Twelve Years Older, She Took Me First

Stories

Chapter 1 The Night Drive

The rain came down hard the moment the meeting broke. Fog filmed the conference-room glass, and then the whole window went white under the wash. Zhou Heng shut his notebook and said that was enough for today; Beiwan's numbers could be checked again tomorrow. Chairs scraped in a rush. Li Gan was still staring at the last page of his notes. The tail of his sentence dropped in his throat, and nobody asked him to pick it up.

Wu Ziyi sat off to the side and a little behind him. She capped her pen and looked at him once. There was no praise in the look, and no picking of faults. She had simply seen him clearly. She was thirty-eight. When anything came up in solutions, people found her first and Zhou Heng only after. Li Gan did not report to her. He was twenty-six, carried on the delivery roster, and the person he reported to was Zhou Heng. She would say that more than once later. But on that rainy night, before the car had even started, he felt the silence change because she had looked at him.

Zhang Xue poured what was left of two Americanos into the sink, crushed the paper cups, and dropped them in the bin. She was thirty-six, client success, quicker with words than anyone, and quiet today all the same. Passing Li Gan, she pushed across the car keys he had forgotten on the table. "There's standing water by the garage exit. Drive slow."

"All right," he said.

The three of them going down together was not an arrangement. It was a habit of eleven months. The company had pulled them out to Linjiang for the Beiwan Bank project. The housing allowance sat at an awkward figure: too little to rent alone, just enough to share. Zhang Xue would not take a two-bedroom. Three people squeezed into two rooms, she said, and given time something would go wrong. In the end they rented an old three-bedroom on the east side of the city. Wu Ziyi took the master. Zhang Xue took the south-facing second bedroom. Li Gan took the smallest room, the one against the kitchen. The car was his, a gray old sedan with dull wipers. He did the driving. The other two transferred him their share of the gas each month. At first it was only to save trouble. Later it became a default: the end of the day, the revolving door, his car, their places in it.

Outside the revolving door the rain had stitched itself into lines. Zhang Xue opened an umbrella and a rib bent at once. Wu Ziyi carried none. Her trench-coat collar was up, and one wet strand of hair stuck to her cheek. Li Gan pulled the car in under the eaves, hazards blinking. Wu Ziyi opened the passenger door, set her bag by her feet, then sat down. The smell of rain came in with her, and a faint citrus on her skin. Zhang Xue climbed into the back. Water flicked onto Li Gan's wrist as she closed the umbrella. She said she was sorry. He said it was nothing.

The doors shut. The rain went far away.

They were often quiet. Zhang Xue answered messages. Wu Ziyi watched the road. Li Gan drove. That kind of quiet had no weight. Today was different. A red light held the car. The wipers cut two fans across the glass, and the rain covered them again at once. Wu Ziyi's hand rested on her knee. Her fingers were long. There was no ring. Li Gan knew she had been divorced for three years. On the project that was not a secret. The secret was the day he had begun, in gaps like this, to look at her hand.

She spoke, not loud. "When you reported today, the moment you got to collections, the end of the sentence fell. You used to lift the numbers a little without noticing."

His hands stayed on the wheel. "You hear even that."

"I sit off to the side and behind," she said. "Zhou Heng asked you a second time. You didn't get annoyed. I saw it."

From the back seat came Zhang Xue's voice, a little amused and a little warning. "Ziyi, don't hold a meeting in the car. I've already had eight hours of Beiwan today."

"No meeting," Wu Ziyi said.

The light turned green. The car slid into the rain. Water thrown by the car ahead hit the windshield in a white sheet. Li Gan looked straight ahead. The corner of his eye was all her. A dark wet patch marked the hem of her coat. Her calves were together. The skirt stopped at the knee. He called himself dull and still could not pull his eyes all the way back. Twenty-six was too old to behave like a man who had never seen a woman. He had. There had been a short relationship, and the reason it ended was ordinary past bearing: different cities, both of them busy, nothing especially cruel said by either. Wu Ziyi sitting beside him was not something those memories could explain. She was twelve years older than he was. He had done the sum, felt ridiculous when he finished it, and today he was doing it again.

Zhang Xue asked from the back whether they should buy food. Wu Ziyi said there were noodles at home. Li Gan said he could pull over. In the end none of them ate anything from the roadside. The car went down into the compound garage. Concrete cut the rain off. The world went suddenly dry, except for the drip of water off the tires. Zhang Xue got out first and said she would put the water on. Her steps sounded a few times between the pillars, and then she was in the elevator.

Wu Ziyi did not pull the handle at once.

The engine was still turning. The heater lifted the ends of her hair. She looked at the concrete pillar ahead as if she were making sure of something. "The quiet in this car tonight isn't quite right."

"The rain's heavy," Li Gan said.

"It isn't only the rain." She turned. The garage light was white, and her eyes were steady. "I felt it. If that makes you uneasy, pretend I didn't say it."

His throat moved. "I'm not uneasy."

The sentence was false. She could hear that, and she did not take it apart. She nodded. Her fingers rested on the door handle and stopped. "Li Gan, I'll leave one sentence here. I am not your superior. I lead the Beiwan proposal. Your review sits with Zhou Heng. Any day you don't want to drive me, you can say so straight out. I won't trip you at work because of it. If you're sitting an extra minute in this car because we share a place, because I'm older, because it's awkward to refuse, then that minute ends here."

He looked at her. When she said these things her ears were not red and her voice did not shake. His did. "It isn't because I can't refuse."

"Then what is it because of?"

He could not answer. Not because there was no answer. Because the answer was too hot to say for the first time in a garage. All he could manage was, "I don't know how to say it. But it isn't because I was forced."

Wu Ziyi looked at him for a few seconds, as if she were putting that insufficient sentence away in some drawer. "All right. Then tonight ends here." She pushed the door and got out. The hem of her coat swept the edge of the seat. Two steps on she bent again and spoke through the half-open window. "Don't boil the noodles too soft. Zhang Xue always turns them to mush."

He smiled, and the smile was short. "I know."

After she went upstairs he was still sitting in the car. There was a little damp on the wheel. Maybe it was only his imagination. He put his forehead against it and swore at himself, quietly. The elevator numbers climbed. The lights in the three-bedroom would come on one by one. He did not search the night for those windows. He locked the car.

In the kitchen Zhang Xue had already boiled the water. She was in a gray long-sleeved house shirt, hair loosely pinned, and when she saw him she pushed the noodle cakes over. "Where's Ziyi?"

"She's up. She said she'd shower first."

"Oh." Zhang Xue broke the noodles and glanced at him. "Your ears are red."

"The garage is hot."

"The garage isn't hot." She dropped the noodles into the pot, and her tone loosened. "Forget it. Rain makes people strange. Go and change. Don't flick a wet sleeve into my pot."

When the noodles were ready Wu Ziyi came out, hair half dry, the collar of a black cotton house set loose, a small patch of pink at the collarbone where the hot water had steamed her. The three of them sat at the small table and ate. Nobody mentioned what had been said in the car. The tap dripped once. Zhang Xue's phone rang. She took a client's voice message out on the balcony, and at once her voice went polite, clear, impossible to fault.

In the living room there was only the light click of chopsticks against the rims of bowls. Wu Ziyi picked up a small bite of noodles and set it in Li Gan's bowl. "Eat more. At lunch you only had half a rice ball."

"How do you know."

"Zhang Xue said." Her lashes lowered. "And I saw it."

The balcony door was still open a crack. The smell of rain came in. Li Gan bent his head to that mouthful and understood something with a sudden clarity: once a silence had been named by her like this, it could not be forced back into its old shape. The person across from him had not touched him. She had only passed him the noodles, finished saying where the line of power was, and then sat here the way people sat on any ordinary night of sharing a flat.

But his knee was tight under the table. Hers was less than a palm away. Neither of them came any closer.

When Zhang Xue came back she looked at the table and at the two bowls and asked nothing. She only said the client had changed the wording again and she would have to be up early. Wu Ziyi answered her. Li Gan drank the last of the broth and got up to wash. The water ran loud. He used the loud water to cover the sentence in him that still had not been said.

At night he lay in the smallest bedroom and listened to the kitchen pipe knock now and then. Beyond the wall was Wu Ziyi's master room. Past that was Zhang Xue. All three doors were shut. He almost typed a line to Wu Ziyi: I really did want to sit that extra minute. Halfway through the characters he deleted them. Not because he did not want to send them. Because he still did not know what wanting would have to carry.

The rain did not ease until after midnight. Before he slept, the last thing he thought of was not her body. It was the sentence she had left in the garage: if it's because you can't refuse, that minute ends here.

In the dark he answered, very softly, and nobody heard him. "I can refuse. I just don't want to refuse you."

Chapter 2 The Red Light

For the next three days it was the same car and the same three people. The change was small enough to be denied. When Wu Ziyi got in she took off her coat, folded it, and laid it on her lap, and the citrus on her was clearer. At red lights she no longer only watched the road. She looked at the side of his face, and when she had looked she took her eyes back, as if nothing had happened. Zhang Xue still answered messages in the back. Now and then she lifted her head, caught some pause in the rearview mirror, and explained the pause to herself as tiredness.

At the office Li Gan still called Wu Ziyi Teacher Wu. The younger people on the project all did. She heard it and let it pass, and she did not particularly like it. At noon on the fourth day the two of them were alone in the pantry. She was drawing hot water. He was waiting on the microwave. She said, "In the car, don't call me Teacher Wu. Ziyi is enough. The word teacher makes the age sound ugly."

"That isn't what I meant."

"I know it isn't." She watched the water turn in the cup. "But I hear it and I'm uncomfortable. If you're willing, change it."

"Ziyi." He tried it. The two syllables were strange on his tongue, and close.

She smiled a little. "Mm. That sounds better."

The microwave beeped. Someone passed the door. They stepped half a pace apart at once, like two colleagues who had both happened to be thirsty. Li Gan carried his heated lunch back to his desk, and his chest was still stopped inside that half pace. He hated the half pace. He was grateful for it too. She had not touched him at the office. She had even taken her eyes back. That made what she had said the other night more believable: she could tell one setting from another, and she could tell power from the rest of it.

On Friday a client kept Zhang Xue for dinner. She sent a voice note to the group chat and said not to wait, she would take a cab. The note was bright. After the brightness the chat went quiet. Wu Ziyi glanced at Li Gan. Between the open desks the glance was too short for anyone else to read. She said, "Then tonight it's only the two of us in the car. If you want me to take a cab as well, say so now."

"I'll drive you," he said.

"All right."

The evening rain was fine, fine enough that the wipers were too lazy to move. The passenger seat was empty for a few seconds. She got in, buckled the belt first, and set her phone face-down on her thigh. "Zhang Xue isn't here. May I speak a little more directly than usual?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll ask you." Her fingers rested on the belt and did not come near him. "From Tuesday until now, do you still want to sit that extra minute? Not out of politeness. Not because I spoke first and you're embarrassed to leave me with no way down. Do you want it yourself?"

The red light came on just then. He held the brake and turned his head to look at her. There was no coaxing on her thirty-eight-year-old face. There were faint lines at the corners of her eyes. The color of her mouth was her own. He felt that face dry him out. "I want it," he said. "I do. I've been wanting it in the daytime too. I know you're twelve years older than me. I haven't failed to count. I'm not saying this because I've taken you for some novelty. If all you want to hear is a young man's impulse, then what I'm saying is more trouble than impulse."

Wu Ziyi's breath slowed by a beat. "A little trouble is better. I've seen plenty of impulse. Trouble means you're willing to think."

He could not smile. "But I still get impulses. When you sit over here, I get hard. Saying that is ugly. But if you're asking whether I want it, I can't give you only the pretty half."

The car went quiet. A horn tapped behind them. The light was already green. He drove on. She was not frightened off by the bluntness. She watched the rain ahead, and her voice dropped, as if she had finally let herself a little way out of the rules.

"Li Gan, may I put my hand on your leg? Through the trousers. If you say no, I'll take it back this moment, today's subject ends here, and at home we're still roommates."

His palms were all sweat. "Yes."

Her hand came down. First the fingertips, then the whole hand, warm, steady, resting on his right leg near the knee. It did not go up at once. She only left it there. The cloth made that small heat clearer. The muscle in his leg went tight, and he forced it to loosen so the accelerator would stay even.

"All right?" she asked.

"All right." His voice had gone rough. "Your hand is hot."

"Your leg is hot too." Her thumb moved once, slowly, still far from the place that had gone tight. "I'm not asking to sleep with you tonight. I need to know first that you're clear-headed in my hand. You can say take it off at any time."

"Don't take it off yet."

Her thumb moved again. The car passed a junction. He was hard enough to hurt, and the shape of it showed plainly through his trousers. She saw it. Her eyes stopped there a moment. She did not laugh at him, and she did not pretend she had not seen. "It doesn't look as if you're humoring me."

"I'm not."

"Then I'll ask one more thing." Her hand was still only on his leg, but every word seemed to move an inch higher. "If someday I want to kiss you, and I want you to touch me, you can still refuse. If you refuse, on Monday in the weekly meeting I'll still finish walking through your page numbers. Do you believe that?"

"I believe it," he said. "You've said it twice. I believe you aren't here to hold me down. Ziyi, if I don't want something, I'll say so. Right now I don't want to say I don't."