The Flight Portfolio

by Julie Orringer

It struck him then that this was all really happening, what he’d sworn would never happen again: they were saying goodbye, letting each other go. If Grant walked through the door of that restaurant, if he took a train to Lisbon tomorrow morning, nothing would ever be resolved between them; the terrible question in his mind would never be answered, or would be answered only in favor of Grant as liar. But how could that be, how was it possible, when the last nine months had seemed the only truth-telling of Varian’s life? How could he wake up tomorrow knowing that Elliott Grant, that particular collection of cells, of inanimate elements made animate by some force that claimed kinship with Varian, would walk to the station, mount the steps of a westbound train, and be carried down the long coastal railway toward Cerbère, over the border into Spain, then down into Portugal, and then, in an airborne metal vessel, across the Atlantic?