"Where did you get off the bus? Did they let you off at the wrong place?"
"No ... I got off in the village..."
"You shouldn't have gone to the cemetery. Not today."
"No matter ... I wanted to look around ... to think..."
Claude spread Orville's clothes on the kitchen table, arranging them carefully--the valet's touch. He hoped everything would fit. Orville hadn't put on weight. Was I ever built so well?
He limped away and Orville saw his hand on the closing door, remembering it as a boy, the red "v" on the back: it wasn't so much the redness, it was the ragged shape of the thing. Bichain had the face of a Pole; his Cracow ancestor's grey eyes that faded into nothingness, his beard went to his chest, the hair was always brushed and immaculate.
As he toweled, Orville glanced at the scars across his stomach, where he had been burned by an engine explosion during training at camp. It was pleasant picking up his clothes from the table, holding them up, remembering. He thought everything would fit. Socks first. That old crew neck shirt from mom.
He was eager to telephone Jeannette.
The trousers were okay ... Claude had remembered his belt.
By god, maybe it was going to be good after all, this leave, this Ermenonville, his Jean.