Honeymoon for Three

good view of her bedroom window. The light inside her bedroom had never come on. Where was she? Even if she were out with that jerk boyfriend of hers, she should be home by now. Didn’t he have to work tomorrow? Alfred looked at his watch by the glow of a streetlight. Almost midnight.
    Her car wasn’t there, either, parked in the apartment house lot where it should be. That meant she had driven somewhere to meet him. It wasn’t typical of her behavior. Ever since she had returned from her trip home to Fenwick, Connecticut, she had been acting differently.
    What was the guy’s name? Gary something or other. He wasn’t worthy of holding her hand. Alfred was afraid that she was falling for him. Girls often fell for the bad guys. Alfred had actually been glad she had gone home. It meant that she couldn’t be serious about this Gary person—just as she hadn’t been serious about the dozens of other guys she had dated during the year since he had reconnected with her. Now his main source of information about her was cut off.
    Every Sunday morning, Penny and her roommate used to go to a café on Pacific Coast Highway, eat breakfast, and talk. Alfred would sit in the booth diagonally across from them, so that he and Penny had their backs to each other. This cut down the possibility that she would recognize him. In addition, his beard, baseball cap, dark glasses, and the loose clothing he wore to hide his potbelly made him look much different than he had looked when they had graduated from high school six years before. The chances of her spotting him were minimal.
    His sharp ears could hear every word they said. He knew Penny was going home for two weeks after she finished teaching for the year. He knew that her roommate was going home for keeps. She was giving up the ghost, giving up the California dream, and returning to the safety of her hometown, somewhere outside of New York City. Penny and her roommate flew east at the same time. Only Penny came back. The Sunday morning breakfasts ended.
    With the end of the breakfasts, Alfred’s information flow dried up. That was when the horrible feeling that he was losing Penny began. This Gary person was winning her. Alfred’s warnings to Penny hadn’t changed anything. It was time for action. He could go to the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and call her number from the phone booth, to see if she were there. He had done that before. This time, he already knew the answer.
    He took his flashlight and laboriously got out of his 1959 Ford Fairlane, stiff from sitting so long. He closed the door gently. He didn’t want to wake up any of the apartment dwellers along the street. He walked to the alley between Penny’s building and the one next to it.
    Penny’s window faced the blank stucco wall of the other building. A few windows dotted the wall of Penny’s building, like rectangular eyes, but they were all dark. The only way he was likely to be seen was if somebody came walking along the street and glanced between the buildings. Somebody walking at midnight in Los Angeles was not a scenario he was worried about.
    Penny’s window was above eye level. Alfred shone his flashlight into the flowerbed that had been planted alongside the building until he spotted what he was looking for, hidden behind a large bush. It was a wooden palette, the kind on which bags of cement, fertilizer, or similar items were typically stacked.
    Alfred had stashed the palette there for emergencies like this one. He was glad that the building owner hadn’t found and removed it. He put the flashlight in his pocket and carefully lifted the palette out of its hiding place. He carried it to a spot directly beneath Penny’s window and leaned it against the wall.
    The tricky part was climbing it and balancing on the top without falling into the thorns of a rosebush. He wasn’t the most agile person in the world, but if he were very careful, he could do it. With the flashlight in his pocket he was able to lift one foot high enough to place it on top of the palette. Then he had to push hard off the ground with his other foot and simultaneously use the strength of his upper leg to lift his body until he could grasp the sill of Penny’s window.
    He did this now, teetering precariously on the top edge of the palette for a few seconds until he had both feet planted firmly on it. His body was pressed against the stucco. When he had stabilized himself, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the