Chapter 6: The Voicemail

Gu Hanzhou had heard the words easy money and faking from the study corridor, and he went back inside without a sound.

He sat at his father's desk in the dark and listened to the house.

It was a good thing to know, he decided.

It was good to know the price of a man, and what the man called it when he thought nobody could hear.

He had paid ten thousand a day for a mourner and had been given exactly that.

He had also kissed the mourner, an hour ago, in a room with a stool on its side.

Nobody had billed him for that, and it was the part he could not file.

He did not understand why the sentence sat so badly.

He took out his phone.

The call list showed Dad at the top, at 6:40 on the evening his father died.

Hanzhou had been in a board preparation meeting with the phone silenced, and he had seen the missed call late that night.

He had walked into this study soon after, and the lamp was on, and the old man was in his chair.

He pressed the voicemail.

"Hanzhou," said his father's voice, tired and kind. "It's Dad. Have you eaten?"

He stopped it there.

He always stopped it there.

He had tried it forty times in four days, and the sentence ended at the same place, because he was afraid of what came next.

He put the phone face down on the blotter, folded his hands, and stayed where he was until the window turned grey.

At seven a maid came to say that the Old Madam wanted him.

His grandmother received him in her small east parlour, among a hundred years of lacquer and a smell of sandalwood.

She sat in her carved chair with the cane across her knees and her tea untouched.

"Sit," she said.

He sat.

"You made your uncle a fool in front of three hundred people," she said.

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