The Third Kind of Silence, That Summer

Zhang Chi called out to Zhou Ye just as the reunion was breaking up, out in front of the hotel.

"Drink?"

Zhou Ye turned, looked at him, said nothing. He pocketed his car keys and followed.

They walked fifteen minutes through the old part of town before finding a barbecue stall still open. Plastic stools. Folding table. A bare bulb overhead, nudged by the wind into a slow sway. The owner, a man in his sixties, was clearing skewers from the last table. He saw them coming and stoked the coals back to life.

"What'll it be?"

"Twenty lamb, ten tendon, two Qingdao," Zhang Chi said. Zhou Ye pulled out a chair and sat down, ordering nothing.

The beer arrived. They poured a glass each, touched rims, drank without a word. Wind poured in from the street, snapping the plastic tablecloth.

"How old's your son?" Zhang Chi asked.

"Nine. Third grade. Terrible at math. Takes after me." Zhou Ye said. "Your daughter?"

"Seven. Second grade soon."

"Who does she look like?"

"My wife says me. My mom says her. Either way, not my wife." Zhang Chi cracked a smile.

Zhou Ye smiled too, but briefly. He looked down, turned his glass in his hand. The foam was gone. A ring of white clung to the inside of the glass.

Silence.

The skewers arrived. The sky had gone fully dark. Lights flickered on in the apartment building across the street, scattered here and there. Zhang Chi pushed a few lamb skewers onto each plate. The meat was overdone, chewy. They ate in silence for a while, neither of them speaking. The owner sat on a low stool nearby, watching something on his phone. A woman's voice was singing, the melody fraying in the wind until only fragments reached them.

"Still at that company?" Zhou Ye asked.

"Eleventh year. Coasting." Zhang Chi said. "Almost jumped ship last year. Headhunter had it all lined up. Then my boss took me to dinner the day before I was going to give notice, and I just… didn't go."

"Soft."

"It's not that. It's more like—" He paused. "Forget it. Can't explain. What about you? You switched?"

"Three times. Every two years, get in an argument with the boss, walk out. This one's fine. Boss is three years younger than me, barely manages anything."

"Sounds good."

"It is. But sometimes it's so quiet I almost want a fight." Zhou Ye laughed at his own line.

Zhang Chi didn't laugh. He lifted his glass, drank, refilled it, then refilled Zhou Ye's too. His hand was steady as he poured, but Zhou Ye noticed he poured more than before, almost to the brim.

"You still play basketball?"

"Knees are shot." Zhou Ye tapped his left knee. "Played a game last year. Next day couldn't even get out of bed. Hospital said meniscus tear. Doctor told me to take it easy. I said I've had this knee since I was sixteen, never listened before."

"You jumped too high back then. Bent the backboard once."

"You remember that?"

"I do. The school replaced it with a steel one. Because of you." Zhang Chi said, and this time he really laughed. Zhou Ye laughed too, longer this time, then looked down and chewed a cold skewer for a long, long time.

The wind picked up. The bulb swung harder, light sweeping across the table. The owner stood and half-covered the grill with a steel plate. The embers dimmed. Smoke thickened, drifting toward the center of the street.

"Almost didn't come tonight," Zhou Ye said.

"Me neither."

They exchanged a look.

"Did you see those photos in the group chat? The ones the homeroom teacher sent. Graduation photo." Zhou Ye asked.

"I did. Couldn't recognize half of them. So many names I can't place anymore."

"Same. But a few—" He stopped mid-sentence, grabbed a lamb skewer, and started gnawing at it with sudden intensity, as if there were still meat worth worrying off the stick.

Zhang Chi watched him, said nothing. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket, wedged it between his lips, then offered one to Zhou Ye. Zhou Ye took it. Both lit up. The smoke tore away in a single line, blown in the same direction.

"Remember senior year—" Zhou Ye began.

"Which part?"

Zhou Ye was quiet for a few seconds. The cigarette burned between his fingers, ash growing long.

"Never mind. Don't remember which part anymore."

Zhang Chi looked down, stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray. He didn't put it out right away. He watched it smolder for a few seconds, then crushed it.

The owner brought the tendon skewers over, muttered "enjoy," and went back to his phone. This time he kept the sound off. The street fell quiet—just the occasional car in the distance, the rustle of a plastic bag tumbling across the pavement.

"My wife asked if you'd be there," Zhou Ye said. "I told her I didn't know."

"She knows about us?"

"I told her. A friend from high school. We were together every day back then, then we lost touch. She said go. What's the harm in seeing each other again."

"She sounds nice."

"She is." Zhou Ye paused. "Sometimes too nice. You tell her one thing, she'll talk you through it for half an hour. Last time I said I wanted to go to—" He stopped.

"Go where?"

"Nothing. Somewhere I've been meaning to go for years but never did. She said go, then. I said forget it. She spent the whole evening trying to convince me. I still didn't go."

Zhang Chi lit another cigarette. His smoking had changed. He wasn't puffing anymore. He was drawing deep, holding it, then letting it out slow, like something in his lungs needed the smoke to carry it out.

"I went back to the school last month," Zhang Chi said. "Took my daughter to a prep class nearby. Walked in on a whim. The field's been redone. Old teaching building's still there. So's the pagoda tree by the gate. I stood under it for a while. My daughter pulled at my sleeve, said there were mosquitoes everywhere."

"When was the last time you went back?"

"Haven't been back since graduation." Zhang Chi said. "Fifteen years."

"Fifteen years."

"Yeah."

Zhou Ye drained his last sip of beer. The bottle was empty. He set it down by his foot. It made a small, soft sound against the concrete.

"Do you remember—" Zhou Ye didn't stop this time. He kept going. "That summer after senior year. The three of us. Riding bikes to the reservoir."

The cigarette in Zhang Chi's hand trembled.

Barely. If Zhou Ye hadn't been watching him, he wouldn't have noticed.

"I remember." Zhang Chi's voice was lower now.

"Three hours. Your chain came off three times."

"You gave her a ride for a stretch."

After that sentence, neither of them spoke. The owner's phone pinged somewhere—a notification, maybe—sharp in the stillness. Zhou Ye didn't move. Neither did Zhang Chi. Between them: five or six bamboo skewers, two empty bottles, a flattened cigarette pack.

"They built a tunnel through that road," Zhang Chi said at last. "Opened two years ago. No more winding around the mountain. I drove through it once. Fifteen minutes to the reservoir."

"Fifteen minutes."

"Yeah. Took us three hours back then."

Zhou Ye picked up a tendon skewer, chewed once, set it back down. He wasn't looking at Zhang Chi anymore. He was looking at the apartments across the street. One window had just gone dark—someone going to bed, or someone watching TV.

"You should go," Zhang Chi said.

"What?"

"That place you've been meaning to go for years. You should go."

Zhou Ye didn't answer. He stood up and walked to the curb, his back to Zhang Chi. The wind filled his shirt, messed up his hair. A taxi passed in the distance. The driver saw someone by the roadside and slowed. Zhou Ye didn't raise his hand.

He came back. Sat down. Opened a new bottle. This time he didn't bother with the glass. He drank straight from the neck.

"Last winter," he said.

Just two words.

Zhang Chi didn't push. He took Zhou Ye's glass, filled it for himself, took a drink. His hand was still steady, but when he set the glass down, it hit the table with a thud. The owner glanced up, then away.

"I went," Zhou Ye said. "Her grave. East of the city."

Zhang Chi didn't speak. He stared at the plate of lamb skewers, long cold. The fat had congealed into white. The bulb kept swinging, light washing across his face in waves. His eyes caught the light, but it was hard to tell whether it was the bulb or something else.

"There's a line on the headstone," Zhou Ye said. "Her mom chose it. It says—" He stopped. "Never mind."

"What does it say?"

Zhou Ye pulled a cigarette from Zhang Chi's pack and lit it. His fingers were clumsy with it, like he hadn't smoked in a long time. He coughed on the first drag.

"'When the pagoda tree blooms next year, come back.'"

The wind died. The bulb stopped swinging. The light fell steady on the table, illuminating every skewer, every bottle, every fleck of ash. In the distance, a dog barked twice, then fell silent, as if something had frightened it.

Zhang Chi picked up a skewer and started drawing something on the tabletop. Two lines, no discernible shape. He snapped the stick in half and set it aside.

"Senior year, I asked her once," he said. "I said what kind of guy do you like. She said she liked—"

He couldn't finish.

Zhou Ye waited, waited until the cigarette was about to burn his fingers. "She said what?"

Zhang Chi didn't say. He just smiled—not because it was funny, but because saying it out loud would ruin it, or because saying it out loud would hurt too much.

"Let's go." Zhang Chi stood. "It's almost dawn."

The table was a wreck. Twenty skewers. Six empty bottles. A pack of cigarettes, spent. As many remains of the conversation as there were men.

Zhou Ye stood too, his legs numb. He fumbled for his wallet, but Zhang Chi pressed his hand down.

"I've got it."

"You paid last time."

"You said it's been fifteen years."

Zhou Ye looked at him, then pulled his hand back. The owner came over, did the math in his head, said one-eighty. Zhang Chi gave him two hundred, told him keep the change. The owner was pleased. He threw in two bottles of water, pressing them into their hands.

They each twisted off a cap and drank. Ice-cold. The beer and the cold water churning together in their stomachs.

"Next reunion—" Zhou Ye started.

"I'm not coming," Zhang Chi said.

"Neither am I."

They stood on the curb. The sky was now a pale, dusty gray. The streetlights looked unnecessary. Across the street, the baozi shop had its lights on, steam rising from the bamboo steamers. A new day.

Zhou Ye turned and headed east. After about ten paces, Zhang Chi called out.

"So what was the third kind of silence?"

Zhou Ye turned back.

"What third?"

"At the reunion. You said there are two kinds of silence between people. One where there's nothing to say. One where you don't need to say anything. You said there's a third."

Zhou Ye stood there. The wind rose again, swept through his hair. His face hung between the streetlight and the pale sky, half in shadow, half in light.

"You already knew what it was," he said.

Then he turned and walked away.

Zhang Chi watched his silhouette shrink in the gray morning light, shrinking until it was just a shadow at the corner, and then nothing. The baozi shop's steel door rolled open. Steam poured out. The sounds of people began to fill the street. Zhang Chi tossed his water bottle, took a few steps east, then stopped.

He looked up at the sky.

It was dawn. The pagoda trees had yet to bloom.