I walked ahead and spoke to her over my shoulder. "Walk more slowly than you think you should. Don't take giant steps, because that'll just tire you. Walk slow and steady, and breathe like that too: slow and steady."
"It sounds like a meditation from Bhagwan's Orange Book."
I turned and mugged at her over my shoulder. She reached out and gave my jacket a friendly tug. It felt as if she'd stroked my hand: the same little electric shock that comes whenever someone important touches you the first time.
We climbed and climbed. The steps were covered with layers of gray and brown leaves so dead they didn't even make that skittery, crackly, dead-leaf noise. Everything had gone out of them, and they were soft under our feet.
A few other people passed on the way up and, invariably, said the inevitable "Grьssgott!" when we passed. God's greetings. It's a small, nice piece of Austria I have always noticed and liked.
At the top of the stairs, Maris turned around for the first time and looked behind us. Above the treetops of the Tiergarten you could see wet rooftops and smoke from chimneys, slices of sun reflecting hard off windows everywhere, like flashy clues to God's whereabouts. The air had been washed clean by the rain, and we'd climbed high enough above the city for there to be totally different smells around us – pine, fresh earth that had never been out of shadow, wet plants. After the stairs came a dirt path that wound up and into a forest. Without hesitating we kept on, walking side by side. A man with a soccer ball under his arm and a Great Dane close by came marching smartly down the path. The dog looked like a silver-brown ghost in the dim light through the trees. "Grьssgott! Are you going up to the hill?"
"Yes, we are."
"It's wonderful there now. We've just been playing ball on the field. Only a few people around, and the view is clear all the way to Czechoslovakia." He tipped his hat and the two of them moved off down the way.
"It sounds like something special up there. You're still not going to tell me?"
"No, Maris, you have to see it. It's not that much longer now. Only a few hours." I smiled to reassure her I was kidding.
Before leaving the forest, we passed a giant antenna for O.R.F., the Austrian National Broadcasting Company. Its high, intricately worked steel and busy electrical noises were completely out of place here. She looked at it for a moment, shook her head, and moved on. "It looks like some invader from Mars sitting here, trying to decide what to do next."
Two men came out of the little office at the base of the antenna. Each had a sandwich in one hand and a beer in the other. Both stopped in midstep and midbite when they saw Maris.
"Mahlzeit!"
They seemed so tickled by this lovely woman in the middle of nowhere wishing them a good meal, that they grinned like the cartoon characters Max and Moritz. They tipped their bottles to her, and nodded to me their approval of my companion.
"That wouldn't be such a bad job; working up here on top of the world."
"Wait, you haven't seen anything yet."
It was another few minutes before the hill evened out into the giant open field that gave onto the most beautiful panoramic view of Vienna I knew. I'd discovered the place years before, but it was true I almost never went there. There are certain experiences in life we should hoard so we never forget to savor them when we have them.
I didn't want to look at her until the full impact of the view sank in. The late afternoon sun, perfectly round and sad yellow, had begun its slow slip to the horizon. The light at the end of a clear fall day is wise light: melancholy, able to pick out the most beautiful or important characteristics of anything it touches.
Without thinking, I said that to Maris as we stood there, and I was glad I did, but also a little embarrassed.
She turned and looked at me. "Walker, this place is superb. I can't get over how much has happened in the last twenty-four hours. I can't. Yesterday at this time I was talking to the Munich police about what Luc had done to me. I was crying, and scared to death. More scared than I've ever been. Now, today, I'm up here on Mount Olympus, feeling comfortable with you." Her voice changed completely. "Can I say something else?"
"Sure."
"I think something is going to happen between us. The feeling is already there for me, and it's only the first day we've spent together. I don't know if you want that, though. I don't even know if I should be telling you."
I took a deep breath and licked my lips. My heart felt like a truck trying to burst out of my chest.
"Maris, the first time I saw you I thought it would be the greatest thing in the world if that woman in the red hat were waiting for me. As far as I'm concerned, something's been happening between us since then."
That's when we should have embraced and held each other tight. But we didn't. Instead, both of us turned away and went back to looking at Vienna below. But despite our not touching then, it was a moment I will remember the rest of my life. One of those extraordinarily rare moments when everything important is so clear, and simple, and easy to understand. It was a moment like the view of the city: perfect, tinged with a light so pure it made me sad, transient.
In the next months, we would grow so close and empathetic that she once joked she wasn't breathing air anymore, she was breathing me. All that happened, and I will tell you about it, but those minutes on top of the hill were somehow the best. They were our Eden, they were what set everything else in motion. Finally, they were what ruined us.
CHAPTER TWO
1.
When we were driving back downtown, Maris asked if she could see my apartment. There was nothing in her voice that said she had anything more in mind than normal curiosity. She'd been so forthright about her feelings that I didn't freeze up at the request or lick my lips like the Big Bad Wolf. She wanted to see my place, and that was that. After we got out of the car and were walking down the street, she took my hand and slipped it with her own into her pocket.
"I liked the barbershop and I loved the hill, but why did you take me to that pet shop?"
"Because the owners love being there. I sense it every time I go in. They love the dog, they love talking to their customers, they probably love it when no one's in there but them. So few people like what they're doing these days. People don't do their job well because they hate it or are bored by it. I like to see people enjoying what they're doing with their lives. There's a bank near here I go to just to watch the teller handle money."
We were at the door to my building and I stopped us just short of it. The door was fifteen feet high and made of carved wood, a beautiful thing.
"Look at this door. Sometimes when I'm going in I stop and look at it because the guy who made it obviously did the job with love."
We walked down the long hall to the entrance to my part of the building. Then up three stairs to the ancient elevator that made so much noise ascending that I often worried whether I'd reach my floor or not. We got in and I slid the door closed, pressing the button for the fourth floor. The thing clanked, groaned, and lurched up. Maris gave me an alarmed look.
"Don't worry, it does this every time."
"That's not reassuring."
When it stopped on my floor she opened the door fast and got out faster. "That thing should have been in The Third Man."
At the door to my place I fumbled with my keys, and realized I was more nervous than I'd thought. But I finally found the right one and turned it in the lock. As soon as I did, Orlando gave his normal "welcome home" meow on the other side. He must have been standing right by the door, because it hit him with a small thump when it swung open.
"Do you always greet your cat like that?"