From the stairway, he called:
"See you tomorrow."
That wasn't his voice, Lena told herself. She listened to his steps, going up: two, four, five, eight: life was that way now: automation: death. The click of his bedroom door was the click of Amélie's door: with cold hands she fondled her cat, speculating about tomorrow, the uncertain tomorrows, if there were to be many of them? Softening the radio music, she remained on her knees, fingering dials, longing for Orville.
Orville switched on his bed lamp, and the rack of guns, the fishing tackle, the mounted bass over his bed appeared with a kind of jabbing abruptness. Jean had laughed at his trophy--his Nonette prize. He wished he had her in his room, had her sexiness.
Copies of Le Matin and Combat lay on the bed table and he rustled through them, sitting on the side of the bed, seeing Lena's body catwise. What changes. What irony. Something like double laughter ran through his brain.
He began undressing.
He called himself a fool.
A Rousseau thought came to mind:
"The innocent plans of the good hardly ever find fulfillment." Was that how it went?
Innocence in E?