Chapter 7: The Fourth Step

The church of St. Nicholas stood at the top of the hill, and its steps were white under the streetlight.

Tomo walked me out of the hall at ten o'clock with four hundred people clapping him on the back.

Old men kissed his cheeks. Women pressed foil-wrapped plates into my hands.

By the time we reached the street, I was carrying six pounds of food and he had a lipstick mark on his collar.

"They like you," he said.

"They like the lamb. I'm just the bookkeeper."

"No." He glanced sideways. "They like you."

We walked uphill without talking. At the church steps, he stopped walking.

I looked at the stone, the iron rail and the heavy oak doors with a wreath of dried corn.

"Which step?" I said.

He didn't ask what I meant.

"The fourth," he said. "From the bottom. I was holding my hat."

I set the plates down on the sidewalk.

I climbed to the fourth step and turned around, so that I stood where he had fallen, and our faces were level.

The streetlight made his eyes look very dark.

"Don't," he said hoarsely. "You don't have to stand there."

"I want to," I said. "I want to stand where he did it, so you'll stop being the only person who knows."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he came up one step, and another, until we were on the same stone.

I took hold of his lapel.

It was a plain wool lapel with a woman's lipstick on it, and I pulled him down by it and kissed him.

His mouth was warm and stiff with surprise.

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