Muriel hung up on her.

That was a couple of months ago.

Kevin Dean came in showing his ID, quite a nice-looking young guy who seemed about her age, Honey thirty now. He said he appreciated her seeing him, with the trace of a down-home sound Honey placed not far west of where she grew up. She watched him gather the morning paper from the sofa and stand reading the headline story about the invasion of Leyte, his raincoat hanging open looking too small for him. She saw Kevin as a healthy young guy with good color, not too tall but seemed to have a sturdy build.

“I have to fix my hair, get dressed, and leave for work,” Honey said, “in ten minutes.”

He had his nose in the paper, not paying any attention to her.

“If Walter’s all we’re gonna talk about,” Honey said, “let’s get to it, all right?”

He still didn’t look up, but now he said, “We’re back in the Philippines - you read it? Third and Seventh Amphibious Forces of the Sixth Army went ashore on Leyte, near Tacloban.”

“That’s how you pronounce it,” Honey said, “Tacloban?”

It got him to look at her, Honey now sitting erect in a club chair done in beige. She said, “I read about it this morning with my coffee. I thought it was pronounced Tacloban. I could be wrong but I like the sound of it better than Tacloban. Like I think Tarawa sounds a lot better than Tarawa, the way you hear commentators say it, but what do I know.”

She had his attention.

“You’ll come to the part, General MacArthur wades ashore a few hours later and says over the radio to the Filipinos, ‘I have returned,’ because he told them three years ago when he left, ‘I shall return,’ and here he was, true to his word. But when he waded ashore, don’t you think he should’ve said, ‘We have returned’? Since his entire army, a hundred thousand combat veterans, waded ashore ahead of him?”