Honeymoon for Three (10 page)

She mentally pinched herself. It
was hard to believe she was actually married. At one time she
hadn’t been able to picture herself getting married at all. So far
married life had been a blast. The curse of Emily hadn’t affected
her, after all. Well, maybe a little. But they had overcome it. She
glanced around the platform, its height a good metaphor for the
high she was on.

Then she looked straight down.
That was a mistake. The platform extended out from the supporting
structure, so there was nothing below except the ground, which
looked miles away. Penny backed up as the universe reeled. She
braced herself against the wall for a few seconds as she tried to
put her stomach back in its proper place. One more jolt like that,
and she wouldn’t be able to eat any dinner.

She wandered around the platform
to see the view in different directions as other tourists did the
same. She saw a man staring at the view whose profile looked
vaguely familiar. Those big ears, the slight hook in his nose. She
glanced at him several times, trying to place him. When he placed
his hand on his stomach inside his jacket she was sure.

“
Alfred,” she said, approaching
him. “Alfred Ward.”

He focused on her, a startled expression
suffusing his face. He looked like a deer caught in a driver’s
headlights. For a moment, Penny thought he was going to turn and
run from her.

“
It’s me, Penny.” He still looked
dazed. “From Fenwick.”

Recognition seemed to dawn in his eyes.
Haltingly, he said, “Hi, Penny.”

“
It’s good to see you, Alfred.”
Penny went up to him and gave him a hug, backing off when he didn’t
return it. “What has it been—six years? Well, I guess we’ve seen
each other a few times since high school.”

“
Yes, a few times.” Alfred
appeared to find his voice and managed something of a
smile.

“
Tempus
fugits
, as Miss Warren used to say.
Imagine running into a classmate in Seattle. What are you doing
here?”

“
Err…I’m sightseeing. Yes, I’m
just here seeing the sights.”

“
I’m on my honeymoon.” It was the
first chance Penny had had to say those words to somebody she knew.
The word honeymoon felt good rolling off her lips.

“
Congratulations,” Alfred said.
“Well, this is a good place to go. Lots to see.” He
giggled.

“
We’re actually going all over the
place. We just came from Mt. Rainier—although it was so foggy we
couldn’t see the mountain. We don’t believe it really exists. We’re
going on to Leavenworth tonight.”

“
You’re moving faster than a
speeding bullet.”

“
We have to cover a lot of
territory before school starts. I’m a teacher. What do you
do?”

“
Uh, I’m in the retail business.
Meat, produce, canned food. That sort of thing.”

“
Where do you live?”

“
Los Angeles.”

“
No kidding. Me too. This really
is a coincidence. We’ll have to get together.”

Gary came up beside Penny. He had
seen her talking to a strange man. “Gary, this is Alfred Ward. We
went to high school together. Can you believe that?”

“
Glad to meet you, Alfred.” Gary
extended his hand.

Penny was glad Gary wasn’t the jealous type.
Of course, he had no reason to be, especially with Alfred. But
since Alfred had been a classmate of hers and because they had
known each other forever, she owed him more than just a hello and
good-bye.

“
We’re going to take the monorail
back to the wharf and have dinner there. Would you like to come
with us? We can catch up on what’s been happening since high
school.”

***

Alfred had not expected to run into them in
Seattle. They were a day ahead of their schedule, as laid out in
the notebook he had purloined. That morning he had waited until
they drove away before he set foot outside his cabin. He was still
limping from the effects of his fall, but he could manage to get
around.

After he ate breakfast at the
lodge, he had to decide what to do. He knew he should go back to
L.A. He was on a fool’s errand, as he’d realized when he heard
Connie Francis singing about fools. In addition, his money wasn’t
going to last forever. He needed to get his job back. However, he
didn’t want to leave on such a negative note, with his tail between
his legs.

He wanted to feel that he had at
least accomplished something. He didn’t know what that something
was. Maybe if he went to Seattle and did some sightseeing he would
feel better about himself. Then he could tell people—if anybody
asked—that he had been on vacation. Seattle was a city, and he
liked cities much better than the wilderness he had been
seeing.

When Penny accosted him on the
Space Needle, he was shocked. His first instinct was to run away,
but that was impossible. Then, when she was so friendly, he
remembered how she had acted toward him in high school. She was
almost the only member of the in-crowd who had paid much attention
to him. She had always smiled and showed concern for his
well-being.

The dinner went well. They ate in a cafeteria
at Pike’s Place Market with a view of Puget Sound. By the time they
arrived there, Alfred had regained his poise. He was witty as they
reminisced about the foibles of the students and teachers at their
high school. He kept them both laughing with his stories. He had
learned to play the class clown in school to gain attention, and
this ability stood him in good stead now.

“
We were always doing things like
taking the flags from the golf course and hiding in the trees. One
time, a group of us were wandering around on a summer night,
looking for something to do. The house where the Coles live now was
about to be built. The boundaries of the house were staked out, and
the stakes were connected with string. We moved one of the stakes.
The next day the builders dug the foundation. They never spotted
the error.”

“
That house has always looked
skew-geed to me,” Penny said, covering her mouth with her hand. “So
you’re the one who did it.”

“
You didn’t tell anybody about
it?” Gary was frowning.

“
Uh oh, I should have warned you,”
Penny said. “Gary has very high moral standards. Yesterday, we
stopped and bought a box of plums. When he saw me take a couple
from another box and add them to our box, he said, ‘Are you going
to teach our children to do that?’ Of course I was just replacing
bad ones…”

“
Where are you headed from here?”
Gary asked, interrupting Penny.

“
Los Angeles. Gotta get back to
work.”

“
What part of Los Angeles do you
live in?” Penny asked. “We’re going to be living in
Torrance.”

“
Nice place, Torrance. I’m living
inland. East of there. I’m not rich enough to live near the
beach.”

“
Give us your address and phone
number, so we can get together.”

“
Well…I’m in the process of
moving. I’ll let you know where I am after I’m settled. If you’d
like to give me your information….”

Penny was already writing it down.
This was much easier than calling somebody in Fenwick. He wasn’t
about to let them know that he’d been living so close to Penny.
Better to have them believe he was living in one of the many
cookie-cutter communities that people might have heard of but
couldn’t exactly place.

Los Angeles was such a big
metropolis that two people could live there for a hundred years and
never run into each other. Unless they wanted to.

CHAPTER 11

It was raining off and on, but that didn’t
daunt Alfred. He felt invigorated as he drove toward Grand Coulee
Dam on a scenic road that ran alongside a pretty blue lake. He
drove with one hand and fingered his bellybutton with the other. He
felt like a new person. There were good reasons for his feelings.
Penny liked him. She really liked him. She liked him well enough to
leave Gary for him.

He was sure of it. She had given him all the
signals. Of course, she couldn’t come right out and say so in front
of Gary. It was his turn to take action. He was the man. He had to
claim his property.

First, she gave him a big hug when she
spotted him. Then she asked him to have dinner with them. She
readily gave him her address and phone number. And she hugged him
again when they said good-bye.

On top of that, she was upset with Gary
because he had corrected her about the plums. A small thing,
perhaps, but a harbinger of what was to come. She understood that.
She was a smart girl. She would dump him now before they became too
entangled. She was just waiting for Alfred to make the first
move.

This revelation had come to him during the
night as he tossed and turned in his motel room, unable to sleep.
He had figured the whole thing out. He was proud of his logical
mind—a steel trap—when he chose to use it. Well, he was using it
now.

First, he had eaten some crow. He had to
admit his mistake in not approaching Penny before this. When he had
moved to Lomita a year ago, he should have made himself known to
her. It would have saved a lot of grief on his part and a lot of
dating errors on her part. There never would have been a Gary. He,
Alfred, and Penny would be going on their honeymoon together, not
Penny and Gary.

But Alfred had been suffering from a recent
rejection when he arrived in California. A rejection it had taken
him months to get over. Psychologically, he wasn’t in any shape to
say anything to Penny. Well, that was over and done with. He had
recovered his poise. He was ready to talk to Penny the way he
should have long ago. He was ready to be a man.

His shyness and insecurity had played him
false before, but he had overcome them. He knew what he wanted, and
he would go after it like a bull in a curio shop. He would get the
girl, and they would ride happily ever after into the sunset.

They would be going on his kind of
honeymoon. A honeymoon not so outdoorsy, with more creature
comforts. Perhaps to a luxury resort. Penny would love it. She was
just doing this roughing it thing because Gary wanted to. But she
had wised up about Gary.

Once Alfred had figured everything out last
night, he had to make a decision. Should he wait until Penny was
back in Torrance, or should he act immediately? The answer was
obvious. He had to act now. Strike while the poker was hot. Penny
would expect it of him. He expected it of himself. He had a head of
steam going, and it would lead him to victory.

Penny and Gary had graciously verified their
schedule for him at dinner. It was almost the same as the one
outlined in the notebook. They planned to stop at Grand Coulee Dam
today, probably for lunch. Alfred had gotten smart. He had his
lunch with him. He was sure he was ahead of them. He would be there
when they arrived.

***

Gary was singing off-key along with a
country song playing on the car radio. “I can’t help it if I’m
still in love with you.”

“What’s the matter?” Penny asked. “You look
as if you’ve lost your last friend.”

He realized that he had a pained expression
on his face. “That’s a hurtin’ song. Written by Hank Williams.
That’s how you’re supposed to look when you listen to that type of
music.”

“It’s too mournful. If it affects you that
much we’d better turn it off.”

Gary clicked off the radio. Penny was right.
This was a time for joy, not sorrow.

“I can’t believe we’ve been married five
days,” he said.

“It’s four days since August
twenty-ninth.”

“I’m counting the day we got married as
one.”

“All right, Mr. Mathematician. Have it your
way. Are you going to try to call Henry again?”

Gary had forgotten about his old roommate.
He hadn’t been able to reach him in several phone calls. They
hadn’t had any problems since the day of their wedding.

“No, I’m going to write off my brush with
the law as a bad dream.”

Gary couldn’t believe how happy he was about
being married. Although he had never been actively unhappy in his
life, there had always been something missing. Penny filled that
void. It was true that he had been in love his last few months of
college. However, there had been several strikes against that
affair from the start.

One was that he had long planned to go to
California the day he graduated, leaving Michigan where he was a
student at the U of M, and Western New York where he had grown up,
far behind. That was the guillotine hovering above the heads of his
girlfriend and himself. They both knew it would drop at a
preordained time. And it did.

Another problem was the age difference.
Alice had been a first semester freshman, too young, too smart, too
ambitious to get married, or to follow him to California. And Gary,
himself, had not been ready for any kind of permanent commitment.
The romance ended the day he boarded a plane for Los Angeles. He
had not seen her since.

The echoes of Alice had reverberated for the
first two years he was in California. He compared all the girls to
her and found them wanting. He had bouts of living like a monk and
at times verged on depression. Even after he got his dating act
together, he had not found any fish worth keeping. He had thrown
them all back. These failures had led him to join Human Inventory.
It was one of the smartest things he had ever done.