March 6th, a Friday, nine forty at night. The Haidilao delivery pot was still on the stove, a film congealed over the red oil. Han Dong finished washing two bowls, shook the water off his hands, walked back to the dining table, sat down, and said one sentence.
“Lulu, I want to talk something over with you.” “Talk.” I was reading a contract on my phone, that Hengxin construction case; opposing counsel wanted our reply letter before ten. “Fang Zhe’s birthday is next Thursday.” “I know. I bought him a watch strap, crocodile, three thousand two.”
“That’s not it.” His finger tapped the tabletop three times, then stopped. “I want him to… be with us.” I didn’t look up. I read the same line on the screen three times and not one word went into my head.
“Be with us how.” “You know.” I put the phone face down on the table, once. “Han Dong, say the whole thing. I do this for a living, I don’t take half a sentence.” His Adam’s apple moved. “I want Fang Zhe to fuck you. With me there.”
The range hood over the stove was still running, humming. I reached over and shut it off, and the place went quiet enough to hear the refrigerator. “Don’t talk yet,” I cut him off. “I ask, you answer. It’s a habit from work, I can’t change it.”
“Ask.” “Do you want him to fuck me, or do you want me to fuck him. Those two are not the same thing.” He went blank for two seconds. “Is there a difference.” “A huge one. The first one is about you. The second one is about me. Think it through before you answer me.”
“…The second one.” His voice dropped. “Lulu, I want to watch you feel good. I can’t give you that.” “How long have you been thinking about it.” “Three years.” He answered fast, fast enough that it sounded rehearsed. “Lulu, I’m not drunk. I haven’t had a drop.”
That was true. There was one bottle of Coke Zero on the table, his, half of it gone. “Second question,” I said. “If this goes ahead, do you still think we are husband and wife.” “Yes.”
“On what grounds.” “On the grounds that I don’t let go.” His hand was shaking when he said it, but his eyes didn’t dodge. “You and him, however it goes, fine. Just don’t stop coming home.” I looked at him for a long time. I have known this man twelve years and slept with him for ten, and the hardest sentence he has said in his life was the one he had just said.
My name is Chen Lu, thirty-five, partner at Jinghua Law Firm. I do construction contract litigation, more than thirty trials a year, and I have seen every absurd client there is. What I had never seen was my own husband sitting across from me talking to me about this.
Han Dong is thirty-six, a structural engineer at the municipal design institute. We have been married ten years, registered in May 2016, never planned on having kids. The apartment was scraped together by his parents plus the two of us, Baiziwan, one hundred eighteen square meters, seven years left on the mortgage.
Fang Zhe is thirty-six too. He and Han Dong shared a dorm room at university, one in clinical medicine, one in civil engineering; the school mixed the assignments that year and jammed the two of them into one room for four years. Fang Zhe is in orthopedics at City Third Hospital now, associate chief physician, divorced three years, lives in Jinsong, eleven minutes away by car.
All these years with him, one dinner after another. The meniscus in my right knee had been clicking for two years and I asked him about it once. He said, “I don’t look at this. Go register with Dr. Lu, don’t come to me. Anyone I have eaten under the same roof with, I don’t treat.”
In 2019 Han Dong had appendicitis, and it was Fang Zhe who drove him to the emergency room in the middle of the night. In 2022 my mother had a knee replacement, and Fang Zhe pulled strings for the bed and didn’t take one cent in a red envelope, and the two thousand he shoved back at us he transferred to my mother to buy a knee brace.
I have always remembered that line of his. In all these years not one finger of his has ever crossed a line with me. “Does he know,” I asked. “He knows.” Han Dong rubbed his palms on his knees. “I raised it with him once, last winter. He set his glass down on the table and said I was sick in the head and told me to get lost.”
“And you raised it again.” “Last month I raised it again.” He looked up at me, his eyes red. “This time he didn’t swear at me. He said it has to come from your mouth. If you don’t say it, he won’t even walk through my door.”
I sat there without moving. Ten years. I know exactly what our home is like. The last time Han Dong touched me was New Year’s Day, three minutes, and afterward he turned his back to me and looked at his phone until one thirty. In all of last year I can count them, under ten times.
I am thirty-five, fourth year of training, three times a week, squat sets at a hundred and ten kilos. Three separate times someone in the locker room has asked me where I train these legs. At home nobody looks. Last month’s body scan, 19.8 percent body fat. The trainer put a tape measure around my thigh, and when he was done he said, “Chen-jie, these legs are way better than the one at my house,” and I laughed about it for ages.
“And if I say no,” I said. “Then I never said it,” he said. “Lulu, I swear, you say one no and I will never say a second sentence about it as long as I live, and I will shut it down on Fang Zhe’s end too. You won’t be short one cent. You won’t be short one thing.”
“I know I won’t be short anything.” I picked the phone up and put it down again. “The apartment is in both our names. I make more a year than you do. Han Dong, I can flip this table any time I want. You remember that sentence.”
“I’ll remember it.” “Third question.” I pushed the phone aside. “When do you want an answer.” “No rush,” he said. “Take as long as you want.” “Fine.” I stood up to go to the bathroom, and at the door I said one more thing. “I won’t answer you on the spot. Everything I have answered on the spot, I have botched.”
That night he came in from behind. He touches me under ten times a year; that night he was very hard. He lay over my back and asked against my ear, “What if he were at the door right now.” I didn’t say anything. Inside I clamped down at once, tight enough that he hissed.
“You want him?” He drove in, hard enough that the glass of water on the nightstand slopped a ring out. “Shut up.” I buried my face in the pillow. He didn’t say anything more, just fucked into me, faster and faster, his hands gripping my waist and dragging me back. I turned my face to the side, one cheek against the pillow, a corner of it between my teeth.
He didn’t hold out three minutes before he finished, came inside me, and lay there panting. I had a Mirena put in at Peking Union in 2020, five years to a replacement, and the new one went in just last year, so it is never something we have to deal with. After he had fallen asleep I lay there with my eyes open until one. Then I put my hand down and worked at it for about two minutes, legs rigid, my heel scuffing a sound out of the sheet.
What was going through my head was last December, the underground garage, my tire flat, Fang Zhe squatting on the ground putting the spare on, and when he stood up there was a streak of engine grease on his hand and he just used the back of that hand to push the loose hair off my forehead. Those hands stayed on my forehead about two seconds.
I went to the bathroom and washed my hands, and then I stood in front of the mirror for a while. My neck had gone red in a patch. For the next two weeks Han Dong didn’t say one word about it. He really did hold it in. On March 9th I was in the waiting area at the courthouse with forty minutes before the hearing, and I searched one word on my phone, deleted the browsing history, then searched it again.
On March 11th I went to Sanlitun, bought two base layers at Uniqlo, passed a shop and tried on a skirt slit to the top of the thigh, eight hundred ninety. I didn’t buy it. March 12th was Fang Zhe’s birthday, Meizhou Dongpo, just the three of us. He poured my Coke, seven-tenths full, the same as ten years ago. I kept watching that hand of his. When the knife went through the beef, the tendon on his wrist jumped and jumped.
Han Dong went to pay and the two of us were left at the table. Fang Zhe pushed his glass forward a little and said, “Mrs. Han, that thing Han Dong talked to you about, don’t agree to it for his sake.” “Do I look like someone who would agree to anything for his sake.”
“No,” he said, and gave a small laugh. “So I’m waiting. You don’t say anything, and I’ll treat it as though it never came up, and we go on eating dinner like always.” On March 13th I was working legs at the gym, halfway through the third set of hack squats, and my phone buzzed on the rack. From Fang Zhe: “You forgot the cake yesterday, it’s in your trunk.” I wrote back: “Got it.” Ten minutes later he sent another one: “Don’t hammer your legs too hard, that meniscus of yours.”
I stared at that sentence for a minute. He never bothers with any of this. I turned the phone face down on the mat and did two more sets. March 18th, Wednesday, noon. I came out of the courthouse, passed a print shop on Xidawang Road, went in and asked for one sheet of A4. The owner asked what I wanted printed. I said I would write it by hand, lend me a pen.
I wrote four lines on that sheet, folded it into quarters, and put it in the inner pocket of my bag. The print shop owner charged me two yuan for the pen. At three sixteen in the afternoon, sitting in my car, I sent the two of them the same WeChat message: “Saturday, eight at night, Fang Zhe’s place. Both of you there. I have something to read to you.”
After I sent it I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and sat with both hands on the wheel for ten seconds. The lights in the underground garage flickered on and off.