Friday night, 7:40, Liang Cheng stood at the foot of Liang Chuan's building.
In five years he'd come to this complex four times. Twice to argue, once to drop something off, once to fetch from downstairs the sewing machine Ma had left, sold for forty—the junk dealer would only give thirty-five, and Liang Cheng made up the five. This time the parcel lockers by the entrance had been swapped for green ones, a lost-cat notice taped to the screen, laminated, corners curling up.
He pressed the doorbell.
The intercom stayed silent. After a dozen-odd seconds the door opened. Liang Chuan in slippers, a pair of chopsticks pinched in one hand, cooking smoke behind him.
"Eaten yet?"
"Eaten."
"Sit a while anyway." Liang Chuan pulled the door wide. "Niuniu's in the back room doing homework. Keep your voice down."
On the table, half a steamed bun, a dish of pickles, capped under another plate. Liang Chuan moved the bowl and chopsticks to one side and wiped the table; halfway through the wiping he remembered something and draped the cloth back over the kitchen tap.
The apartment was the same as ever. Three pairs of shoes in the entryway; the pair at the very back was Ma's, black, one strap across, soles clean, five years unworn. Every visit Liang Cheng saw them there; every visit nobody had moved them.
Liang Chuan poured him tea, the leaves still standing, the water too hot. He didn't drink his own cup either; it sat on the corner of the tea table. Under the table's edge an electricity bill was pressed, one end sticking out.
"Tomorrow, ten o'clock," Liang Cheng said. "Calling or not."
"Calling," Liang Chuan said. "I said we'd call, we'll call. Sit down first."
Liang Cheng didn't sit. From his bag he took out a sheet of paper, folded twice, opened it, laid it on the tea table.
"Four payments," he said. "March 2020, 3,600. 2021, 4,200. 2022, 4,800. Last December, 12,900. Total 25,500. All cancelled for payment timeout. Received: zero."
"These are proxy-payment records initiated under your own name," he said. "I reconciled them last month."
Liang Chuan looked at the sheet. Looked a long time—long enough for the child in the back room to turn a page, the paper crackling once.
"I know," he said.
"You know."
"I know," Liang Chuan said. "The first one was in March, Ma's birthday month. I figured I'd pay three years in one go, cheaper. The weekend after I paid it, I took Niuniu to Shijiazhuang to look at stock, and when we got back I forgot."
"The other three."
"The other three," he set the chopsticks down on the tea table—the chopsticks were dry; he'd been holding them the whole time—"were me remembering one, topping up one. When I paid, the system said the executor had to confirm. I called you. You didn't pick up."
Liang Cheng did the math. Those four dates. The last-December payment was the biggest, 12,900; that day he was stationed out of town, phone on silent for two days.
"I never got the notices."
"There's a lot you never got." Liang Chuan stood, took his phone off the sideboard, swiped a few times, held it out.
The SMS inbox, searched on "proxy payment." Topmost, from last December:
> 【Afterlife Cloud】Your proxy-payment application (12,900.00 yuan) must be confirmed by the executor within 24 hours; it will be cancelled automatically after that. If already confirmed, please ignore.
Unread. Scrolling down, four of the same kind in all, every one unread.
"When I changed phones," Liang Chuan said, "the texts all carried over. I never opened them. Open one, and you have to think about the whole thing."
Liang Cheng handed the phone back. He sat down, picked up the tea, too hot, set it down again.
Light showed in the gap under the back-room door. The sound of a pencil writing, cell by cell.
"Let me ask you something," Liang Chuan said.
"Mm."
"That day. Where were you."
The sheet on the tea table lifted one corner in a draft. Neither of them pressed it flat.
"On the expressway," Liang Cheng said. "The Beijing-Kunming, the stretch where it happened. Exited at 10:47—ETC has the record. Nineteen kilometers left."
"What were you doing on the expressway that day." Liang Chuan asked. "You were supposed to be in the city."
"Delivered bid documents to Baoding the night before. Fog on the way back; they closed the road three hours," Liang Cheng said. "Borrowed Old Chen's car, the fuel light on the whole way, one more stop at a service area. That's all."
"That's all." Liang Chuan chewed on it once and asked nothing further.
"Then."
"Got to the hospital at 11:20. That salesman was still in the corridor, hugging a tablet. Ma's sealing was at ten thirty," he said. "When I got there she was inside, asleep. The doctor said she'd been lucid that morning."
"Lucid." Liang Chuan repeated the word.
"You know better than any of us she was lucid that morning," Liang Cheng said. "The contract copy they delivered for signature—you have one in your hands."
Liang Chuan didn't take that up. He stood, went into the bedroom; the child in the back room glanced up, and he said do your homework. He dragged out a plastic storage box, blue lid, one latch broken and wound with tape. He knelt and opened it, dug to the bottom, pulled out a document sleeve, kraft paper, an elastic cord wound around it.
He set the sleeve on the tea table, didn't undo it.
"Ma did the paperwork on the night of the thirteenth," he said. "Two in the morning. The salesman on duty said daytime was crowded, nights were quiet, so she picked the night."
"You were with her."
"I waited in the corridor. She wouldn't let me in," Liang Chuan said. "She was in there over an hour by herself. When she came out she had this in her hand. She told me to keep it safe. Said don't give it to you."
"Why give it to me."
"You listen," Liang Chuan said. "When she came out she was like a different person, bright as anything—that thing, the last flare before the lamp goes out, you know the one? The doctor said afterward that's what it was. She sat on the corridor bench and had me sit next to her. She told me three things."
He held up fingers.
"First. Her passbook is under the pillow. The PIN is your birthday, backward. That money is not to be touched—it's saved for the phone bill. Second. Chuan Chuan, look after your Ge. He earns little and spends little. Don't let him throw money around."
He stopped there. In the back room the pencil went quiet a beat, then started again.
"The third," he said. "Her voice dropped. I leaned in to hear it."
"She said, don't let Xiao Cheng know about the plan. He's got a lot on his shoulders."
Liang Cheng's hands rested on his knees. They didn't move.
"What plan."
Liang Chuan undid the elastic cord, drew a contract out of the sleeve, then a single loose sheet, laid it beside the contract. He pushed both toward Liang Cheng, sat back down on the sofa, lit a cigarette. The ashtray was a beer can cut down by half, four or five butts already crushed in it.
Liang Cheng picked up the contract.
Page one. Party A: Zhou Sufen. Signatory: Zhou Sufen. The name signed with a familiar hand, a small hook at the stroke's end—only a name signed for sixty years ends a stroke like that. Date: 03-13, 02:41 a.m.
The tier-confirmation box, three cells.
Platinum: empty. Standard: empty. Basic: one check.
The check was drawn small, the strokes heavy; you could feel the mark through the back of the page.
The loose sheet beside it was the price list, three tiers, type all one size. Platinum, 980 a month. Standard, 420. Basic, 180. Outside the notes column of that bottom tier, pressed against the rule, a line in pencil—not the company's hand, hers:
> Just keep the voice, nothing more.
Six words.
Liang Cheng paged on. Page two, terms of service, and at the signature line another Zhou Sufen, the same hooked ending. Page three, the voice-sampling authorization; beside the signature line, over the date line, a red thumbprint, the whorls plain, too much ink, a small ring bleeding out past the edges.
"The salesman told me one thing after." Liang Chuan let out smoke. "He said Ma was in there over an hour and asked just three questions. Can she keep only the voice. What happens if the power goes out. How much is the cheapest month."
Liang Cheng turned the price list over. The back was blank.
He laid the contract flat on the tea table, dug a pen out of his pocket, pulled the electricity bill over, flipped it to its back, and started to work.
"There's 8,500 in her passbook," Liang Chuan said. "What are you working that out for."
Liang Cheng didn't look up. He'd pulled the account's payment records before—back then he'd only checked Liang Chuan's four payments; on the self-debit stretch he'd scrolled straight to the bottom, glanced at the total, and moved on. Now he pulled that stretch up again and, against the electricity bill, copied it entry by entry.
First entry, March, 180.00. Second, April, 180.00. Every entry after that, 180.00, payer: Zhou Sufen (auto-debit, account holder).
Somewhere past the tenth entry Liang Chuan leaned over for a look, then looked away. "Stop copying them one by one," he said. Liang Cheng didn't stop. Forty-odd entries, one 180 apiece, until the back of the bill ran out of room and the column turned the edge and ran two more lines down the side.
Past the fortieth entry, the pen stopped.
Forty-seven entries. Not one month missed. The line under the last entry was a debit no longer; it was a status change on a gray ground: insufficient balance, auto-debit failed. Forty yuan left on the card.
47 times 180 is 8,460. 8,500 minus 8,460 leaves 40.
The numbers all lined up. He wrote the three figures in a column on the back of the bill and pulled a rule under them. Seven years in this trade, and it was the first account he'd ever worked that owed nothing to anyone.
"After it stopped," Liang Chuan said, "I didn't know. I assumed you were paying. Your signature was on it; I assumed the company docked your wages. You'd just started there that year. I asked you once whether your pay was enough. You said it was."
The cigarette had burned to the filter. Liang Chuan crushed it into the can and lit another.
"Ma's passbook," he said. "Did you ever go look for it."
"No."
"I did. Forty left. I took it out." From the drawer under the tea table he fished out a red envelope, an old one, the corners worn white. "Been meaning to give it to you. Couldn't get my mouth open."
"When I withdrew it, the teller asked me, what's the forty for. I said withdrawing forty is withdrawing forty." He set the envelope down beside the column of figures. "Three months before she went, she taught herself to check her balance at the ATM. Checked it, wrote it in a little notebook, one line a month. Three lines. I found that notebook. The writing's tiny—like she was afraid of wasting paper."
Neither of them touched the red envelope again.
The back-room door opened a crack. Niuniu came out with her water cup to refill it, slippers slapping, saw a man sitting in the living room, and stopped.
"Uncle," she said, not loud.
"Back to bed," Liang Chuan said. "You've got school tomorrow."
She filled her cup, went back in, pulled the door to. The light in the door gap stayed on a little while, then went out. The fridge hummed once in the kitchen and stopped.
Liang Cheng closed the payment records, squared the contract page by page, slid it back into the sleeve, wound the elastic cord around, twice. Setting it back in the storage box, he saw there was also a quilt in there, blue cotton, cloth tapes sewn at the four corners.
"After Ma told me the third thing," Liang Chuan said, "she sat by herself a while, said she was tired, said she'd nap. The sealing was the next morning; she told them to wheel her in. Before she went in, she waved me off—meaning, don't follow."
He stubbed the second cigarette out, unfinished.
"Five oh-two in the afternoon, she went. You were there by eleven twenty; you stood in the stairwell till the afternoon. I know all of it. I watched you standing," he said. "I just never told you what she said that morning. Five years."
Liang Cheng nudged his cup farther in. In the back room the pencil scratched, cell by cell.
"That year I asked you," Liang Chuan said. "Did Ma say anything before she went. You said, she did."
Liang Cheng didn't answer.
"Why did you say 'she did.'"
"You asked."
"I asked." Liang Chuan nodded. "I waited for you to take it back yourself. Waited five years. You never did."
The cigarette in the ashtray had tipped over, lying on the floor of the can.
"Why." Liang Cheng asked.
"I was afraid of you hearing the first two," Liang Chuan said. "The passbook is phone money, look after your Ge, don't let him spend. You listen to that. Is that a thing you leave to a son? Right to the end, she was guarding you against reaching for your wallet."
He stood, carried the can to the kitchen, rinsed it under the tap, set it upside down by the sink. Coming back, he stopped at the back-room door and pulled it fully shut.
"I carried that sentence five years," he said. "Today under the trending tag there's a crowd of people cursing her. Stupid, they say—a few hundred a month to keep a piece of data. I thought about it all day, and I kept seeing how small she drew that check. Was she afraid someone would see? That was just who she was. Anything that got her a better price, she kept her voice down about."
Liang Cheng picked up his bag. The black one-strap shoes in the entryway were still at the very back, soles up, very clean.
As he opened the door, Liang Chuan said one last thing behind him:
"The cheapest tier—she picked it herself."
The stairwell's sound-activated light came on, went off. Someone had left a bag of trash at the turning, tied at the top. Downstairs the lost-cat notice curled at its corner in the wind. He pulled the sheet of payment records out of his bag, folded it twice, and pressed it down to the very bottom.
The shutter at the subway entrance was half down; forty minutes to the last train. He sat on the steps by the entrance, took the work badge off his neck, and held it closed in his fist. The badge sleeve was puffed out; the note inside it he thought about, and didn't pull out.
The ad lightbox at the entrance had been changed to a new one, a Filial Score ad, a girl holding up a phone, smiling. In the lightbox's bottom right corner half an old poster was still pasted, torn. The wind was strong at night. He turned his collar up and sat until the last train came in.