Chapter 28: Please Be Clara

Clara came through the arrivals doors at Lisbon airport with her backpack on both shoulders and her knees not quite working.

There were forty people waiting behind the barrier.

She scanned them for a tall man in a blazer, and did not see one.

Then she saw a square of white cardboard held above the crowd.

MERCER, it said, in square black capital letters she would have known anywhere.

Under it, in smaller print: PLEASE BE CLARA.

The man holding it was in a gray T-shirt, and his hair had grown over his ears, and he was brown from two months of sun.

He saw her see him, and the cardboard sank an inch.

She walked straight through the barrier gap and stopped a foot in front of him.

Neither of them said anything.

"Hi," Miles said, finally, and his voice cracked on it.

"Hi."

"I practiced something."

"I'm sure you did."

"It was good. It had three parts." He looked down at the sign in his hands. "I've forgotten all of it."

"Today's sentence," Clara said.

"I'm so happy I'm going to be sick."

She laughed, and then she was kissing him, with the sign crushed flat between their chests.

He dropped it.

His hands came up into her hair and held on, and he kissed her slowly, from the beginning.

Somewhere behind them, a taxi driver whistled.

His apartment was in the old part of the city, four flights up a stair so steep it had a rope for a rail.

"The tram's quicker," Miles said, taking her bag.