59: The Bench at the Fountain

I was at Hangzhou north at 6:50 PM IRL.

I had walked the four kilometers from the dorm. I had walked them slowly. I had on the small dark jacket and the scarf my mother had knitted for me in 2013 and the small canvas bag with the small pencil notebook and a thin paperback in case the bench had longer minutes than I expected. I had not, since the bonded-thread had dimmed at 12:14 AM Saturday morning, opened the slab phone for anything other than the small clock check.

The 7:14 from Suzhou pulled in at 7:14 exactly.

Wanqing came down the platform at the end of the third car. She had on the white canvas bag and the dark green sweater under her own dark coat. Her hair was in the small low braid she wore on Sunday evenings. She had not, the small look across forty meters of platform told me, slept much in two days.

She walked over.

She did not, when she reached me, say anything. She did not put a hand on my jacket. She did not lift onto her toes. She said only, in her ordinary voice:

"Walk."

We walked.

We walked west out of the small north-station courtyard and along the small Sunday-evening pedestrian boulevard to the lower-city night market. The market was the market it was at this hour: the small steam from the dumpling stalls and the small chestnut braziers, the small vendors calling the small specific Sunday-evening prices, the small old couples walking with their small grandchildren at three, the small students in twos and fours from the small HZUT and Zhejiang University campuses. We walked through it at the steady walk Wanqing walked all walks.

The western fountain was at the western end of the market square.

It was an old fountain — a small carved stone basin perhaps three meters across, with a small stone column at the center, and a small carved stone bench along the western rim. The fountain was, on Sunday evenings in late October, lit by the small yellow lamps the night-market lighting committee had installed in 2011 and had not since replaced. The water was off — they turned the water off after September fifteenth and on after April first — and the small basin held only the small pile of dry leaves and the small reflection of the yellow lamps.

The bench was empty.

Across the small square, at the small noodle stall under the small awning at the eastern end, a small older man in a small grey jacket was at a small folding stool with a bowl of beef-noodle soup and a small bottle of beer. He did not, when we crossed the square, look at us. He looked at the small folded paper-edition of the small evening newspaper at his side.

Old Wolf had come.

We sat on the bench at the western rim.

Wanqing sat at the small left side. I sat at the small right side. There were the small twenty-eight centimeters of stone bench between us. The small lower-city night-market sound was around us — the calling of the prices, the small sizzle of the dumpling stall's pan, the small careful conversation of the small old couples walking past, the small distant trolley bell from the boulevard.

Wanqing said: "Ten minutes."

I said nothing.

The small lower-city night-market clock at the north end of the square was at 7:42 PM IRL.

I sat.

I did not, at the bench, look at her face. I looked at the small stone basin and the small reflection of the small yellow lamps in the small basin's collected leaves. I sat the way she had told me to sit on the bonded thread on Friday night — without saying anything, without checking the time, without offering anything that would change the small shape of the small ten minutes she had set.

The small clock at the north end of the square moved to 7:43.

It moved to 7:44.

It moved through the next minutes.

A small grandfather and grandson walked past the bench at 7:46 with two small chestnuts in a small paper cone. The grandson, perhaps five, looked at Wanqing's face and then at mine and then at the empty space on the bench between us, and then he looked at his grandfather and the grandfather pulled him gently along.

At 7:51 a small woman walked past the bench with a small cloth bag of dumplings.

At 7:52 the small clock at the north end moved to 7:52.

At 7:52 PM IRL Wanqing said:

"Ten minutes."

She did not look at me. She looked at the small stone basin.

She said: "I have decided three things. I will tell you them in the order I decided them."

"All right."

"One. I am not, on the not-telling, going to ask you to apologize. The not-telling was, by your father's request and by the small careful judgment you made about my father's register, the right not-telling. I would, in your position, have made the same not-telling. I would have, in your position, also gone the three weeks without finding the right small Wednesday-afternoon moment to tell me. The right small moment did not, in those three weeks, exist. I would not have invented it. You did not invent it. I am not going to ask you to invent it now."

I sat.

She said: "Two. I am, however, going to ask you for one piece of bookkeeping. From now on — until I tell you otherwise — when you make a call to a member of my family that I have not, at the time of the call, been informed of, you will, within twenty-four IRL hours of the call, write the call into the small bookkeeping ledger I am going to give you. You will not, in the ledger entry, have to tell me what was said. You will only have to write the date, the time, the family member, the duration, and one word for the topic. The ledger will be the small Suzhou-cotton-paper notebook I will give you on Wednesday at the lab. I will not, except at the end of every IRL season, read the ledger. At the end of the season — December 21, March 21, June 21, September 21 — I will, in the small private upper-floor reading-room of the small Suzhou library, read the ledger entries. I will not, after reading, ask you for the contents. The ledger is the small mechanism by which the not-telling does not, by accumulation, become a small different thing. The ledger is for me to know that I know there are entries. It is not for me to read them."

I sat.

I said: "All right."

She said: "Three. The third is the one I have been deciding for thirty-six hours."

She paused.

She said: "I am, after the small Sunday tonight, going to be the small specific kind of partner who can be told things she does not, in the small specific moment, want to hear. I will not, in the next two IRL years, ask you to tell me the small civic-historical context you came back from. I have, since the bench by the western fountain in-game on Friday two weeks ago, known that you came back from a small civic-historical context I do not have access to. I have not, since then, asked you. I will not, in the next two years, ask you. After two years I may. I may not. I will decide then. The deciding now is — I am, in the meantime, the partner who knows there is a context she has not been told. I am not going to be the partner who pretends otherwise, and I am not going to be the partner who demands the telling. I am going to be the partner who carries the not-knowing as a small weight she has decided to carry. The carrying is the third thing. The carrying is the part I had to decide whether to say tonight."

I sat with that.

I said, after a long minute: "All right."

She said: "And — the small fourth thing, which is not one of the three but which I am going to tell you anyway. The lock will, when we leave this bench, lift. The bonded thread will be the bonded thread again. I will not, in the IRL frame, kiss you tonight. I am not, tonight, ready to kiss you. I will be ready, by my own small careful timing, by Wednesday at the lab gate. On Wednesday at 5:42 PM IRL after the lab I will be at the dorm-corridor intersection at the western lane the way I was on Friday two weeks ago. We will, at the intersection, be the way we were. Until Wednesday at 5:42 PM IRL we will be the way we are now. The small twenty-eight centimeters on this bench will, until Wednesday at 5:42, be the small twenty-eight centimeters."

I held that.

I said: "All right."

She said: "Now I would like, before we leave the bench, one piece of you that is not an answer to a question I have asked. One piece of you you are choosing to give me. The piece can be small. I do not, in the giving, want you to perform anything. I want a small piece."

I considered it.

I gave her the piece I had decided, on the long quiet at the dorm Saturday afternoon at 2:30 PM with the notebook open, I would give her if she asked.

I said: "On the eighth of November, this year — eleven IRL days from now — my mother will, by the small specific civic-historical context I have not told you, fall on the small specific cement step at the back of the Pingjiang Road kitchen. She will not break the small specific hip. She will fracture the small specific small left wrist. The fracture will heal. She will not, in the moment of the fall, be alone — my father will be at the table reading the paper, three meters away, and will hear the fall and come to her. He will, in coming to her, lift wrong with his left arm — the small specific arm the spring surgery has not, by November eight, fully recovered — and he will set back his recovery by approximately three IRL weeks. The small three IRL weeks of setback will, in the old timeline, push the small three more months Doctor Yan has given him to a small two and a half. I am, in this timeline, going to call my mother on November seven and ask her to put a small specific rubber mat on the cement step. She will, by my asking, put the mat on the step. The fall will not happen. My father will not lift wrong. The three months will be the three months."

I paused.

"I am giving you this piece because it is the small specific kind of piece I have not, in the three weeks I have been carrying it, told anyone. I am giving you this piece because I trust you to carry it without using it."

She did not, at the bench, look at me.

She said: "Thank you."

She said: "Cangtian."

"Yes."

She said: "I will not, with the piece, do anything but carry it."

"All right."

We sat at the small twenty-eight centimeters on the bench for the next ten minutes without speaking.

At 8:14 PM IRL the small bonded-thread visualization on the small slab phone in my jacket pocket — I had not, since 12:14 AM Saturday, opened the slab phone to look at it — buzzed once at the small thread-lift pulse the launch-week patch had laid in. I felt the buzz against my ribs through the jacket.

The lock had lifted.

We stood up.

We walked back through the night market the way we had come. At the small noodle stall the older man in the grey jacket did not, when we passed at twelve meters' distance, look up. He folded the paper-edition. He paid. He left east toward the small trolley stop two minutes after us.

At the western boulevard Wanqing turned to me.

She said: "Walk me back to the dormitory north corridor. Don't, at the corridor, come up. I am at the small late library tonight."

"All right."

We walked the boulevard.

At the dormitory north corridor she stopped. She put a hand, briefly, on the back of my left hand at the small wrist — the small two seconds the press took, no more — and she turned and walked into the corridor.

I walked west toward A-7.

In my chest the second voice — *three months* — was quiet. The first voice — the old counter — said:

*She gave you the ledger. The ledger is the small specific small careful gift she could only give a partner she had decided to keep.*

I walked the rest of the way slowly.