The Weather She Cut

She took over at seven. Six rows of terminals in the dream-mending room, eight to a row. The night-shift lights were one setting dimmer than the day shift's, and they hummed.

Zhou Huilan drew her old dressmaking shears from their cloth sleeve and fitted them into the handle slot of the tactile annotation terminal, pushing them home. She opened and closed the blades twice. Snick. Snick. The steel still bit cleanly. The joints of her right index and middle fingers would not bend to a right angle; she could not hold the slender stylus that had come with the machine. She had adapted the shears herself, welding a brass pivot into the plastic casing. She had used them for four years.

The first strip emerged from the terminal's left side: thermal paper, a thumb's width. Above the parameters in its first section, a red line read: temperature over limit, forty minutes. She pulled the strip with her left hand, brought the shears down with her right, and cut that section out on a slant. She aligned the cut edge with the next section. The terminal flickered: splice successful. The second section was low cloud, its base too low, lingering at the junction by the east-side market for nearly an hour. She cut. In the third section the rain had gone on too long. It should have stopped after forty minutes; instead it had dragged on for an hour and a half. Cut.

She worked through the first row, section by section. The paper wound onto the take-up spool on the right. She moved to the second row. Her fingers were not shaking yet.

At nine twenty, Old Tan wheeled in the scheduling trolley. He did not mend dreams. He handled the schedule: whose dreams went up on which day, and for how many days. He pulled a master sheet from the top of the trolley and laid it on the corner of her desk.

“Position four. Ahe.” Old Tan jabbed at a box on the sheet, a yellow rim of tobacco stain around his nail. “Fourteenth straight day of sunshine. The system says demand is high. The station's set to renew it automatically. Have a look, and sign if it's all right.”

Zhou Huilan glanced down the dates, from the beginning of the month to yesterday. Not a day missed. She knew that registration number. The girl sold breakfast on the street outside the station: congee, tea eggs. A few times, when Zhou Huilan had been out early, the girl had given her an extra spoonful of pickles. Once last month, Ahe had yawned while ladling her congee and said she didn't know what was going on lately. So many dreams at night, and the next day the sun always came out. Even the soy milk on her stall was going sour faster than usual. It made her want to sleep two hours less. Then she had laughed at herself. “Would you believe it? I bring my own sunshine.” Zhou Huilan had said, “Well, that's handy. I'll keep coming here. Save me the price of a padded coat.” Now she looked at the fourteen boxes on the sheet, one after another, the same registration number printed heavily beneath every one. A living person, pressed by the schedule into a number put up over and over again.

“Fourteen days.” Zhou Huilan set down the strip. “Keep putting her up and she won't be able to dream anything else. I've seen people drawn hollow. After that they lie there all night with their eyes open. Nothing left.”

Old Tan did not answer that. He took the waiting-list folder from his pocket, turned to Zhou Huilan's page, and tapped the signature box with his forefinger.

“Nobody hands over a shift with this box empty,” he said. “You fill it, I sign. Leave it empty, and your daughter's name won't be on this ward allocation.”

The folder closed. The signature box was still blank. Old Tan's pen remained clipped to its side.

“If I take Ahe off, somebody has to fill that box.”

“That's right. I don't care who. Just fill it before daybreak.”

He pushed the trolley on to the next row. Zhou Huilan looked at Ahe's number on the sheet. Fourteen days of sunshine, one after another.

Her break was at eleven forty. She went to the records room. Only half the corridor lights were on. Third row of metal cabinets, against the wall, filed alphabetically by surname. Her husband's name was in the latter half. She crouched to look for it; her knee cracked. Two turns of white string held the kraft-paper envelope closed. She unwound them and took out the authorization, folded in half. He had signed it two years ago. She had coaxed him into it, saying that if the station ever ran short, someone in the family could stand in. He had laughed and said he didn't even know how to dream. Blue-black ink, a small blot spreading from his signature. She rested a fingertip on it for a moment, then folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket.

Back in the dream-mending room, Ahe's section lay a little beyond the middle of the strip. After the registration number came a stretch of sunshine parameters: cloud cover zero, rainfall zero. Zhou Huilan held the shears against it to judge the length, then made a slanting cut. The strip came apart. Ahe's number fell into the scrap bin.

She searched the night's reserve pool for her husband's section. A full set of parameters was printed for every registered dream source and kept at the bottom of the pool; normally no one looked at them. She found his number. The section after it read: dry; a line of wind running into the afternoon; a cloud staying in one place for a long time. She cut it out. It was about the same length as Ahe's. She fitted it into the gap, aligned the cut edges, and fed it into the scanner. The terminal brought up the confirmation for that day's use: two boxes, “Self” and “Family proxy.” She pressed “Family proxy” with her thumb, then gripped the pen and signed her own name in the confirmation box. The system checked the authorization number. A green light flashed at the scanner, and a line appeared on the screen: Reserve dream source activated.

She brushed the scraps from her desk into the bin, pinching up the last few pieces with her fingertips. Ahe's number and the cut ends of her husband's strip lay mixed together. There was no telling whose was whose.

In the latter half of the night, she finished the remaining four rows. Every box on the schedule was filled. Old Tan leafed through it when he came to collect it and ticked the signature box without pausing. “Hand it in before six.”

She handed it in at five fifty. Changed out of her work clothes, slid the shears from the terminal's handle slot, returned them to their sleeve, and put them in her bag. Outside the station, the street still had the old weather. Dawn was not quite through; the streetlights glowed yellow in the mist.

She stood on the steps for a moment, thinking. A little longer, and the whole day would be dry. Wind in the afternoon. One cloud over the east side, not moving. Nobody would be able to tell whose it was.

Below the steps, the breakfast cart was already putting up its awning. She glanced that way and kept walking.

With her errands done, Zhou Huilan got off the bus at the market and walked the last stretch. The cloud was still at the junction. She had seen it through the bus window that morning. Now it was still a little to the right of the utility pole, neither breaking up nor moving, its base as flat as if it rested on something. At this hour there was always a puddle on the ground at the scallion stall. Today there was not even a damp mark.

Three or four neighbors stood outside the building entrance, talking about the weather.

“A whole day in the sun, and the sheets are still dry when you shake them out. Strange.” The woman from the second floor tipped her head back to look at the washing line.

“We're all in light clothes now, and then we get this wind,” another said. “Have you seen that cloud at the market junction? I went past this morning, went past again at noon. Hasn't budged.”

Zhou Huilan nodded to them and went upstairs.

She pushed open the door. The light was on. Her husband sat at the table with a bag of apples in front of him, the plastic still tied shut. He had one in his hand and was peeling it.

“You're back,” he said.

“Mm.”

She hung her bag behind the door, changed her shoes, and went to wash her hands at the sink.

“Were you on last night? The second half?” His knife kept moving, the apple peel hanging down in rings. “Been dry all day for no good reason. You noticed it on your way, didn't you?”

“I noticed.”

The knife stopped. He set it down and put the apple on the table. The peel lay in an unbroken coil.

“I had a dream last night.”

Her hands were still wet. She stood by the sink.

“I dreamed I was in my twenties, waiting on a platform before dawn for the first long-distance train. An open-air platform. Just me. It was cold. Coal cinders crunched under my feet. The wind got up my sleeves. I was so stiff, stamping my feet did no good. When the train's lights came from the east, it was still dark.” He paused. “In the end I didn't get on. I went home.”

She waited.

“Haven't dreamed that bit for years.” He reached for the apple half, rested the knife against its skin, and did not cut. “This morning, when I got up, all that sunshine. Then the wind started in the afternoon, and I remembered. I'd had the dream. But the part in the middle was empty.”

“Empty how?” she asked.

He did not answer at once. The knife stayed against the skin, unmoving.

“I remember how hard the wind blew on the platform. What time the train came. I remember the cold that night,” he said. “But standing there that night—whether I wanted to leave or not—I can't remember.”

She dried her hands, came over, and sat on the other side of the table. She did not speak at once. There was a knot in the plastic bag of apples. She looked at it, then lowered her eyes.

“I signed for them to use your dream that day.”

He said nothing.

“I was on last night. Ahe's number had been up for fourteen days. The system was going to renew it automatically. Keep doing that and she'd be drawn hollow. People who've been drawn hollow can't sleep at night. They can't dream anything else after that. Old Tan said nobody could hand over with that box empty. He'd only sign the ward allocation if I filled it. Our daughter's operation is next week. I couldn't have anything go wrong with my schedule this quarter. I couldn't leave that box empty.”

She stopped there. He had not interrupted or urged her on.

“During my break I went to the records room. Found the family authorization you signed two years ago. I'd talked you into signing it, in case we ever needed it. Back at my station I cut out Ahe's section and put your number in. In the proxy box, I signed my own name.”

She had said it all.

The cut edge of the apple half was turning yellow. The peel still lay where it was, ring upon ring, without coming apart.

He drew his hand back from the edge of the table and put it on his knee. Sat a little straighter. For a while the room was quiet. Downstairs a bicycle bell rang twice, passed, and was gone.

“That night,” he said, “did you think of waking me first?”

She looked at the apple half on the table.

“I did,” she said. “There's a phone in the changing room. I stood there for a while. I was afraid you'd say no.” She paused. “I didn't call.”

He said nothing. After a while he lifted his hand from his knee, laid it on the table, and tapped once, slowly. Then it was still.

“Didn't call,” he repeated.

“Didn't call.”

Her fingers curled against the tabletop. She did not reach across.

He sat there looking at the apple half. Looked at it for a long time.

Her phone chimed, then chimed again. She looked down. A notice from the station: Ahe's continuous use had been suspended; she was back on the ordinary schedule. The ward allocation for their daughter had come through too. Bed number, time to come in, signature box. She turned the phone faceup and pushed it a little toward the middle of the table.

“They've stopped using Ahe,” she said. “The ward allocation's come through too.”

He did not glance at the phone.

She waited. When he still said nothing, she pushed her chair back a little, took the cloth sleeve from her bag, drew out the shears, and set them between the two of them. They struck the tabletop with a clack.

“Whether you let me handle your dreams again,” she said, “is up to you.”

He looked at the shears and picked them up. He ran his thumb along a blade, wiping away a bit of white paper stuck to it. Then he set them down on his own side of the table, a little back from the edge, and withdrew his hand.

He looked up. “When do we go and sort out the ward paperwork?”