Four months later, the day after his first Thanksgiving home, Bianco and his brother David decorated their variety store for Christmas. They packed away the cardboard turkeys and plastic souvenir whales; they wrapped silver demitasse spoons with “Craig Harbor, L.I.” enameled on them, and packed them in a box with sateen gold-fringed flags and pillows that also said Craig Harbor. They took orange and gold paper leaves out of the windows, and put paper holly in their place; they put long-­sleeved blouses on the half-­forms in the windows, and on the display racks inside the store they hung plaid mufflers, ruffled aprons, and ties that said Merry Christmas. They put ribbon and wrapping and cards in the bins and put away the hunting boots and work shoes. They brought out boxes of costume jewelry and arranged it—pins, rings, bracelets, and earrings—on green velvet.

Before the war, Bianco had enjoyed the decorating, and had done most of it himself. He’d liked the sense of order it gave him, and he’d found that he was even a little fussy. Now it annoyed him. The jewelry seemed too small for his hands to manage. His cuff caught in the gold-­filled chains and pulled them off the velvet, and he gave up, left the jewelry arranging to his brother, and went down to the basement to get the toilet water and cologne they’d ordered for the season. He tried to carry too much and he dropped a seven-­dollar bottle of Prince Matchabelli’s Duchess of York cologne. It smashed on the cement floor and, as the heavy sweet smell of the stuff filled the basement, he had an impulse to smash the rest of the bottles against the furnace.

He cleaned up the mess and they finished the windows and displays, then unwrapped the cellophane Christmas tree they’d been using for years. The transparent needles were limp and torn; the decorations brightened it up some, but it was still a dismal-­looking thing. They hung scallops of tarnished tinsel across the ceiling, and he and David stood back to admire the effect.

Bianco thought the place had looked better before they decorated it and that his brother was acting like an old maid. He longed for his clean spare quarters at Camp Lee and the sense of doing things that mattered.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said to his brother.

They locked the front door and drove home.

A green Packard was parked in front of the garage, the living room lights were on, and when he opened the door, he heard Captain Abrams’s voice. He was telling June that German pastries were wonderful. Bianco closed the door quietly, and stood in the living room entrance to the side so Abrams couldn’t see him.

“Puff pastry filled with cream,” Abrams was saying, “covered with chocolate and nuts.”