04 / 15
Chapter 4 Friday
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.
