Honeymoon for Three

couldn’t go upstairs in our dorm except during special events, and I don’t remember ever seeing a room in a girls’ dorm. When girls were allowed into our rooms, we had to keep the door open and four feet on the floor.
    “With all the rules, you would think that life there would be pretty chaste. So perhaps it was especially bad that we found a way to shack up on weekends.”
    Gary paused to let that sink in.
    “Did she love you?” Penny asked, softly.
    “She loved me physically, although not with her heart and soul, which perhaps makes her sin worse. But the point of this whole thing is, should she be tainted for life for what she did? Should I? Should you for what you’ve done? Who is to judge? All I want you to know is that I love you.”
    There was silence for a few seconds. Then Penny said, “Give me a kiss.”
    He kissed her and felt the wetness of her tears. He kissed them away. Her lips were soft.
    She said, “Get undressed and come to bed.”

    CHAPTER 19
    “Did you get the feeling we were sliding downhill all night?” Gary asked the question as he crawled out of the small tent and braved the coolness of the morning. The singing of the birds had woken them up earlier than they would have liked.
    Penny poked her head out and blinked at the morning sun. “We set the tent up on a slope, didn’t we?”
    “Yup. If we do that again we’ll at least point our heads uphill.”
    “Well, now that we’re up, we might as well get going. Fire up the stove and let’s have breakfast. Then animals, here we come.”
    “And Old Faithful.” Gary didn’t say anything about what had happened last night, and Penny wasn’t about to mention it. That they were behaving like honeymooners again was enough for her.
    ***
    For at least the tenth time, Alfred bemoaned the loss of his car. He had spent a second night sleeping in the small Falcon, and he was stiff and sore as a result. He had stayed in the campground closest to Old Faithful, figuring that he would be less conspicuous there than he would parked along the road somewhere. Park officials discouraged camping except in the campgrounds.
    He ate breakfast in a café and then set up his observation post where he could see Old Faithful but not be seen by the tourists who gathered at the benches that served as a viewing location. He used the buildings of Old Faithful Village as shields. Scalding steam rose constantly from a number of fissures. This was a hotbed of volcanic activity. When Old Faithful did erupt, boiling water and steam rose into the sky in an awesome and terrible display of the power of nature.
    Although he was not normally attracted to the outdoors, Alfred could watch Old Faithful all day. He pictured what was happening below ground to produce this spectacle, and it showed how puny mankind was in comparison to these forces. This made him glad, because it meant that the people in the world who were full of themselves weren’t so great after all.
    Alfred had purchased a hunting knife before he came into the park. Knives weren’t traceable the way guns were, but they could be just as deadly. A knife didn’t go off unexpectedly. He kept it in a sheath on his belt and wore his jacket over it.
    ***
    The animals were absent without leave. So were the geysers. Penny and Gary walked around Norris Geyser Basin, but nothing was erupting. Then they drove along a dirt service road for five miles, searching in vain for the elusive animals. They ate lunch during their search. Then they drove toward Old Faithful Village.
    ***
    Alfred hadn’t dared desert his post to eat lunch, and hunger gnawed at his insides like a dog gnawing on a bone. The few potato chips he’d eaten didn’t satisfy him. Hunger made him grouchy. He had spent much of the trip being hungry. Now more than ever he was prepared to deal with Gary.
    When he finally spotted Gary and Penny, they were headed not toward Old Faithful but toward the laundry at Old Faithful Village. It was dumb luck on his part that they didn’t see him, because he had been looking in the wrong direction. He ducked around a corner and contemplated his next move.
    They were always doing laundry. They had done laundry the night he was with them. He had done laundry then, too, but nothing since. He was stuck with the clothes on his back, because he had left everything else in his car. It was just another reason to regret giving up his car.
    The nomad life he had been leading was getting old. He was going to return