Chapter 23: The Top Tier

The boat bay was dark and smelled of old rope and varnish, exactly as it had on Labor Day.

I carried the top tier in its white box, held out in front of me with both hands, up the ladder.

Lark climbed behind me in the sage green dress, with her shoes in her teeth.

At the top she pushed open the trapdoor with her shoulder.

The loft looked the same.

The slanted ceiling, the square window over the water, the sagging brown couch under the quilt.

Moonlight lay on the floor in a wide pale square, and the buoy light slid across the beams every few seconds.

Down below, the party still thumped through the hall's wall, faint and happy.

Nobody was looking for us.

I set the box on the floor and sat on the couch, and the springs complained.

Lark sat beside me and took her shoes out of her mouth.

"Same couch," she said.

"Same springs."

"I'd like to formally ask you something."

"Go ahead."

"Is this the place where you told me you were a terrible sneaker?"

"It is."

"You're a better one now. You walked across the lawn tonight like a woman carrying only a cake."

"I was carrying only a cake."

"I know," she said. "That's why it was good."

She laughed, and then she stopped, and looked at me in the moonlight.

Her braid had come half out of its pins.

The sage dress dipped low at the back, the one I had zipped up in a bridal shop with Pru in the doorway.

"Turn around," I said.

She turned, and I looked at the long pale line of her spine.

The zipper sat at the nape of her neck, small and silver.

I put two fingers on the pull.

"There's no one here," Lark said. "Nobody in the doorway. You can take your time."

"I intend to."

I drew the zipper down very slowly.

It made a long soft sound in the quiet loft, and her back came out of the green.

She shivered, and a little of the old pink line showed where her bra strap pressed.

I kissed the top of her spine.

Then the next place, and the next.

And I followed the zipper's track all the way to the small of her back, as far as it would go.

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