Chapter 4: Separate Wings

Mingzhou didn't go down to dinner.

At seven, a maid knocked and told him the table was laid.

At eight, she came back and said it again.

At nine, Ou Jin knocked himself.

"He's eating alone," Ou Jin said through the door. "He's cut his own steak into very small pieces. I thought you'd like to know."

"I'm not hungry," Mingzhou said.

"He moved my parking space to the street."

"Good," Mingzhou said.

"It's raining."

Mingzhou almost smiled. He buried it in the pillow.

Then he heard the footsteps go away.

He lay in the dark of his own wing, which had a bed, a desk, a bathroom and a door he had never locked.

The villa was built in two halves.

His was the east side, with a view of the harbour lights. Yuheng's was the west.

In eight months he had crossed the hall between them only on fourteenth days, when the bond came due.

The rest of the time they ate at opposite ends of a table built for twelve.

He lay on his back.

There is no bridge, he thought.

He had said it to Yuheng's face this afternoon, and he had known as he said it that it was a bad lie.

You hummed it in your sleep.

He had never hummed in his sleep before in his life.

At two in the morning he gave up and went downstairs in bare feet.

The living room was dark. Somebody had cleaned the sofa, and somebody had opened a window to air the room.

The piano stood by the glass wall with its lid down, as it had stood since the wedding.

Nobody played it.

Mingzhou lifted the lid.

It was an old instrument, a Steinway, well kept. It had been tuned this month, though nobody had asked.

He sat on the bench.

He put his hands on the keys, and for a long minute he did nothing.

Then he played the first phrase of the fourth piece, very softly, with his left hand only.

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