The North Steps

Keir found Blythe’s glove beneath his chair the next morning.

Only one. Dark green, with a repaired seam at the thumb. He picked it up and immediately invented three reasons to take it to her.

She might need it. The weather had turned. Returning property was not the same as asking to be let in.

He set it on the table.

By noon he had moved it twice.

At one he went to work.

The lamp waiting on his bench belonged to a woman who had explained, at some length, that it was for reading and that she could not see any improvement in a lamp which required admiring before it could be used. He liked her. Today he liked her especially because her requirements had nothing to do with his intentions.

The fitting sat crooked. He loosened it, adjusted the base and tightened it again. Still crooked. He did the work a third time, slower.

When the woman came to collect it, she placed it on the counter, bent to look along the base and nodded.

“Better.”

“Yes.”

“It was better last time too. Then it tilted when it grew warm.”

Keir looked at the lamp.

“Leave it with me until tomorrow. I’ll run it this evening.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

“Did you?”

“You generally listen after I’ve become sufficiently inconvenient.”

She paid nothing yet, took her basket and left him with a deserved observation.

He lit the lamp. After half an hour the fitting shifted.

There was comfort in a fault that could be made visible by waiting.

· · ·Scene break

That evening, without a supper to reach, he walked the shortened course slowly.

He expected to hate it. Instead he found a turn he liked better without the broad white sweep overshadowing it. A narrow blue line rose through the gold, delicate and unexpected. He followed it to the river and let it bend.

Pleasure came, inconveniently unashamed.

He had not made a wholly bad artistic decision. He had made a personal decision for mixed reasons and then lied because he wanted the welcome without the difficult explanation. Being able to separate those things did not make him feel better at once. It did make it harder to hide in the grand misery of having sacrificed everything for love.

He had sacrificed a part of a work. He had also gained an evening he wanted. Blythe had not asked him to make either change.

The older worker from the bridge stood near the north steps, drawing a red loop through the air.

“Lost your white road?” the man asked.

Keir nearly said it had changed.

The old habit rose so quickly he felt it in his mouth.

“I banked it.”

The man closed his red loop.

“Why?”

“It took more time than I wanted to give it.”

“You’ve a still-light woman now.”

“I have a shortened course. Those aren’t the same fact.”

The man looked amused. “Are they not?”

Keir thought of Blythe on the bridge, demanding to be told the truth even when it did not make anybody look particularly noble.

“I wanted time with her. I also wanted time. I made the choice. She didn’t ask me.”

“All right. No need to bite.”

“There is if you mean to tell people she took it.”

The man’s amusement faded.

“I hadn’t said that.”

“Then don’t.”

They stood in silence. Keir could hear his own sharpness and did not enjoy it, but he did not withdraw the words.

After a while the older man nodded at the blue line.

“That part moves better.”

“I think so.”

“Will you keep it?”

Keir looked at the course. For years that question had sounded like asking whether he intended to remain himself.

“For now,” he said.

The man returned to his red loop.

Keir walked on.

He did not imagine the conversation would get back to Blythe in a form that repaired anything. It was not meant as a message to her. He had been present when somebody began shaping a story about her, and had stopped lending it his silence.

At home, her glove lay where he had left it.

He wrapped it in clean paper and wrote a note.

You left this beneath the chair. I told you the course settled early because I wanted you pleased and did not want you asking difficult questions. You would have listened. I made that harder by lying. I am sorry. I won’t come to the house unless you ask. If you want to speak, I will meet you wherever you choose.

He read it and wanted to add an explanation of the white turn, how he had thought of banking it before meeting her, how complicated the decision had been. All true. All things he had already said. None belonged between the apology and the space he had promised her.

He folded the note.

The next morning he left the parcel with Tamsen.

She looked at him over her counter.

“Does it explode?”

“A glove.”

“They seldom do.”

“And a note.”

“More dangerous.”

“You needn’t carry messages for us. If you’d rather—”

“I will give her the glove. I will not tell you what her face does when she opens it.”

“I wasn’t going to ask.”

Tamsen gave him a look.

“I was thinking of asking,” he admitted.

“There. Progress already.”

She put the parcel behind the counter and asked whether he had brought the small lamp he had promised for the shop. He had not. She told him to stop being interesting and fetch it.

He did.

· · ·Scene break

For three nights he kept to his own house after the course.

He repaired the reading lamp. He delivered Tamsen’s. He ate an insufficient supper, then cooked a better one the following day because misery was not an exemption from hunger. Once he took down the tailless glass bird and considered finishing it.

He put it back unchanged.

Not everything incomplete was waiting for him to become wiser.

On the third night he sat by the floor lamp and watched its light climb the wall. Blythe had sat here, turned in his arms and laughed. He remembered how certain she had sounded when she asked to stay. He had not distrusted her wanting. He had distrusted whether her wanting could survive knowing he was inconsistent, impatient, capable of resenting the thing he loved making.

Yet she had shown him a crooked flower she hid from a teacher. Had told him about the green bells she kept because somebody once praised them. He had admired her honesty and answered it by becoming more polished.

He pressed his hands against his eyes.

A knock came.

He was on his feet before the second.

Tamsen stood outside with an empty lamp box.

“Your face,” she said, “is going to exhaust me.”

He stepped aside.

She did not enter. She handed him the box and a small folded note.

“She asked me to bring this because I was collecting the lamp. This is the last time I am a bridge. Walk over your own water.”

“Thank you.”

“The lamp is very good.”

“I’m glad.”

“Try to remain capable of that while unhappy. Good night.”

She left.

Keir opened the note.

Tomorrow, the eating house. Seven. I want to talk. I also want supper. Do not confuse the second with forgiveness.

He sat down on the step and laughed once, so relieved it hurt.

Then he read the note again.

She wanted to talk. She wanted supper. She had not promised anything he could reasonably turn into certainty.

He put the note beside the lamp and made a list of the deliveries he had to finish before seven. No tricks. No gift. No grand explanation improved by practice.

He would go in time to meet the woman who had agreed to hear him, and let her decide what she heard.