A Man in Uniform by Kate Taylor Page B

inquired.
    “I was thinking the kilo today.”
    Dubon was feeling the need to be generous. His reunion with Madeleine the previous evening had been unusually flat, even a little awkward. When he had entered her apartment at five, he had the odd sensation that someone had preceded him; he had no rational evidence of this, no half-empty glasses on the table or a forgotten scarf trailing across the divan, just a sense that Madeleine was not the only one who had been breathing the air in those rooms or sitting on the chairs. It was not that he forbade her other companionship, but he always assumed that he was offering an easier life than the one she would have experienced had she pursued her original profession or married any ofthe artists or clerks who used to hover about her. Perhaps, he thought to himself, he was being naive.
    “Pleasant afternoon?” he had asked, without mentioning to her that he had knocked on her door earlier in the day. Was it his imagination that she responded just a trifle too quickly, “I was out”? Their conversation proceeded listlessly from there, and what followed in the bedroom was almost perfunctory. Dubon had felt deflated as he prepared to leave for home, and if he clasped her tightly to him as he kissed her on his way out the door, it was to reassure himself that this little coolness between them was an aberration, that their relations where unchanged and unchanging.
    “Very good, Maître,” Lebrun replied. “I’ll go around the corner after I have closed up for lunch.”
    Dubon turned his attention back to his desk, but Lebrun, usually as discreet as a ghost, lingered. He seemed to have something to say.
    “I wanted to apologize again to Maître Dubon for the inconvenience caused by my absence last week.”
    “Not at all, my dear Lebrun,” Dubon said, continuing to tidy his papers.
    “I know how difficult it is when you have to make do with Roberge.”
    Dubon looked up again. “We managed. Not as well as we do when you are here, of course.”
    “I trust I always give satisfaction.”
    “Yes. Of course, satisfaction. Entirely. And your mother is better now?”
    “Yes, thank you, Maître. She is much improved, as much as one can expect under the circumstances.”
    “Ah yes, the circumstances.” Dubon hadn’t a clue what the circumstances might be and wasn’t at all sure he wanted to ask.
    “Yes, the elderly. You know, Maître, how it is. One cannot ask that they heal the way the young do. An elderly relative is something of a burden. My mother is increasingly unable to care for herself. Thankfully, I have found an excellent housekeeper for her. The expense is significant but familial duty makes certain demands. I do not needto tell Maître Dubon that. I am lucky, of course, that I do not have a wife and children—that would be a great responsibility, a great financial responsibility—but nonetheless, there are costs associated with the care of an aging parent …”
    This was about the longest speech Dubon could ever remember Lebrun making.
    “Yes, well, I am sure you are a dutiful son, Lebrun,” he said, as he rose from his desk to forestall the request he suspected was coming and straightened his jacket. “I must hurry home. You know how I disappoint Madame Dubon if I am late for lunch.”

    In fact, Geneviève was not home when he got there.
    “Madame is still out,” his manservant Luc informed him as he greeted him at the door.
    “Out where?”
    “Out visiting.”
    “In the morning?” Geneviève followed the convention of paying her calls in the afternoon.
    “I believe she was delivering her condolences to Madame Fiteau.”
    “Madame Fiteau!” Dubon almost laughed. He had told his wife not to stand on ceremony, but he hadn’t actually expected her to march right over there. The metallic ping of the doorbell sounded behind him, and Geneviève, who never used a key because she thought it more genteel if a servant answered the door to her, walked into the