They Swapped the Room Keys

Stories

The Couple-Swapping Game on the Road

Chapter 1 The Room Keys

September in Qingdao had not quite given summer up. The sea was bright. The wind already found the open collar and came in with a damp chill. When Chen Hao lifted the suitcase out of the taxi trunk, Xu Siyi was standing under the revolving door of Tingchao Hotel, looking at her phone. A corner of her black coat lifted in the wind. She was thirty-one, a corporate account manager at a bank. In a new place she confirmed the checkout time and the breakfast cutoff before she would look at the sea.

"Twelfth floor. 1208." She put the phone away. "Did you read the reviews when you booked? Someone said the soundproofing is only average."

"I read them." Chen Hao handed the suitcase to the bellman and carried her laptop bag himself. He was thirty-four, a sales manager at a medical-device company in Shanghai. Most of his talking had been trained into him by the job. Silence was something he had only just, in the last two years, managed to learn. They had been married six years. Annual leave was cut into short pieces. This piece had been Xu Siyi's idea. She had said that if they did not open a room with a view of the sea, the only conversation left between them would be reimbursements, parcels, and who showered first.

The lobby was pale stone. There was a faint smell of citrus in the air-conditioning. The woman at the desk took their two identity cards, tapped the keyboard, then stopped and looked to their left.

A man had his elbows on the counter. The cuffs of his dark gray shirt were rolled to the middle of his forearms. He looked about thirty-six, broad through the shoulders, with the color of someone who had been outdoors. Beside him stood a woman in a beige knit dress, her hair loosely pinned, her earrings very small. She smiled first, as if the little confusion were not worth anyone getting nervous over.

"Lin Zheng." The man nodded at Chen Hao. His voice was not loud. "Ours is 1210. The envelopes probably got swapped."

The clerk apologized more than once, rewrote the room numbers, and pushed two black cards into paper sleeves. Xu Siyi saw her own room number pause for a second beside Lin Zheng's hand, then get drawn back. The hand was steady. There was a little old callus on the knuckles. It was not a hand that only held a mouse all day.

"If nobody had noticed," the woman said suddenly, her voice clear, "we'd have slept in the wrong rooms tonight."

She looked at Xu Siyi. It was not a provocation. She had set a joke down on the counter to see whether anyone would take it up. Xu Siyi's eyebrows moved.

"We'd have to see first whether the minibar has water I can drink," she said.

All four of them laughed. When the laugh ended, a thin thread stayed in the air.

The woman added, "Gu Wanning. From Hangzhou. He's my husband."

Going up in the elevator, no one hunted for more talk. The corridor on the twelfth floor was deep blue carpet. Footsteps were eaten. 1208 and 1210 faced each other. Between them there was only a fire hose cabinet and a painting of a sailboat. Chen Hao opened their door and stepped aside to let his wife in. At the edge of his sight, Gu Wanning had already opened the door opposite. Before she went in she turned and said to Xu Siyi, "There's no one in the bar downstairs until after seven. If you come down, we can finish that joke. Or we can talk about something else."

"We'll see," Xu Siyi said.

The two doors closed, one after the other.

The sea in the room was closer than the lobby had promised. Beyond the glass was the last stretch of Golden Beach. In the middle of September there were not many people. Someone was walking a dog on the wet sand. Xu Siyi hung up her coat and went into the bathroom first to wash off the dust of the road. When she came out, Chen Hao had changed his shirt and was standing at the window.

"You looked at her," she said.

"You looked at him too."

"I looked at his hands." Xu Siyi sat on the edge of the bed and took her earrings off into a small dish. "A very dull observation. And you?"

Chen Hao did not answer at once. There were only the two of them in the room. Wrapping the truth would have looked false.

"She talks straight," he said. "Straight enough that you want the next sentence."

Xu Siyi made a sound. It was not anger. It was confirmation that she had heard. "Sixth year of marriage, and you finally admit in front of me that you looked at someone else. Call it progress."

"And you?"

She took off her boat shoes. The socks were thin. Her toes curled once against the carpet. "When he looked at me he didn't look away. That doesn't happen often. Most men either don't dare look, or they look and then pretend they were looking at the sea. I'm not saying I'm going to do anything. I'm telling you I noticed."

They stood at the window for a while. In the evening the sea turned a heavy blue. The lighthouse was not lit yet. Chen Hao put his arms around her waist from behind and set his chin against her hair. He had done this countless times. Today it felt like checking a size. This was still his wife. Her shoulders were a little thinner than he remembered. The perfume was the same bottle. Under his palm her heartbeat was steady.

"Go down?" he asked.

"Shower first. Then go down. If they're not there, we treat it as our own holiday."

"And if they are?"

Xu Siyi turned her face and kissed his wrist. "Then we drink. A joke can stay a joke."

After she went into the bathroom he was still at the window. The balcony door opposite was open a crack. A white sheer was pulled out by the wind and snapped back. He saw a short length of Lin Zheng's arm setting a bottle of water on the railing. Drops ran down the glass. Chen Hao took his eyes back and felt ridiculous. A man of thirty-four should not have his heart jump over a stranger's hand and a curtain.

But the jump was real. He noted it, to tell Xu Siyi in a little while. Over the years they had not been without other heartbeats. They had only grown used to pressing a heartbeat back down, pressing it into weekdays, pressing it until neither of them would say it first.

Water started in the bathroom. He took off his shoes, plugged in both chargers, and folded her scarf onto the chair. The actions were small. Small enough to be saying to himself: you still have a wife, you still have an evening to get through together, do not turn the day into a fantasy in the first hour.

Chapter 2 What Can't Be Decided After Drinking

The bar was on the west side of the hotel. Past the door was a wooden boardwalk, and under the planks the tide hit the pilings in rounds. The evening of the eighteenth of September was not cold, but the wind still got into clothes. Xu Siyi put her scarf on. Lin Zheng and Gu Wanning were already at a table by the sea. In front of them were two glasses of soda. No alcohol.

"We've been waiting twenty minutes," Gu Wanning said. "Not to rush you. I bet you would come. He bet you wouldn't."

"Who won?" Chen Hao pulled a chair out.

"She did." Lin Zheng said, "So the first round is mine. Only the first round. After that we each pay our own, so it doesn't turn into some other meaning."

Before he ordered he asked how much each person drank, and whether anyone wanted food. Xu Siyi asked for a dry white. Chen Hao wanted beer. Gu Wanning later changed to whiskey with ice. Lin Zheng drank beer himself, and drank it slowly. The four of them first finished the parts of their lives that could be said in public. Chen Hao talked about sales targets, about machines he was not allowed into the operating room to see, only to wait outside the door for a doctor to nod. Xu Siyi talked about corporate clients, about a boss who had called her proposal something a little girl wrote. She had read the contract clauses back to him one by one, and after that he called her Manager Xu. Lin Zheng was a structural engineer, in Qingdao to look at the joints of a waterfront commercial complex. The project had been stopped for half a year. The client was still changing the facade. Gu Wanning worked on her own as a buyer, choosing clothes for a few small shops, and also keeping afternoons when she did not work.

"Hangzhou," she said. "An old compound. Stairs, no elevator. Hot in summer. You're in Shanghai?"

"Xuhui," Xu Siyi said. "Elevator building. Summer is hot there too. When the heat is done you get on the subway."

Halfway through the drinks, a young couple in matching clothes walked the boardwalk, laughing loudly. Gu Wanning touched her temple with the rim of her glass.

"When I said at the desk that we might sleep in the wrong rooms, you didn't take it as an insult, did you?"

"No," Chen Hao said.

"A little," Xu Siyi said at the same time.

The other three looked at her. She turned her glass. Wine slid down the inside. "The insult isn't the joke. It's that after the joke was said, nobody really threw it away. Including me."

Lin Zheng looked at Gu Wanning. In the look was something only a long marriage has. Not a prohibition. It was: I know which way you are going.

Gu Wanning did not look at her husband. She looked at Xu Siyi. "I've been married eight years. I'm not here to find a replacement. Neither is he. The year before last we took a very bad trip. The whole way we argued over who was more tired. After we came back we agreed that if something needed saying on a trip, we would finish saying it on the trip and not carry it home to ferment. So I'm used to saying a thing until it sounds ridiculous, to see if it can still stand up."

"Swapping room keys doesn't stand up," Chen Hao said. The smile was short.

"Of course it doesn't." Gu Wanning smiled too. "So it can only be a joke. Unless all four people are sober, all married, and all willing to put the ugly part in front. I haven't met that. Today probably won't be it either."

The wind blew a strand of her hair onto her lip. She brushed it aside. Chen Hao saw the gesture and moved his eyes back to his beer. Xu Siyi saw him look away. The sourness in her was clearer than when he had been staring. It was not anger. It was like lemon on the tongue, a reminder that taste was still working.

Lin Zheng asked, all at once, "When your husband looks at my wife, does it hurt?"

The peanuts on the table went quiet for a second. Chen Hao opened his mouth to explain. Xu Siyi lifted a hand and stopped him.

"It hurts," she said. "And it's clear. Clear is more useful than pretending to be fine. So I'll ask you. When I look at your hands, does your wife hurt?"

Gu Wanning bit a piece of ice in two. Her voice was light. "It hurts. I still let her look. His hands are his. They are not my property. If you turn a marriage into property, going to sleep at night feels like counting stock."

"Wanning," Lin Zheng said, low.

"I'm speaking for myself." She nodded once at her husband, to show she had taken the reminder. "I'm not entering you in anything."

After the second round the talk got smooth. Lin Zheng told them about a young supervisor on a site who had read a reinforcement drawing the wrong way around. Gu Wanning did the voice of a client on the phone. Xu Siyi laughed until she put her face into her scarf. When she finished laughing she leaned on Chen Hao's shoulder. The lean was habit. Today it was also being shown to the people across the table, and to herself.

Chen Hao heard himself say, "Suppose. Only suppose. The keys really changed for three nights, and going home we treated it as if nothing had happened. A suppose like that is already rotten the moment you say it."

"Rotten," Lin Zheng agreed.

"Because you've had two drinks," Xu Siyi said. "So have I. People who have been drinking cannot decide this. Whoever settles it now, I'll treat him as a man behaving badly."

Gu Wanning raised her glass. "Agreed. Tonight stops here. The joke is taken back. Tomorrow, if anyone still remembers, we say it again at a table with no alcohol. If anyone doesn't remember, the sea wind took it."

Glass touched glass, a thin sound.

Back in 1208, Xu Siyi rinsed her mouth first. The wine had faded. She was still warm. Chen Hao sat on the bed undoing his watch. She came out and stood between his knees. The hem of her skirt crossed his hand.

"You're hard," she said.

"A little, from the moment she pushed her hair back. I'm not lying."

"Don't be sorry that fast." Xu Siyi pulled her skirt up and sat on his thighs. They knew this place. The body found the angle on its own. She did not take her underwear off. She only moved against him through the cloth, slowly. Chen Hao's breath thickened. He kissed her and tasted toothpaste and a little wine that had not quite left.

"We are not deciding," she said into the kiss.

"We aren't."

"But I want to. With you. Now."

He put her on the bed. The sea outside the window could not be seen. Only the sound remained. He knew her body. A small mole under the left breast. A place at the side of the waist that could not bear tickling. When he entered she usually held his back, and her legs did not close very hard. Tonight she closed hard. Chen Hao stopped and looked at her eyes.

"Who are you thinking about?"

Xu Siyi flushed, and she did not hide the flush. "You. And also whether, if it were another person, I would still know myself. That thought makes me want you more. Can you stand hearing something that ugly?"

"I can." His throat was dry. "Because I'm the same."

They did it. It was not the ordinary sex before sleep, the kind in which you can ask, while you are at it, what time to get up. Chen Hao went in slowly. Each stroke reached the place that made her take a small breath. Xu Siyi opened her knees. Her heels pressed his waist. She kept her voice down, as if she were afraid the room across the hall would hear. The thought of that room made her body draw in, and then she was wetter. She hated how quickly she had gotten wet, and the hatred made her more aroused. Chen Hao felt it. He bent and took her nipple in his mouth. The flat of his tongue pressed that point and circled. She swore, very softly, and put her fingers into his hair.

"Don't stop."

He did not stop. His hand under her lifted her a little so he could go deeper. Her orgasm came quicker than it usually did. She bit his shoulder. The tops of her thighs shook. Inside, she clenched in pulses. He had meant to wait. The clenching was too honest, and he came with it. When he came he said her name. Xu Siyi heard it. Her eyes went hot.

They did not pull apart at once. He was still inside her. Both of them were sweating. The air-conditioning cooled the sweat. She touched the back of his neck.

"If they don't bring it up tomorrow, neither do we."

"All right."

"If they do, we finish saying it between ourselves before we say it to them. Being persuaded doesn't count. You have to want it yourself."

Chen Hao kissed her eyelid. "Do you want it now? Not me. That suppose."

She looked at the smoke detector on the ceiling for a long time. "I want to know whether we only know how to live one kind of day. That answer doesn't have to be paid for with other people. But I'm thirty-one. I don't want to drag curiosity until it becomes regret. I'm afraid. The fear is real. So is the curiosity. No vote tonight."

"No vote tonight," he said again.

The door opposite sounded then, as if someone had gone out for ice and come straight back. Both of them went still. In the stillness there was jealousy, and a laugh, and a clarity the sea made very large.

Chen Hao pulled out, tied the condom, and dropped it in the bin. He ran hot water in the bathroom, wrung a towel, and came back to wipe her stomach and the insides of her thighs. Xu Siyi watched him and said, suddenly, "If you really sleep with someone else tomorrow, you do this too. You don't finish and go shower and leave the person on the bed."

"You're already making law for tomorrow."

"I'm making law for myself." She took the towel and wiped his stomach as well. "Whatever happens tomorrow, tonight you are my husband. That gets said, and it stays said."