Honeymoon for Three (9 page)

Penny was close to crying. She had wanted
their honeymoon to be perfect, but it wasn’t turning out that way.
Gary returned, empty-handed. When he saw the expression on her
face, he took her in his arms.

“It isn’t worth getting upset about, honey.
We can recreate our schedule from memory.”

“But it also contained our trip log.”

“This is only the third day of our trip. We
can recreate that too. I’ll do it. I’m supposed to be the writer in
the family, anyway. Let me keep the log from now on.”

Penny clung to Gary. More than ever, she was
sure she had made the right decision to marry him.

“When we go into the village, we’ll get a
notebook or something to write in,” Gary continued. “We can
probably find something where we’ll buy postcards. We’ll eat supper
in the village and watch the show at the lodge. I’ll try to call
Henry again.”

There had been no answer when Gary had tried
to call Henry before.

“You’ve just made everything all better,”
Penny said. “Now can we crawl into the tent and snuggle for a
while? I’m freezing.”

CHAPTER 9

“We’ve been married two whole days now.”
Gary was filled with awe. He couldn’t grasp the implications of
this change in his life that had happened so quickly and yet was so
permanent. “Or to put it another way, this is the third day of our
marriage.”

“And we’re out of the snow,” Penny added.
“It’s getting warmer.”

It had been snowing while they made
breakfast.

“Now all we have is rain.”

“A little rain never hurt anybody.”

“There must be enough wheat out there to
feed the whole country.”

They had been passing through miles and
miles of wheat fields as they neared the Columbia River, which
marked the border with Washington.

“After we cross the river we’ll start
gaining altitude again on the way to Mt. Rainier,” Penny said,
looking at the map. “We may run into some more cold weather.”

“We’re tough. We can take it.” Gary was
feeling good. Even though he hadn’t been able to get hold of Henry,
he had a feeling that nothing could go wrong.

***

Alfred didn’t want to get too far ahead of
them. He stopped at a lodge in Packwood, a few miles from Mt.
Rainier National Park. Last night he had stayed in a motel in
northern Oregon. Traveling this way, while not luxurious, was at
least comfortable. Eating in restaurants, driving through the
countryside in a leisurely fashion. He mustn’t get used to it,
because he was rapidly burning through his money.

It was clear from the notebook that they
intended to visit the 14,000 foot peak. He hoped they weren’t going
to try to climb it. Actually, he wouldn’t mind Gary climbing it,
because it was a treacherous mountain, but he didn’t want anything
to happen to Penny. He, himself, had never climbed a mountain, and
he wasn’t about to start now.

He spread his Washington map out on the bed
and studied it. He figured that sometime tomorrow they would show
up at Paradise, a village inside the park. Although the park was
large, it didn’t have many roads. He should be able to spot them
there easily.

He had mixed feelings about finding them. On
the one hand, he wanted to see Penny again. On the other hand, if
they did make it here, it meant that they were still together and
getting along all right. It meant that Penny hadn’t yet seen the
light.

***

The food served in the rustic dining room of
the lodge was delicious, and there was plenty of it. The walls were
dark wooden logs, just like the walls of the cabin he was staying
in. That was a real log cabin, albeit with modern conveniences.
From what Alfred had learned about the original log cabins in
school, they were dark, cold places, and he wouldn’t want to live
in one.

He was chowing down on a healthy hunk of
meat when out of the corner of his eye he saw a young couple come
into the dining room. He looked directly at them and then jerked
his head away. They were supposed to be camping. He hadn’t seen a
campground in the vicinity. Did that mean they were staying
here?

He became petrified, not able to move for
several seconds. Then he turned his head slightly and peeked at
them. A waitress escorted them to a table on the far side of the
room. Good. They were seated with their profiles toward him,
meaning that they probably wouldn’t notice him.

With Gary, it didn’t matter anyway, because
he no longer looked like the person who had probably been described
to them by the woman at the chapel. Penny hadn’t seen much of him
for six years. Well, she had undoubtedly seen him at the restaurant
in Lomita when he had eavesdropped on her conversations with her
roommate. She couldn’t have recognized him.

His current short hair and hairless face
resembled his yearbook picture a lot more than his previous look
did, but she would still have a problem recognizing him at this
distance. Especially if he didn’t let her get a good look at his
face.

Breathing easier, he finished the main
course and ordered apple pie a la mode. Since he didn’t dare call
attention to himself by getting up to leave until they were gone,
he might as well enjoy himself. He looked at them from time to
time—casually, ready to turn his head away if they glanced in his
direction.

His precautions were unnecessary. They only
had eyes for each other. They bantered; they laughed; sometimes
they reached across the table and held hands. They were
obscene.

Alfred finished his pie and drank coffee.
The dining room wasn’t full, so he wasn’t pressured to give up his
table. He grew impatient, waiting and watching what he didn’t want
to see. Fortunately, they didn’t linger over dinner, which would
have increased his agony. Any time spent watching them together was
too much. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand it when
they finally finished eating and left.

Now what? He had gotten his glimpse of
Penny. She was obviously happy. Now he should do what he had
planned—go home, get his job back, and rebuild his life.

But first, he hastily paid his bill, put on
his new winter jacket, and left the dining room. Outside it was
dark, but he heard a tinkle of laughter coming from among the
evergreen trees. Walking swiftly and silently on a blanket of pine
needles, he followed the laughter and was just in time to see them
enter one of the cabins.

He returned to his own cabin. It was roomy,
with a living room, bedroom, and a small kitchen at the end of the
living room. Once inside, he turned up the heat and turned on the
television set. A movie called
Man on Fire
was playing, with
Bing Crosby and Inger Stevens. The movie didn’t grab him. He kept
the sound on to provide background noise while he took out his
sketchpad. He extracted the sheets containing the sketches of Penny
and placed them on a coffee table in front of the couch where he
sat.

He opened the pad to a blank sheet and
started drawing Penny in profile, the way she looked tonight. He
knelt on a throw rug in front of the table and concentrated on his
work. He had trouble getting it right. He ruined one drawing,
turned the paper over, and tried drawing her on the other side.
That didn’t look good, either.

He crumpled the paper into a ball and threw
it across the room. Then he retrieved his jacket. He went outside
and pulled the hood over his head. He didn’t like the cold. That’s
why he’d left Connecticut. He walked downhill to their cabin. A
light shone in one of the windows. If he could get another look at
Penny, he might be able to draw her correctly.

Because of the sloping terrain, the window
was above his head. Just like Penny’s window at her apartment. He
looked around in the dark for something to stand on. The only thing
he could see was a rock—actually a small granite boulder ten feet
from the window. He tried to lift it and almost collapsed. If he
succeeded in getting it off the ground, he would end up with a
hernia.

However, he found that he could roll it
because it was roughly spherical in shape. Very roughly. It didn’t
want to go where he tried to direct it. It was much more interested
in heading down the slope toward the woods and away from the cabin.
By the time he got it near the window, he was hot and panting, in
spite of the cold night air.

Now the trick was to stand on top of the
uneven surface. He placed his hands against the logs of the cabin
to steady himself and gingerly stood up on the rock. As he inched
his body higher, his eyes came above the windowsill, and he could
see into the cabin.

There they were, sitting on a couch to his
left, similar to the one in his cabin. Penny and Gary were looking
at the television set, which was to his right. He glanced at the
screen and saw the blond beauty of Inger Stevens. They were
watching the same movie he had been watching.

Watching was too precise a word. They did
glance at the screen, occasionally, but they were more interested
in each other. They kept kissing and fooling around. Now he was
touching her—inappropriately. Now he slid his hand under her
sweater. In spite of his disgust at what they were doing, Alfred
unzipped his jacket, unbuttoned a couple of buttons of his shirt,
and put his hand through the opening, pushing his T-shirt up and
out of the way. He found his bellybutton and started manipulating
it.

This helped to relieve his tension, but he
still could barely watch the two of them. His body began to
vibrate. He had only one hand available with which to steady
himself. He pulled his other hand out of his shirt, but not in
time. His body began to tilt, slowly but irrevocably. There was
nothing on the side of the cabin that gave him a firm grip. His
hands skittered along the log wall as he fell off the rock.

He landed clumsily and twisted his ankle. He
tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress a cry of pain. Even though he
landed on the pine needles, his body made a thump. They must have
heard the cry or the thump. He got up and limp-ran toward the
woods. Fortunately, there were no more cabins between him and the
woods. The biggest problem in the dark was not tripping on rocks
and pinecones.

Once in the woods, Alfred stopped behind one
of the larger trees. The trunk was wide enough so that it easily
hid him. He leaned against the rough bark and panted for a few
seconds. Then he looked around the trunk of the tree and back
toward the cabin. The door was open, and Gary was silhouetted in
the doorway. He was looking around.

There was no way Gary could see him. Where
he was in the woods it was almost pitch black. Gary came down the
steps in front of the cabin. He was carrying a small flashlight,
and Alfred could follow his progress by watching its beam. Gary
walked to the side of the cabin where Alfred had looked through the
window. He wouldn’t find anything there except a rock under the
window. He wouldn’t be observant enough to see that the rock had
been moved.

The light of the flashlight flitted along
the ground and among the trees surrounding the cabin. Alfred didn’t
think Gary would come into the woods, but he was prepared to keep
the trunk of this granddaddy tree between them if he did. Gary’s
search, however, was cursory. There was nothing for him to see.
Alfred hoped he would go back inside. This one time he was
depending on Penny’s allure to pull him back into the cabin like a
rubber band.

Gary did return to the warmth of the
cabin—and the warmth of Penny’s body. Alfred cursed him for that,
but at least he appeared to be out of danger. He waited five
minutes after the door closed. Five cold minutes, since he rapidly
cooled off from his recent exertions.

He made a wide circuit of their cabin as he
returned to his own. He limped because his ankle hurt. It was
uphill to his cabin, which made it more difficult. When he reached
his refuge, he collapsed on the sofa without taking off his coat.
The movie was still playing. He watched it without much interest
while he decided that Penny could go to hell for all he cared.

CHAPTER 10

“I don’t believe Mt. Rainier actually
exists.” Penny was disgusted. She made an adjustment to the focus
of their binoculars and looked again. “The map clearly shows Mt.
Rainier to the south, but all I see is clouds.”

The map on the Observation Deck of the Space
Needle pinpointed the grand peak to the south and slightly east of
their location five hundred feet above the bustling metropolis of
Seattle, but it was nowhere to be seen.

“Mt. Rainier is a myth whose purpose is to
draw tourists to the great state of Washington.” Gary took the
binoculars from her.

Penny was sure
of it. That morning they had driven into cloud-covered Mt. Rainier
National Park. The majestic peak was nowhere in sight. At the
Visitor’s Center near Paradise Lodge, they f
ound out that the glacier caves had been closed for a year
due to snow. They tried to walk to Nisqualy Glacier in Paradise
Valley. They reached a viewpoint, only to see fog and more fog.
They did get a look at the lovely Fairy Pond.

They escaped from the fog and
drove through Tacoma on the way to Seattle. In Seattle, they walked
along the wharf area, stopping at The Old Curiosity Shop, with its
shrunken heads, mummies, and other exotic imports, including items
showcased by “Ripley's Believe It or Not.” Other large importers
occupied nearby buildings. Random walking took them to the site of
the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and the Space Needle.

“
Anyway, there’s a good view of
Puget Sound.” Gary swung the binoculars to the southwest. “Look,
there’s a freighter.”

“
Let me see.” Penny playfully
fought him for the binoculars. Gary gave them up without much of a
struggle. She looked in different directions, pretending to hog
them. Gary hovered nearby, so she finally gave them back, acting as
if it were a magnanimous gesture on her part.