Honeymoon for Three by Alan Cook Page A

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