The Flight Portfolio

by Julie Orringer

Varian, disinclined to trust anyone, did in fact trust Leon Ball. It wasn’t just that he hailed from Montana, which struck Varian as an honest state; he’d held vulnerable lives in his hands before and had delivered them to safety, at no benefit to himself.

“Most Americans don’t want to believe there’s a war on,” Varian said. “They just want it all to go quietly away, or for it never to have existed. Even the sympathetic ones don’t really understand.”

He put a hand on her arm. “Don’t think about things,” he said. “I’ve always found it futile myself.”

Pale gold, basted with a glistening pink reduction, they seemed as naked as anyone in the room. Above them hung an enormous chandelier of stuffed brassieres, smelling faintly of Chanel No. 5. In place of napkins, each guest had a carefully folded pair of women’s culottes.

“I’m losing my mind, Grant.” “You’re not. You’re on a little journey, a stimulant journey.

Grant was his only country, and would be for as long as he lived.

As she reached the pier, as the deckhands threw giant ropes ashore and other hands caught and secured them, she ceased to be an independent machine and became instead a giant captive beast, surrendered and docile; the groaning quieted, the rocking stilled, and she was home, at least for a time.

Whether or not the war reached American soil, whatever the final count of the dead, they had all already lost. They’d lost, at least, a world in which that war had not been fought. What emerged from the ashes might or might not be recognizable.