Chapter 7: What Water Does at Night

Meng Yuhe had been Tang Zhenhai's boy for twenty-one years.

He knew exactly what the smile on Tang Wenjie's face was for.

"I know," he said.

It was all he said.

Wenjie waited for more while the hall emptied around them.

Meng Yuhe looked at the lights over his shoulder until Wenjie gave up.

"Come to dinner," said Wenjie. "Dad will cry."

"No."

"Brother Yuhe."

"No," said Meng Yuhe, and went out through the door.

The car park was a gravel yard with one lamp.

He sat in the driver's seat with both hands on the wheel and did not start the engine.

Through the glass he could see the hall steps.

Lu Qing was standing on them with six aunties holding on to him from every side, talking with his whole body.

He was telling them something about the register, and in a dry borrowed jacket he looked about nineteen.

One of the aunties was crying into his shoulder from happiness.

Meng Yuhe watched, and did not understand why it was so hard to look away.

His mouth still tasted of tea eggs.

He had carried one sentence around for three days.

A customer is a customer.

He had heard it on Wednesday, standing in the rain at the edge of the awning, and it had not worn smooth.

Ten minutes ago Lu Qing had answered it, and Meng Yuhe had not yet worked out how to hold the answer.

He closed his eyes.

It was a mistake.

When he closed his eyes the pool came.

It always came in the same order.

First the sound, a low hum from the plant room under the deck, the dosing pump working.

Then the smell, sweet and sharp.

It had reached him on the deck at midnight, when he went back for his goggles.

Then the junior, eighteen, coughing in lane four, hanging on the rope with both hands, unable to say why.

Meng Yuhe had gone in without thinking.

He remembered the water as a thick warm weight, and the taste in his mouth.

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