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Chapter 5 The Record
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.
