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Chapter 1 After Court
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.
