Part 2
The Lawyer Comes Home Late
A rewritten short story on the theme · not an excerpt of an original · 18+
The characters and plot in this piece are newly created. Everyone involved in the romance is a fictional adult over twenty-five, and none of them are related.
Chapter One: A Page Without a Signature
At 10:47 p.m., Lin Zhiyuan switched off the last desk lamp in the firm. The window glass held her face, and the empty workstations behind her. She was thirty-four. She had spent seven years in this building and knew the speed of every elevator, yet she could not remember the last day she had gone home on time.
Two documents lay on the desk. One was the settlement proposal due the next morning. The other was only three thin pages, slipped into a manila envelope with no letterhead. It was not a client's file. The first page bore her name and Xu Cheng's, and under them a list of the apartment, the savings, and a few things worth little and hard to divide.
Did the blue enamel pot in the kitchen count as joint property? The bookshelf they had put together one afternoon after they married—who would take it apart? She had left those lines blank. As a lawyer, she knew how much quarreling a complete agreement could spare. As a party to it, she found she could not even write clearly about the pothos that had grown crooked.
She stuffed the envelope into her bag. Her phone lit up at once. Xu Cheng had sent two characters: Downstairs.
Zhiyuan walked to the curb and saw the old gray car parked in front of the convenience store. The interior light was off. Xu Cheng moved the coat from the passenger seat and asked whether she had eaten.
"I ate during the meeting," she said.
He did not call her on it. On the back seat sat an insulated bag holding wonton from the shop at the gate of their complex. Fog had already gathered along the rim of the paper bowl. For the past two months she had always said she had eaten at the office, but the note he had left on the fridge was still there: Don't wait on Thursday. I'm on the night shift.
Xu Cheng was a maintenance technician for the city bus company. This week he had been switched to days. She had forgotten.
They drove one block. At a red light Xu Cheng glanced at the envelope on her knees. "Is that it?"
Zhiyuan nodded. "You can read it first. Wherever you don't agree, we'll talk."
"How long are you giving me?"
"No deadline." She answered quickly, then realized the sentence was identical to what she usually told clients.
The light changed, but he did not turn toward home. The car stopped beside the old park. It was where they used to wait for the late bus. The stop had been moved, and the old shelter had been turned into a vending machine.
"Let's walk a loop first," Xu Cheng said. "If I look at the words now, I might not take in a single line."
Chapter Two: The Decision Made for the Other
Only a few streetlamps were still on in the park. Plane-tree leaves lay scattered across the stone path. Zhiyuan was in hard-soled shoes and walked slowly. Xu Cheng slowed his steps, but he did not, as he once would have, warn her where the ground was uneven.
That deliberate distance hurt her more than a quarrel.
It seemed to have begun the day her mother had surgery. The operation was minor, but a family member had to be present. Zhiyuan remembered sending the date into the family group chat, and she remembered Xu Cheng replying with a single "Got it." By the time she reached the hospital, the nurses had already wheeled her mother in. The person waiting at the door was her aunt.
That day she called three times in a row. Xu Cheng did not answer. When he came home that night he explained: there had been an accident in the maintenance shop, and his phone was locked in his locker. No one was hurt, but he could not leave.
"You could have arranged it ahead of time," she had said then.
"You could have told me outright that you needed me there," he answered.
After that they began arguing over what "Got it" actually meant. Zhiyuan said any ordinary person would understand. Xu Cheng said he had thought she had already taken the day off. The argument lasted until one in the morning and landed, at last, on a sentence that had nothing to do with it: You always think your affairs matter most.
Tonight, when they reached the edge of the artificial lake, Xu Cheng brought up the hospital first.
"I'm not trying to explain the shop again," he said. "That day I really didn't put your mother's surgery into my plans. That part is on me."
Zhiyuan looked down at the toes of her shoes. She had prepared answers to everything she expected him to say. She had not prepared to hear this.
"But I want to know something else." He stopped. "When you turned down the out-of-town post last month, was that because of me too?"
It had been an offer from the head of a branch office: one year, higher pay, a team of her own. She had not told Xu Cheng. She had simply replied that she would not go. She had thought she was protecting the life they shared, and that this was her concession in the relationship.
"I couldn't have you quit your job and come with me," she said.
"But you never asked whether I would quit."
A stretch of the automatic lights by the lake went out. The two of them stood in the dark, waiting for the sensors to come back on. Zhiyuan thought of the dozens of negotiation minutes she had signed, each one requiring both sides' intentions to be confirmed. At home, she often finished the whole process on guesswork alone.
She had decided Xu Cheng would not want to leave this city. She had decided he would mind a life in two places. She had decided that if she asked, he would force himself to agree. So that he would not have to force himself, she said no in his place, and then quietly kept the sacrifice to herself.
"At the time I thought telling you wouldn't help."
"I know," Xu Cheng said. "It wasn't that you failed to tell me one thing. Little by little, you came to feel that a great many things no longer needed telling."
Chapter Three: The Desk He Left Alone
By the time they reached the old activity room, Zhiyuan's heel was rubbed raw. She stopped on the steps. Xu Cheng went to the little convenience cabinet beside the vending machine and bought a pack of bandages. He handed them to her and sat half an arm's length away.
"The apartment can be sold," he said suddenly.
Zhiyuan looked up.
"I'm not agreeing to a divorce," Xu Cheng added. "I mean you don't have to be afraid to change jobs because of the mortgage. What I earn now can't cover the share you used to pay, but this isn't the only way we have to live."
She did not answer. He took out his phone and opened a notes page. It listed their fixed expenses for each month, down to twelve yuan for the pothos fertilizer. The last line read: If she wants to go, how much would a year cost.
"When did you find out?"
"Last time you had a video meeting in the living room, I overheard a little. After that you never said anything, and I never asked."
"Why?"
He smiled, though it hardly looked like a smile. "I was afraid that if I asked, you'd think I was calculating how much of a raise you'd get."
They both fell silent. Zhiyuan suddenly saw the shape of these past months: each of them standing on the far side of a door, translating care into avoidance, then reading the other's avoidance as not caring.
Xu Cheng spoke again of the study at home. That desk had always taken the best place by the window. His tools and models were kept on top of the bedroom wardrobe. Zhiyuan had once said he paid attention to nothing at home, that he did not even know how many case files were piled on the desk.
"Actually, once I moved the water glass on your desk inward," he said. "You came home and asked who had touched the papers. I knew you weren't aiming it at me. After that I stopped touching anything. Not even the glass."
Zhiyuan remembered that day. She had just lost a case. She came home, could not find a page of an attachment, and her tone was harsh. The attachment turned up at last in her own laptop bag. She did not apologize. She only said, "Found it."
"I'm sorry," she said.
Xu Cheng stared at a small water stain on the step. Several seconds passed before he nodded.
Zhiyuan did not add, "But I was under a lot of pressure that day." At work she had seen too many apologies undone by a "but." Tonight she finally swallowed the second half.
The insulated bag was still in the car. They walked back and sat on the lip of the open trunk, eating wonton that were no longer hot. Xu Cheng passed her the extra spoon. Zhiyuan noticed a small square of gauze on the back of his hand.
"What happened to your hand?"
"Cut it changing a part. Three days ago."
The hand holding her spoon paused. For three days they had shared one bathroom light, one dinner table, one set of locks, and she had not seen it.
Chapter Four: The Decision Not Made Tonight
When the wonton were finished, Zhiyuan set the envelope between them. Xu Cheng did not open it. He only asked, "Did you bring it down because you had already decided, or because you wanted me to see it?"
It was the hardest question of the night.
"I want to end the way we're living now," she said. "But I don't know whether that means ending us."
Xu Cheng looked down. His finger traced the crease of the envelope once, back and forth. "I don't want to go on like this either. The moment you come through the door it's as if court is about to open. The moment I hear the key, I start wondering whether I said something wrong today."
She had meant to explain that she had never asked this of him, but the words stopped at her lips. That one person had never demanded it did not mean the other had never felt it.
They got back into the car. The envelope went on the back seat. This time neither of them hurried to start the engine.
Zhiyuan opened her calendar and marked the regular meeting next week that a colleague could attend in her place. She did not cancel an entire month of work, and she did not say, "From now on I will never come home late." Those words were too easy to say, and too easy to fail at the next emergency.
"Tuesday and Saturday, I'll try to be home by seven. If I can't, I'll tell you before six," she said. "Not so you'll wait. So you can arrange your own evening."
Xu Cheng thought it over, then changed "I'll try" to "We'll try Tuesday once first." On Saturday he had to go back to his father's to fix the pipes. He had already promised. He could not cancel someone else's plans just because the two of them had reached an understanding tonight.
They agreed to find, next week, a stretch of time when neither of them was working overtime, and to set out clearly the options for the apartment and the job out of town. Ask first. Then decide. For her mother's follow-up appointment, Zhiyuan would tell him directly what help she needed. If he could not go, he would say why, and they would look for a way together.
As for the agreement, Xu Cheng said he would read it. Zhiyuan agreed as well: they would not treat the absence of a signature as proof that the problem was already solved.
It was past midnight when they got home. Half the entryway light was out, and what remained flickered. Xu Cheng went for his tools. Zhiyuan did not go straight into the study the way she used to. She set her heels neatly aside, sat on the low stool, and held the flashlight for him.
The bulb they took down was light. It left a ring of dust in her palm. The new light came on and showed the crooked pothos by the door. Zhiyuan turned the pot halfway around, clearing a space so Xu Cheng could set down his toolbox.
The next morning she still left before he did. The paper on the fridge had been changed. It was not a long list about the relationship. It named only two things: Tuesday, seven o'clock; buy a mug rack that can be reached without standing on tiptoe.
At the firm she sent a message to the head of the branch office, asking whether the post could still be discussed. Then she sent Xu Cheng the same question: This time I want us to work the numbers together.
The reply did not come at once. She knew he was already in the shop, his phone put away in the locker.
Zhiyuan set the phone down and did not go on guessing. Outside the window the sky slowly brightened. She picked up her pen and changed one ill-chosen word in the settlement proposal. The envelope stayed at home, still unsigned. It was not a promise. It was only a place they had left empty for now, until they had decided to hear each other all the way through.