Chapter 5: Clause Four

The rear door of the black car opened from the inside.

"Get in," Hanjing said.

Zhe looked back once.

Qiu stood in the shop doorway with the screwdriver in his fist and his chin up.

"It's all right, Master," Zhe called, and got in.

The door shut on the noise of Nanshan Road.

The car pulled out so smoothly that he felt it only in his stomach.

"Who is the old man?"

"My teacher."

"You laughed." Hanjing was looking out of his own window. "I've never heard you laugh."

"There was nothing to laugh at, in the house."

Hanjing's head turned. It was a reflex, the reflex of a man who is rarely answered back.

His hand came across the seat and took Zhe's chin.

He turned his face toward the window, toward the light, the way he did every evening.

Then his hand stopped.

His nostrils moved.

Zhe knew what he was smelling.

Camellia oil from the soap at the shop, and the pine rosin that never washed out of his hands, and the plain warm smell of his own skin.

"You aren't wearing it."

"No."

"I told you the cologne was to be worn daily. It's in the contract."

"Clause four," Zhe said. "Party A supplies the fragrance. On the twenty-second you told Lu Wen to throw out the bottle."

Hanjing's eyes narrowed.

"You're quoting the contract at me."

"You're the one who taught me to read it."

The thumb on his jaw was very still.

It was strange how well Zhe knew the weight of this hand.

At twenty-five, he had never been kissed.

Three years of nights, and the whole of what a man had ever done to him was this: a thumb under the cheekbone, a face tilted to the lamp.

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