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Chapter 15 Home Does Not Close
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.
