Honeymoon for Three

where?”
    “Leave Gary and come home with me.”
    She must not have heard him correctly. “What did you say?”
    “I want you to leave Gary and come home with me. Now. Today.”
    He couldn’t be serious. He wasn’t smiling, but she decided to treat it as a joke. She laughed and said, “Alfred. I never knew you had such a sense of humor.”
    “I mean it. Gary’s no good for you. I’ll take care of you.”
    “All right, joke’s over. I don’t want to hear any more talk like that.”
    Penny glanced at Alfred. He was looking at her with his mouth slightly open. After a pause he said, “I’ll protect you from Gary. You don’t have to be afraid of him.”
    “I’m not afraid of Gary. Now will you get off this subject?” She was getting mad.
    “We had an understanding.”
    “What?”
    “At the Space Needle. And dinner afterward. Gary is controlling you. With his so-called morals and his domineering nature. I saw it in your eyes. You were appealing to me to help you get away from him.”
    “Alfred, you have completely lost what little mind you had. If you say one more word, I’m going to stop this car and dump you out.”
    “It’s my car. But before you do anything rash, listen to this.” His voice had suddenly developed a hard edge that Penny had never heard before. “What do you think Gary will do when he finds out that I know you have a mole on your left breast?”
    Penny turned to look at him and almost drove off the cliff. She jerked the wheel to turn the car away from the cliff and then had to slam on the brakes to prevent them from driving into the mountain on the other side of the road. She brought the car to a stop and sat there trembling.
    “How do you know that?” She immediately realized that it was the wrong thing to say. She was admitting that he was right. How could he know? It must have been a wild guess. She could tell from his wolfish grin that he knew he had scored.
    “Remember the party at Joan’s house when we were seniors in high school?”
    She shook her head.
    “Let me refresh your memory. Halloween night. Everybody went in costume. As I recall, your boyfriend of the moment was off somewhere. You put on quite a show.”
    It was coming back. She had long forgotten about that night. Repressed it. She had gone as a cheerleader. Nothing unusual about that since she was a cheerleader at Fenwick High School. Underneath her cheerleader uniform she had worn sexy pink panties, instead of tights, and a pink bra.
    It was her secret, and she didn’t really intend to show off her fancy underwear—at least that’s what she told herself—but when the Thunderbird wine started flowing, she became warm—from the wine, the bodies, and a fire in the fireplace. Somebody put marching music on the phonograph—the kind the school band played at football games. That’s when she started doing cheerleading routines. Which made her even warmer.
    The boys, who had also been sucking up the wine, started shouting, “Take it off.” She used the heat to rationalize taking off her sweater, evoking more cries. So she took off her skirt. She remembered doing handstands and then going out in the yard and turning cartwheels. She wasn’t certain what happened after that. Alfred must have been at that party—she didn’t remember—but what did he know that she didn’t? How did he find out about the mole on her breast? Penny decided that silence was her best defense.
    Horns blew behind her. She was stopped in a traffic lane on the narrow road. Cars were trying to get by. She drove forward, still trembling a little.
    “You did a striptease,” Alfred said. “Then you passed out on the lawn.”
    She must have passed out because her memory ended at that point. It was definitely out of character for her. It had cost her a boyfriend, although that had been a minor loss. There were plenty of boys aching to go out with her. But what about Gary? She had represented herself to him as an All-American girl. Would this bother him? After all, it had happened seven years ago. Youthful indiscretion.
    What had occurred after she passed out? She was afraid to hear what Alfred was going to say next.
    “Of course, I wasn’t drinking,” Alfred continued.
    Ouch. Puritan Alfred.
    “I was looking out for you. I and another guy carried you upstairs and put you on a bed in Joan’s spare room so you’d be safe.”
    Uh oh. She definitely didn’t want to hear this. She spotted the green VW stopped at a turnout. She