Don't Use the Third Key

Don't Use the Third Key

Kai loaded the hard hat into the taxi at four. The lane held the last of the Mid-Autumn smell. The osmanthus in the courtyard bowl had already gone brown at the edges.

I stood in the spare-room doorway with the garment bag over my arm. Elias held out the third key. Blue painter's tape still wrapped the head of it.

He was forty-one. I was twenty-three. The doorway was narrow enough that the bag brushed his wrist when I shifted. Lime sat under his thumbnail. He did not look at my mouth. His thumb worried the seam of his palm.

"No guests," he said. "The upstairs pipe is dead. I sleep in the loft Tuesday and Thursday."

Kai had left him the house and me for six weeks. I had met Elias at twenty, after the dance that started the bookings. That night Kai walked his new partner through this lane and did not look back.

"That's the rule, then?" I said.

"The first-of-month partnership draw sits on this building," he said. "If the house fails, I lose my half and my name on the firm. Kai still eats with me. No one else from the old office does."

He started on lime mortar. He talked about how the mix set in autumn damp. He talked about joints in a wall this old. He did not look up. I could have stepped back into the spare room. I stayed in the doorway.

I hung the garment bag. It listed on the hook. The jade pin from that Mid-Autumn dance slid from the inner pocket and hit the brick, and the sound of it going was small and exact, and he was already bending before I told him to leave it.

He picked it up. His knuckles grazed the nape where the pin had sat. He did not kiss me. He set it on the steamer lid.

"Don't use this key if I'm not here," he said.

"If you're not here, then?"

The tape stuck to his thumb. He could lock the street door. I could tell Kai he had been careless with the draw. Neither of us said that second part.

"Kai said watch the pipes and watch you."

I took the key. The tape was still warm from his hand. He stood too close for the size of the room. I did not move. His breath changed once. He put his hands in his pockets.

Night three the courtyard wet-room was the only working shower. I found him on the stone wrapping the burst pipe in boiled cloth. Steam had put a skin of water on the slab. The fitting robe stuck to my back. There was nowhere else to stand that was dry.

I went to my knees because the slab left no room.

He said my name like a warning. I put my mouth on him anyway. His cock was already hard under the wet cloth of his trousers. The belt was stiff from the damp. I got him out. I took him in. He tasted of pipe-water and skin.

"Zara. Kai."

The name came out as a brake. It failed. I kept him on my tongue. I worked him slow at first, then not. His hand found the back of my head and did not push. It stayed. I could have sat back on my heels. I did not.

The pipe knocked in the wall, loud enough for the lane. He braced on the plaster. I did not get up. I sucked him through the first pulse and the second. He came on my tongue and on the boiled cloth. I swallowed. I kept him there through the aftershocks until his thigh shook against my cheek.

"Stop," he said. He did not pull away.

"Stop, then?"

I stayed until the cloth was wet with more than water. Spit and come ran down the wrap onto the stone. My knees hurt. I noticed that before I noticed his face.

He tucked himself away with hands that were not steady.

"This house is his," he said. "I was supposed to keep it. We used it as a mouth."

"A mouth, then?"

He looked at the blue tape on the key still hanging from my robe pocket. He looked at the door. He did not open it for a long time. I stood. The robe clung. He reached as if to fix the collar and stopped short of my throat.

Week two, one in the morning. The loft. Garment tape still striped my breasts from the night shoot. Two of his fingers were in my cunt. My bun was collapsing. The jade pin started to slide.

The house iPad lit. Kai's name. The camera sat too close to the quilt.

I had to answer. It was his account. I held the tablet above the frame of Elias's wrist. His fingers stayed inside me, frozen. I did not clench. I did not ask him to take them out.

"The pressure is worse after ten," I said.

Kai talked plumber. Elias's breath hit my shoulder and stopped. I kept my eyes on the icon, not on the man attached to the hand in me. The pin slid another inch. I did not catch it.

"El, you there?" Kai said.

"Here," Elias said. His voice was level. His fingers were not. They had gone still at the last knuckle, two of them, wet, and my pulse ticked against them.

"Sign the invoice in person tomorrow. Nine. Don't send the intern."

"I'll be there."

The call ended. We still did not finish. He took his hand away like it burned. I sat up. The tape pulled. He wiped his fingers on the drafting cloth and would not look at me. He washed that hand in the loft sink for longer than soap required.

Tomorrow he had to sit across from Kai with that same hand. I looked at the cloth. I did not say it.

"You could have ended the call," he said.

"You could have taken your hand out. That's the choice, then?"

He did not answer. The pin hit the floor. Neither of us picked it up. The iPad dimmed. Downstairs the dead pipe knocked once.

Three nights later I hung a qipao on the steamer. Water dripped onto the brick. He came up behind me and did not ask with words. He asked with his mouth on the back of my neck.

"Yes," I said.

He fucked me standing in the courtyard. My back hit cold brick. He held me up by the backs of my thighs. His arms shook once and then locked. My left foot cramped on his calf, the old dance arch from rehearsals I still could not stretch out.

"That foot," I said.

He did not set me down. He kept me there. His cock filled me in one push. I bit the shoulder of his shirt. The steamer hissed. A window latch turned in the next house.

"Quiet," he said.

I was not. He covered my mouth with his. He fucked me harder. The brick scraped. I came around him and he pulled out and came across the garment tape still stuck to my ribs, a wet stripe over the flesh-colored strip, aimed there on purpose. I looked at the tape after. I did not look at him.

He set me down. The cramp stayed.

At eight the lane auntie found him at the street door.

"Zhou laoshi's niece is loud," she said.

"She is Kai's sister," he said.

He had not said sister to me. He said it to her. I heard it from the wet-room. I had washed the tape off and the come with it. The qipao still dripped. He came in and stood in the doorway and did not touch me.

"If she tells the lane committee, the inspection moves up," he said. "The draw is the first. This house is the collateral. You know what I lose."

"You know what I lose, then?"

He knew. The roof. Kai's call to the French house. December fittings. He nodded once. The brown osmanthus sat between us in the bowl, untouched. I picked up the jade pin from the steamer and put it back in my hair with fingers that still smelled like him.

Week four we went to Pudong after hours to check a beam. The drafting chair squeaked when I sat on him. I rode his cock with my hands on his shoulders. He was older and he looked it under the site lamps, grey at the temple, the set of his knees, and I used that, and he let me.

He put me on the table. Paper stuck to my shoulder blades. His mouth went between my legs. He licked my cunt until I came on his tongue. I said his name. I did not say Kai's.

Then his cock was down my throat. I took him until my eyes watered. He held my head and I let him. I could have tapped his hip. I did not. He came in my mouth. I swallowed before I had air.

A guard's flashlight moved at the far end of the scaffold.

We found the intern's time-lapse camera still aimed at the table. A red pin-light. He deleted the file with my spit still on him. I watched the progress bar. I did not watch the dark glass.

Site photos went to Kai as a matter of course. He said that while the bar crawled. His voice dropped on the word beam and could not finish the sentence.

"If that file had gone," I said.

"I know."

The partnership was his name in this city. Heritage work. Not a solo practice. Kai was the only person who still ate with him after the divorce. I had a spare room and a possible December. Both of those sat on Kai's say.

The flashlight passed. He zipped. I stood. The paper tore when I peeled it off my back. He almost reached for me and put his hand on the camera instead.

Week five Kai came back a night early. I was naked in the loft. Elias's mouth was on my clit. One of my knees was hooked over his shoulder. I had my hand in his hair. I had not come yet.

Shoes on the courtyard stone. The third key turning. Kai had borrowed Elias's office spare.

Elias yanked the quilt. I hid in the wardrobe with spit on my clit and no pin in my hair. I counted hanging tubes of drawings. Eighteen. Nineteen. My breath fogged the door crack.

Kai's voice in the loft. Elias drinking a beer he did not want.

"She's sleeping," Elias said. "Spare room."

The spare-room bed still smelled like my steamer. Kai cooked. He thanked Elias over the second bottle for looking after me. He slept in the room that was mine.

I stayed in the wardrobe until the house went quiet. Unfinished. Wet. The jade pin was on the loft floor somewhere I could not reach without crossing the light. Elias sat on the drafting stool with the quilt around his waist and did not open the wardrobe. Downstairs the third key went onto the hook. We both heard the sound of it.

I could have stayed in the dark until morning. I put my palm on the door and waited.

I left the wardrobe and went back. Kai was asleep downstairs. On the loft floor Elias put his palm over my mouth. I nodded under it.

He fucked me without a condom for the first time. I did not ask him to pull out. His cock went in bare. The heat of it was different, and the wet, and I still did not ask. He came inside me while his best friend slept under the same roof. I kept my eyes on the ceiling. Dust moved when he fell into me, a fine pale lift off the boards that hung in the loft air and settled again on my shoulder and on the back of his hand still covering my mouth, and that was the only long thing I had.

He took his hand away. I could have spoken. I did not. Come leaked when he pulled out. I felt it on my thigh. We did not hold each other.

Dawn. Kai did not shout. He set the jade pin on the kitchen table. He took the third key off Elias's ring. The tape was still there, blue, a little dirty.

He cancelled the French-house call that was going to put me in Paris fittings in December. I heard him do it from the stair.

Elias offered in writing to sign his half of the lane house to Kai if the partnership stood. Kai said he would decide after the Suzhou draw.

I packed the garment bag. I paid for my own taxi. The spare room was no longer mine. No last clinch. There was nothing left to reach for. What was left was who still had a roof and whose name was still on the firm. I looked at the pin on the table, not at either of them. I passed the brown osmanthus in the bowl, still untouched, and I went out into the lane with the bag listing the same way it had on the first afternoon.