Chapter 379: The Chair Beneath the Window

April 19th, nine o'clock.

By the time she came upstairs, the door was already open, the window too. On the sill sat Li Huilan's water cup with the paint chipped off. The smell of onions frying downstairs climbed up the stairwell, thinning out by the second floor until only the exhaust fan's hum remained.

She set her bag on her desk. The wind lifted a corner of the top sheet of paper; she reached out and held it down.

"Morning, Lawyer Lu."

He looked up from behind the paper, half a beat later: "Morning, Lawyer Shen."

After that, only the exhaust fan filled the room. She sat down, opened her notebook, unzipped and re-zipped her pencil case, and in the end wrote nothing.

The cup on his desk was empty, dry, overturned on a sheet of old newspaper. She knew that cup. On ordinary mornings, when he poured his first glass of water, he rinsed that one first.

The metal cabinet door wasn't fully shut. Three kraft paper envelopes stood upright inside, side by side. The first was the bulkiest; its mouth gaped open under the pressure of the stack inside, the paper corners worn soft. The other two were thin—one from the sample-swap case, one from that car back in March. On the envelope faces were rows of his handwriting: who gave it, when it arrived, how it reached his hands. The horizontal strokes ran flat, ending with a small flick back. She stood up and pulled out the bulging envelope, pressed the mouth flat twice, but the paper still pushed its way out.

[Thud. Qingshi Village: first-instance victory. Judgment not yet final. Appeal period runs to April 23rd. This entry not counted yet.]

She slid the envelope back into the cabinet, pushed the door shut, sat down, and spread out the photocopy of the judgment, counting from page one.

Li Huilan stood up at her own desk and placed a slip of paper on Shen Zhixia's.

"They accepted it. The window said wait for the asset-tracing feedback; they'll call this number when it comes in. I asked if it could go faster. He said it's in the queue, everyone's at the same speed. There were seven or eight people sitting by the window, and one standing holding a stack of papers. I asked—he came yesterday and he's still standing today."

"Don't promise Old Kan a date just yet." Shen Zhixia copied the date from the slip into her notebook.

"What would I promise him?" Li Huilan picked up the thermos and walked between the two desks into the back room. Water splashed for a while, then she filled it, screwed on the cap, and carried it back out.

Passing between the two desks, her feet never stopped, but her eyes paused on this side, then on that side.

"Nice day today," she said.

No one answered. She answered herself: "Just windy. Don't leave the window open so wide; papers are blowing onto the floor."

Li Huilan sat back at her desk, opened her register, and bit down on the pen cap. After half a minute, she pulled it out of her mouth. "At the window today—"

She swallowed the words and changed course. "Who's upstairs at lunch? I'm going down to eat."

No one answered that either. She put the pen cap back in her mouth.

The morning's work was grunt work: holding the judgment photocopy against the complaint, against the stack of appraisal opinions, counting page by page, then transcribing the operative part for Qinghe. On the third item, her pen stopped.

"Did you check the page count on that Qingshi Village photocopy against the original?" he asked from the opposite desk, eyes still on his own paper.

"I did. Copied at court on April 8th. Came back and counted against the original."

"Pages match?"

"They match."

"Mm." He turned the page in front of him. "When you transcribe the operative part, don't change a character. It says 'restored to,' not 'restored into.' They'll use those exact words to fill in forms. Change one character and they'll copy the change all the way down."

"I won't change anything." She looked down at the judgment. "I'll copy it word for word."

At ten-twenty he got up to get water. The dispenser sat at the wall end of the two desks. The machine gurgled twice; the water ran slow. He stood holding his cup, waiting, and when it filled carried it back. Passing her desk corner, his eyes flicked down at her paper. He said nothing and set the cup at his desk corner.

She finished that page, and when she looked up she saw the old wooden chair under the window. A cloth was spread over the seat, one corner hanging down—someone had sat there yesterday and pushed it back.

At ten-forty, the phone on the small middle table rang.

It rang three times before both of them reached for it. His hand stopped in midair, withdrew, and slipped into his trouser pocket. She picked up the receiver.

"Zhengping Firm."

"Is this Lawyer Shen? Qinghe here—" The caller gave a name, voice a little hoarse, as if he'd just finished a long speech. "We're laying out the two forms for the remediation plan. The board wants to see a draft at the next meeting, and there's one box we don't dare fill in ourselves. Director Cai's out in the field today and told me to ask you first; she'll review it tonight."

"Which box?"

"The header—effective date."

She pressed her palm over the mouthpiece and looked up. "Qinghe's asking what to put in the effective-date box on the header for now."

"Leave it blank," he said.

"They want it for a draft."

"Then show them a draft with it blank. The moment a date goes in, it's a promise you've made out loud."

She lifted her palm and relayed the words verbatim. The caller paused on the other end, pen scratching twice on paper, then asked another question: in the supervisor column, should they write the center's name or the name of the person doing the on-site visit?

This time she didn't look up, just carried the words into the room: "The supervisor column—organization or person?"

"Person. The organization goes on the line beneath the name. Whoever goes to inspect signs. Name on top."

She passed it on without missing a word. The caller repeated it back: "Name on top, organization below." She answered, "Correct."

"Then when can that box be filled in?"

"When the certificate of effectiveness comes through. Once we have it, we'll fill it in for you, and you'll review it yourself before it goes in."

"Lawyer Shen," the voice dropped half a notch, "do the two-month checkpoints follow that same box?"

"They follow that same box. One box filled in wrong, everything after it follows wrong."

"All right. Then I'll list out the blank boxes first."

"List them. Don't fill them in yourself."

She hung up, set the receiver back in the cradle, and said, "Hung up"—as if announcing it to the other two people in the room. He made a sound of acknowledgment.

From start to finish, both of them had been looking at the phone on the table.

She pulled over a sheet of paper and wrote down those two lines: Effective date left blank, await certificate of effectiveness; supervisor is a person, organization beneath the name. When she finished, she pushed the paper to the middle of the two desks.

He reached over, turned the paper around, read it top to bottom, and tapped a fingertip on the word "blank."

"Keep this for Qinghe," he said. "Next time they call, read from it."

He slid it back. "Add one more line: when we fill it in, they review it themselves one more time."

"Already added." She pointed at the last line.

He said nothing more. When he pushed the paper back, he overshot by two inches, so it landed right beside the pen at the corner of her desk.

Li Huilan finished a line in her register without looking up. "The two of you on the phone are more synchronized than one person talking."

The room went quiet for a moment. She turned a page, her pen nib paused against the paper, then kept writing.

At eleven-fifty, Li Huilan stood up. "I'm going down to eat. I'll be back."

He put on his jacket too. "I'm heading out. Something to look over at the Intermediate Court."

"Don't wait for me at lunch." He stood at the top of the stairs, said that, and went down.

The second-floor window was still open. The wind rattled the pot of pothos on the sill. The leaves had long gone dry; a touch and they crumbled.

At noon, footsteps came up the stairs, slower than either of theirs, pausing on each step.

He Xiufen came up carrying a tray with two bowls. She set one on Shen Zhixia's desk, chopsticks laid across the rim.

"I didn't put cilantro in yours." She carried the other bowl to the window, lifted a corner of the cloth on the old wooden chair, sat down, and balanced the bowl on her knee. "I won't push, and I won't ask. But you have to eat the noodles."

The broth was clear, a thin sheen of oil on top, not much noodle, an egg tucked underneath. Shen Zhixia picked up her chopsticks and took a sip of soup first. Too hot. She set the chopsticks down and waited, then ate.

"I soaked the bones last night." He Xiufen lifted a strand of noodle and blew on it. "Simmered this broth until morning, never let the heat get too high."

"Mm."

"That bowl from last night—I heated it up and ate it myself this morning. Cold noodles reheated are a sorry thing, but nothing goes to waste."

"Mm."

"You didn't come in at all yesterday."

"I was writing."

"Did it come out?"

"No."

He Xiufen didn't follow up. She ate her noodles slowly, quietly. There was a small old stain on the cloth under the window. Mid-bite, she poked at it with the tip of her chopsticks. It wouldn't budge, so she left it alone.

"This morning the family across the hall asked if the upstairs office would be open today." She shifted the bowl on her knee. "I said open. It's open every day."

Shen Zhixia swallowed her noodles, her throat burning.

Halfway through, she set her chopsticks across the rim.

"Director He."

"Mm."

"...Never mind."

"Save it up," He Xiufen drained the last of her soup and set the bowl back on the tray. "Tell me when you've got enough saved. This chair of mine is right here. I'm not going anywhere."

"I swept the steps yesterday." She stayed seated, drawing the tray closer. "After I finished, another layer of dust settled. Let it settle. Sweeping once is once done."

She ate faster than Shen Zhixia; only a few strands remained at the bottom of her bowl. From downstairs someone called, "Sister He—two beef noodles, one mild!"

"Coming!" She answered, stood up, gathered the tray, and took Shen Zhixia's half-finished bowl too.

With the tray in hand, she stopped at the metal cabinet and freed one hand to pull the door open.

Inside, the bulging Qingshi Village envelope was still bulging. The gap at its mouth, where the papers pushed through, hadn't closed. She pressed the flap down; it wouldn't flatten.

"This envelope—he brought it in at the start of the year," she said. "It was empty then."

Shen Zhixia looked up.

"The papers are yours." He Xiufen leveled the tray and headed toward the stairs. "The envelope was his."

She went down without waiting for a reply.

Her footsteps descended step by step, fading out at the bottom. Downstairs the exhaust fan started up again, then the muffled thump of dough slapped on a workboard.

The cabinet door stood open. The envelope was still bulging inside, its mouth gaping outward, the paper corners worn soft. On the old wooden chair beneath the window, the cloth corner still hung lifted, and no one moved to smooth it down.

A fleck of scallion had landed on the desktop, dropped when the bowl was set down. She picked it up, rolled it between her fingertips, and tossed it into the wastebasket.