Chapter 20: Carried

By the third month, Su Ye had carried Lu Chen into the lift and out of it, and across the tower lobby.

He had carried him to the car, and from the car, and once, at a board lunch, from his chair to the window to look at the rain.

"I can walk," Lu Chen said, for the twelfth time that day.

"Coupon," said Su Ye, and kept going.

"There is no coupon for carrying me."

"I wrote a new one. It's in your briefcase. It's on the last page."

Lu Chen hid his face in Su Ye's neck.

Mrs. Su, passing in the hall with a vase, said, "At last he's useful."

The Chairman, behind her, said, "Point one, light exercise only," and wrote it down.

Su Ye carried his husband up the stairs of the east wing, wheezing, and kicked the bedroom door shut with his heel.

The baby was down the corridor, asleep, with a grandmother in the chair.

The monitor was off.

Su Ye had turned it off himself, and thrown the Chairman's rocking-chair cushion over it.

"Put me down," said Lu Chen, in a thick voice that did not mean it.

"Not yet."

"Su Ye. I'm heavy."

"You're light. You're disgraceful. You've lost weight again."

Su Ye staggered two steps, bent his knees and set Lu Chen on his feet against the door.

"You don't eat."

"I eat. I eat constantly."

"You ate half a rice ball and threw up behind the potted fern."

"It was a very large fern."

Su Ye kissed him.

Lu Chen kissed him back, greedy and open, pulling at his shirt, and Su Ye felt the heat of his hands through the cloth.

The doctor had said the third month was kind.

She had said it would make Lu Chen hungry, and restless, and impossible.

She had not said Lu Chen would look at him across a boardroom and mouth a word that made a director drop his pen.

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