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Chapter 3 Hunan Road
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.
