pen she said, "This is not a great victory. This is the door still in the original wall. Don't issue an announcement. If suppliers ask, say operations are as usual."

"Those two words, as usual," Gu Chengyan said, and made a sound while he signed. "I used to think they sounded like admitting defeat. Now they sound like good fortune. Your husband didn't come. That's fine too. This kind of paper doesn't need the last row to keep it company again. Give him my regards for me. Regards aren't a family banquet. They're a human sentence."

"I'll say it," Lin Xi said.

She left West Nanjing Road at five-twenty. The sky was still bright. Plane-tree shadows stretched long on the walls of Hunan Road. The osmanthus was clearer than last week. She did not message ahead to say she would be early. It was not a test. She wanted to see what the home looked like when she had not announced herself, and to accept that look, whether or not dinner had a share for her.

Xiaoyao was in the second room. The door was open. On the black paper the gold line was already the finished thing, thin, and it did not stop in any extra place. He heard the floor, looked up, saw her, startled, and then smiled.

"Is the case over?" he asked.

"This stretch of it is over," she said. She set her bag outside the door and did not bring it in among his paper. "The settlement is signed. There is no banquet. I came back to eat. If you only made your own share, I'll boil noodles. Boiling noodles isn't a negation of your dinner. I'm hungry."

"The share is for two," he said. "The soup is in the pot. I didn't know what time you'd be back, so there's more soup. More isn't a schedule. It's a habit. This habit can stay."

While they ate she said three sentences. No reconsideration. Once a quarter, not once a month. Gu Chengyan had asked her to pass on his regards. When she finished she kissed him, the toll, and she kissed him a little longer than the rule required. Xiaoyao received the regards and did not elevate them into a lesson about life. He ladled her more soup.

At night the window was open a crack. The last wind of September came in through the plane leaves, carrying a little cool. The phones were on the stool outside the bedroom door, both of them, screens down. The tin was in the cabinet. It had not been invited out. It did not need to take the stage every night.

Lin Xi leaned on the wall by the window. She had not changed her dress. She watched him gather the cups. Watching, she said:

"Tonight, you. Please lead. I want it slow. No demonstration. No score. No Zhao Heng. If you want to do it by the window, draw the curtain only halfway. Across from us is a tree, not the building opposite the forty-second floor. If the tree sees, let it see. You decide. I keep the right to stop."

"By the window," he said. "Curtain halfway. Turn around. Hands on the sill. I'll come in from behind. Before I come in I want to kiss you. After the kiss, if you still want it, say you still want it. Say it once, complete."

She did as he said. The metal sill was a little cold. Her palms went onto it, and the cold traveled her arms to her nipples. From behind, Xiaoyao kissed her neck first, kissed the small patch behind her ear that went soft, and his hand went in from the side of the dress and found cloth that was already wet. He drew her underwear down to the bend of her knee. He did not take the dress off. He only pushed the hem to her waist. His fingers slid between her labia, found her clit, and did not rush to rub it apart. He only pressed, and let her grind lightly on the pad of his finger herself.

"I still want it," Lin Xi said. The wind made her voice lower. "Please come in. Slow. Coming inside is all right too. I want this week to actually leave a little of itself behind. What stays isn't the record. It's you. Xiaoyao, I'm here. I'm not writing a closing argument in my head."

He entered very slowly. Her grip on the sill made a light sound. After all of him was in he stopped, chest against her back, and the two of them listened together to the leaves outside. Then he moved. One stroke, and another, deep and unhurried, as if giving the nights that had been seized back to the body. Lin Xi's forehead rested on the window frame. Her eyes were open. She saw the tree, the streetlight, and on the glass her own mouth, parted a little by the way he drove into her. She did not hide. His fingers carried her clit. Pleasure stacked up, stacked full, full until her legs shook.

"I'm going to come," she said. "Please hold me while I come. Holding me isn't giving the lead back to me. It's me asking to be held."

His arm came around her waist. His cock still drove, stroke by stroke, to the deepest point. When she came, her walls clenched. The sound she made fell into the leaves. It was not loud, and she did not cut it herself. The contraction pushed Xiaoyao to the edge. He said her name, low, and came inside her. Heat in surges. She took it with her body. While she took it, her eyes were still open.

They did not leave the window at once. Beyond the half of the curtain, someone rode a bicycle along Hunan Road. A bell rang once. The rider did not know that in the shadow on the third floor two people had just set a week of case outside the body. Xiaoyao pulled out and used the hem of his own shirt to pad her first, so she would not dirty her legs if she could not stand steady. The gesture was clumsy. Clumsy enough that she wanted to laugh, and wanted to kiss him.

"This case ends here," she said quietly. She meant the Gu family. She also meant the trial she had been running on herself all week.

"Home does not close," Xiaoyao answered. "At home there is no 'concluded.' Tomorrow there is still breakfast. The day after, I may be at the press very late. You may have a new engagement. We will forget. If we forget, we open the tin. There are no damages. Lin Xi, you came back so early today. I'm glad. Not because you performed well. Because when the door opened, the person was you."

She turned. Her legs were bare. The hem of the dress was wrinkled. She kissed his mouth. After the kiss she went and showered, and left the phone outside. On the bed he had already turned down the quilt on the side by the window. That place used to be empty, empty because she arrived so late that he was used to leaving the outer side for her to find in the dark. Tonight she was early, and she still lay down on the outer side, and left him the inner side against the wall. Their knees touched. Touching was enough. It did not have to be made into another round of proof.

"Stay," she said in the dark. The word went back to the night after the hearing, back to the taxi and the glass and the family line in the register. It was a little lighter now. Light was not because it did not matter. It was because it no longer had to defeat an entire schedule before it could be said.

"I'm here," Xiaoyao said.

On the refrigerator door there was only one line, in his own hand. The shoes under the elm bench were not neat. In the tin, beside the note from six years ago, lay the crumpled blocks of color, and the few lines of keywords that had come after. The paper was still his. Dinner was sometimes both of theirs. The window was still open a crack. The plane tree's shadow moved, like a record that did not have to be filed.

Lin Xi held his hand. There was no sweat in the palm. Silence came down. It was not a gap. It was a quilt. Inside that silence she heard his breathing, and she heard her own. Both sounds were there. There was enough for this one night. Tomorrow's door was not yet open. The handle was on the inside.