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 found 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
