Ye Cheng: Whoever crosses is a puppy

At 12:30 a.m., the bedroom door is pushed open, and the hot air from the hallway rushes in.

My aunt stands in the doorway holding a pillow. Her hair is twisted up haphazardly with a claw clip, a layer of sweat on her neck. She's wearing my old gray college T-shirt, washed pale, the hem hanging to mid-thigh.

"The one in the living room completely stopped working," she says. "Thirty-eight degrees. I measured it with my phone."

I say I'll go sleep in the living room.

"You? Don't you have work tomorrow?" She's already walked to the bed. "We're family. What's wrong with squeezing in a bit? When you were little, you slept on the same mat with me, rolled over and kicked me in the middle of the night—did I ever complain?"

She tosses her pillow to the outer side of the bed, then pulls a thin quilt from the closet, rolls it into a long strip, and places it upright right in the middle of the bed.

"The 38th parallel," she says, lying down with her back to me. "Whoever crosses is a puppy."

The air conditioner is mounted on the wall on my side, humming. The breeze dies out by the middle of the bed.

Five minutes later, she turns over.

Ten more minutes pass, and the quilt strip shifts half a palm's width toward me.

"...Is it cooler on your side."

I don't say anything.

In the dark, a foot—just rinsed with cold water, still damp—crosses the quilt strip and presses against my calf.

She doesn't pull it back.