Wednesday afternoon, two fifty, and I stood by the third floor elevators for two minutes before I rang the bell.
New underwear, seamless Uniqlo, black — I changed three times before leaving. I shaved my legs too, went all the way up to the tops of my thighs in the shower last night, even trimmed my pubic hair. Zhou Kai was in the living room playing a game and never once knocked on the door.
In the morning my mom took Doudou downstairs in the stroller for some sun and said they’d stay out till noon. With the place to myself I shut the bedroom door and did my Kegels, ten seconds squeeze, ten seconds release. I stopped on the sixth one and sat on the edge of the bed staring at nothing.
“Ms. Yang, room three.” The front desk girl had her hair in a bun today. She smiled and said, “A-Jie is waiting for you.”
A-Jie was in the same white short-sleeved uniform, laying a disposable sheet over the bed. He didn’t turn around. “Internal today. Same rule, you say stop and I stop, and changing your mind partway counts. Towel is on your right.”
I undressed faster than last time. Legs into the stirrups, knees apart. He didn’t cover me with the towel; he swung a small lamp over instead, and the light landed on my cunt, white and glaring. “The episiotomy has healed well, a little scar buildup, a few sessions and it’ll soften.”
He took a white thing out of a drawer, about as thick as a finger, wired to a box the size of a palm. “Pressure reading first, then hands.” The thing was cold and went in all at once. “Squeeze.” I squeezed; the screen jumped to 23. “Squeeze as hard as you can.” I squeezed; it jumped to 31.
“Thirty-one, not high. Normal postpartum should be over forty.” He pulled the probe out and set it in a tray. “Hands are more accurate than that thing is.”
He pulled on a glove, squeezed a blob of something clear from a tube onto his fingertip, cold, and spread it twice around the mouth of my cunt. “I’m going in.”
One finger. The middle one — I was watching his hand, it was the middle one. He didn’t shove it in all at once; the pad circled the opening twice first, then pushed slowly, stopping at the second knuckle.
“Squeeze once.” I squeezed. My cunt clamped down on his finger, and I heard a very soft “mm” through his nose.
“Grade three, better than the outer layer.” The pad of his finger turned a half circle inside me and pressed on the front wall. “This is the pubococcygeus. Your leaking is mostly because it has no strength. I’m going to press on it, and you breathe with me. In. Out.”
The moment he pressed, my hips came off the bed. His hand stopped instantly, went still. “Pain?” he asked. I said no.
He drew his finger back a joint and sat back a little, looking at my face between my two raised legs. “Ms. Yang, there’s something I need to say plainly. If I press any further, this isn’t rehab anymore, it’s me doing things to you. Do you want that?”
The only sound left in the room was the air conditioner. I stared at the ceiling light for about five seconds, my throat so dry I had to swallow.
“I want it,” I said. Not loud, but I heard myself say it. “Keep going.”
Instead he pulled his finger out. Peeled the glove off inside out and dropped it in the bin with a snap. “Not on this bed.”
“…What does that mean?” I propped myself up, my legs still in the stirrups, forgetting for a second to take them down.
“It means that in this room I’m the person doing your rehab, and what your money bought is rehab.” He tucked my file folder under his arm. “Get dressed. I’m going to the front desk.”
My pants were only halfway up before he was out the door. It didn’t shut all the way, and the soft music from the corridor poured in. I did up the button, went barefoot to the door, and watched through the gap.
He slapped the folder down on the counter and said to the girl with the bun, “Ms. Yang’s remaining sessions go to Liu Min. Cross today’s off, no charge.”
“Transfer… to Liu Min?” The girl looked up. “Liu Min is booked into the week after next, she only has four slots a day.”
“Then book the week after next.” He flipped the card open. Ten boxes, one already used for the assessment. He drew a line through today’s box and wrote two words: not done. “The remaining eight go under Liu Min’s name.”
The girl looked at me over his shoulder. “Ms. Yang, do you agree? You picked A-Jie yourself, you know.”
I was standing in the doorway of room three, hair a mess, dress zipper not all the way up, bare feet on the floor tile. I said, “I agree.”
He slid the folder back into the rack. I watched the name Yang Ting slide into Liu Min’s row and seat itself firmly, like it had crossed into somebody else’s territory.
He went to wash his hands with the tap turned all the way up. He shook them dry, turned his head and said one thing to me: “I get off at five thirty. Basement garage, B2, white Lavida, plate ending 715.” Then he went into room four and the door shut.
I sat in the waiting area for an hour and a half. The mugwort smell didn’t fade, and the soft music finished and started over from the top. The girl poured me a glass of water and asked if I wanted to lie down for a while. I said no need.
Five twenty-five, I went down. Half the lights on B2 were out. The white car was parked in the last row, its rear end to the wall.
Five twenty-eight, the fire stairwell door pushed open. He’d changed into a gray hoodie, hair wet, a plastic bag in his hand. He came over and opened the passenger door. “Get in.”
The car smelled of rubber, cloth seats, a layer of dirt on the floor mats. He threw the bag in the back, shut the door, and locked it with a click.
“Why did you transfer me away,” I asked.
“Those eight sessions are something you paid for.” He clicked his seatbelt in and then undid it. “Liu Min works finer than I do, her hands are small, she finds the front wall accurately. That leaking of yours, she can fix it.”
“And you?”
“I’m not the person doing your rehab anymore,” he said. “I clocked out at five thirty; this is my own time now. That ”I want it“ you said on that bed — say it again now, and then I’ll put my hands on you.”
“You have a lot of rules.” “Not that many.” He turned in his seat, one arm along the back of my headrest, not touching me. “If I traded you those eight sessions for something, I’d be a different kind of man. If you want to leave now, I’ll walk you to the elevator, you come do your sessions as scheduled, and nobody owes anybody anything.”
I looked at him. The row of lights on the garage ceiling buzzed. I pulled my dress up in one motion, up to the top of my thighs, and said, “I want it.”
He reclined the passenger seat halfway. His hand came up from my knee — no glove, hot, fingerprints on it — sliding all the way up the inside of my thigh and stopping there. “Wet.”
“It was, from the moment I walked into the building,” I said.
Two of his fingers hooked my underwear aside and went straight in. No lubricant, and none needed; I was slick enough that he was in to the base in one stroke. I cried out and bit down fast on the back of my own hand.
“Nobody else is in this car.” His fingers curled and hooked that place on my front wall, the same place he’d stopped halfway through pressing on the bed. “What are you holding back for.”
I let go of my hand. Every time he hooked, I cried out — a dozen-some times a minute — and the wet ran down the crack of my ass onto the cloth seat, soaking in a small patch that kept spreading.
I pushed my T-shirt up to my collarbone myself and shoved my bra up; both tits sprang out and swung twice before they settled. He freed his left hand and grabbed one, fingers closing tight, two of them pinching my nipple and rolling it back and forth. I let out a moan and pushed into his palm. “Sensitive,” he said. “Now you know.” He squeezed harder.
My back came off the seat in an arch, my foot braced against the plastic panel under the windshield, and the panel creaked. I called out, “Stop.”
His hand pulled out instantly and hung in the air, motionless. “What is it.” “Cramp in my calf,” I said. He moved my foot down, squeezed the muscle twice, and after that left his hand resting on my knee, waiting. I said, “Keep going.”
Two fingers went back in, his thumb pressing circles on my clit. Hooking inside, rubbing outside, a rhythm nothing like that soft music in the corridor — much faster.
I squirted. Onto his forearm, onto the seat, all over the underside of the center console. I shook with his hand clamped between my thighs, shook hard enough that the rearview mirror swayed. Before I got pregnant I never once squirted with Zhou Kai. I thought that was something they acted out in porn.
A film of fog had risen on the windows. He pulled out tissues and wiped the seat, very carefully, saying as he wiped, “I still have to drive this tomorrow.”
I reached over and felt him through his jeans — hard, straining the seam pale. He took my hand away. “Not needed today.” “Why?” “Today is yours.”
Before I got out I took my underwear off, balled it up and stuffed it in my bag, bare under my dress. There was an old man with groceries in the elevator, and I held the bag in front of me.
Zhou Kai got home at ten thirty and asked, “Did you do the rehab?” I said I did. “Is it working?” “Liu Min says ten sessions and I’ll see results.” He said “oh,” took his phone into the bathroom, came out, dropped onto the bed, and was snoring in two minutes.
My phone lit up. A text from Churui: “Your treatment plan has been transferred to therapist Liu Min; you are booked for Wednesday week after next at 10:00.” Underneath it a WeChat message from A-Jie: “Saturday, two in the afternoon, my place. Sending you the address.” I stared at those two lines, and then I put my hand down my pants.