FORTUNATELY I HAD the children in bed, where I didn't have to worry
about them, when the next customer drove in. He was a brisk-looking,
gray-haired man in a new coupe.
Often during my life I had heard people speak of "buck fever." It had
seemed strange to me that any hunter should, at his first sight of a
deer, tremble and shiver and find his fingers too numb and unresponsive
to pull the trigger.
Now, though, I understood. With no capable, confident husband to talk
to the man, I would have to do it myself. My fingers were icy as I
opened the door, and I forced my lips apart in what I hoped looked like
a pleasant smile of greeting.
My knees were quivering (visibly, no doubt) and my voice, when I
squeaked "hello" to the man, was so like the sound of a rusty hinge
that I glanced around in surprise.
The tall, gray-haired man looked at me strangely and asked if I had a
vacancy.
I throttled the moronic impulse to gibber "I feel like there's a great
big one in my head!" and carefully mouthed the words I had rehearsed
for such an emergency as this.
"Yes, I have," I chirped. "Would you care to see it?"
"Please," he replied, with a pained expression that seemed to say,
"Well, what in hell do you think I'm here for?"
I led the way to one of the single cabins in the rear. He followed
close behind me. It was about three hundred feet from the office to the
single cabins--much too far for two people to walk together without
saying a word. Coyotes were howling in the blackness of the hills, and
I felt like howling with them.
I was hot with embarrassment as his footsteps padded along behind me. I
cast about frantically in my mind for a topic of conversation. If only
I had noticed the state on his car license I could ask him how the
weather was where he came from. But I couldn't risk saying merely,
"How's the weather where you came from?" He might sneer, "Same as it is
here. I just came from the other side of town."
He tramped along close behind me, without saying a word. We still had
more than half the distance to go to get to the cabin. Suddenly I had
an idea. Maybe something in his costume, or an emblem or pin he might
be wearing, would give me a topic for conversation. I turned and looked
back at him, searching for pins or ornaments in his lapel and working
slowly up to his face, which was ten or twelve inches higher than my
own. The yard lights, bright lights on a pole on one of the grass
islands, made the details of his clothing visible. Just as I got up to
his eyes I was struck by his expression. He didn't say it, but I could
literally feel him thinking it: "Well, what the hell are you staring
at?"
We went the rest of the way in silence--still more of it. I sighed with
relief as we reached the door of the single cabin--at last the ordeal
was over.
And then I realized I had forgotten to bring the key!
His eyes were on me, impatient, obviously bored with my stupidity and
slowness.
"I--I forgot the key. I'm very sorry. I'll go get it," I stammered.
Throwing dignity to the Banning breezes, I broke into a run as I headed
back toward the office. Not only was I in a hurry to get away from the
pitying contempt in his expression, but I was afraid that if he didn't
get a little satisfaction soon he'd just get into his car and drive
away. It would be terrible if I lost my first customer, especially
after such a bad start. I'd never have the courage to tackle one again.
Seizing the master key out of the desk drawer, I rushed back and opened
the door, snapping on the light and motioning him into the cabin.
His eyes flicked over the maple furniture, the red carpet, the Venetian
blinds, and back to me.
"Well, the cabin's okay," he said.
We embarked on the trip back to the office, while I pondered over the
inflection of his words.
He filled out the registration card, paid me four dollars, accepted the
key from my frigid hand, and turned to give me one last contemptuous
glance before he stepped out of the office.
I sank onto the davenport, weak with relief that my initiation into the
horrors of cabin-renting was over.
I suppose the affliction from which I suffered would be called
customerphobia. Such a word, if it existed, would be defined in the
dictionary as "a morbid fear of customers." No doubt in extreme cases
the victim would run shrieking at the sight of a customer. (As a matter
of fact, I had had to exert a lot of self-control to keep from doing
that very thing!) I grace the ailment by the coining of a name only
because I discovered others can suffer from it too. Grandma, later, was
to go through a violent attack of it, with much more disastrous results.
The next car that drove in that night disgorged a dark, trim looking
man with big ears who demanded, "How mocha get two people?"
"Four dollars," I said.
"How mocha get three people, four people?"
"Five dollars and a half; six-fifty for four people," I said. "I wanna
to buy it," the man declared.
"All right," I said indulgently. "Just fill out this registration card."
"No, no--no, no no!" he cried, shoving the registration card away in
horror. "I means, I wanna to buy it, I wanna to buy it to belong to me.
I got thirty thousand dollars down pay. You wanna to sell your motel?"
"Well," I hedged, "we hadn't really thought of selling. How much did
you want to pay?"
He fingered one huge ear, and I saw the glitter of a diamond on his
finger. "Let's let me look at it, first. Then I make you offer."
I showed some of the empty cabins to him and his wife, a meek little
woman who clambered out of their car and trailed along after us. I led
them out to the land behind the back row of courts. It was just a
gigantic splotch of blackness at this time of night, but I described it
to them. They were very much impressed.
When we were back in the office Mr. Gorvane--for he had introduced
himself by now--said, "I been looking around, this is nicest court in
Banning. I wanna it to belong to me. I offer you seventy-five thousand."
I gasped. By selling, we would make eleven and a half thousand dollars
profit. That was a lot of money, especially considering the short
length of time involved.
I promised him I would talk it over with my husband the following
weekend. I took his address--he lived in Los Angeles--and told him that
Grant would stop in to see him in a little over a week.
Every once in a while during the rest of that evening, I caught myself
almost on the verge of tears. I tried to figure out what was the matter
with me, and I realized that I was unhappy because I was afraid Grant
would insist on selling the motel. I wanted to keep it, no matter how
much we might be offered for it.
Still, I was glad Mr. Gorvane had made the offer. My relatives and the
few of our closer friends to whom we had told the price we were paying
for the motel had insisted that we were being fools, that the motel
couldn't possibly be worth it; that the business about the owner being
sick and having to sell was an old, old gag, that we'd lose every
penny. I had never really doubted the wisdom of our course, but it was
nice to have my faith in the value of our motel upheld. And if some one
offered to buy it for seventy-five thousand the day after we took
possession, probably in a couple of months, with the beginning of the
season at Palm Springs, (a popular winter resort twenty miles from us)
and the influx of winter tourists into California, we'd be offered even
more.
After those two encounters, the edge wore off my customerphobia. I
rented two more cabins before I went to bed. I checked carefully to be
sure that all the neon lights were on. Then I locked the office door
and the door that led outside from the living room, and lay down on the
bed with my clothes on.
The scrunch of wheels on gravel brought me off the bed several times,
but it turned out to be cars going into the restaurant next door. The
beam of the headlights of cars turning around in the restaurant parking
lot shone between the cracks of our Venetian blinds, casting stripes of
light against the wall, and made me think cars were coming into our
driveway.
There was no doubt, though, that the next car I heard was in our
driveway. Besides the agitation of the gravel, there was a thud, and
then loud, excited male voices.
I hurried to the door and looked out. A battered roadster, which had
apparently come from Williams street along our private road and entered
the graveled driveway from the rear, had banged up against the curb of
one of the grass islands. Two young men in the roadster were arguing in
a heated and highly alcoholic manner.
The idea of approaching two angry, unpredictable drunks didn't appeal
to me, but I knew I couldn't let them stay there, making a disturbance
that would be sure to annoy our customers. "Thish ish too the highway!"
one of the men roared.
"No, it ish not! Thash the highway over there, where the lightsh are!
You better let me drive, you're drunk, don't even know where the
highway ish."
They struggled for a moment over possession of the steering wheel.
Finally the one who had been driving said, "You're drunk yourshelf.
Here, you better drive."
They traded seats, with painstaking clumsiness. Then they sat quietly
for a moment, apparently about to go to sleep.
I was trying to coax my reluctant legs to carry me fiercely toward them
when, to my relief, the new driver started the car and pulled out onto
the highway. I hoped they would get safely wherever they were going.
At last I relaxed and went to sleep. Anyone who drove up wanting a
cabin would ring the bell by the office door, anyway.
I couldn't have been asleep more than five minutes when the bell rang
for the first time. I rented four more cabins during the night, each
about an hour after the other. Nervousness and excitement kept me awake
about half an hour after I rented each cabin, and I'd just be drifting
into the sounder stages of sleep when the bell would ring again.
It wasn't a very restful night.
In the morning Mrs. Clark, the husky maid, came to work in the cabins.
She was, in a bristling way, proud of her dark complexion and her
Irish-Italian ancestry, and contemptuous of "them funny-lookin'
foreigners that's always stayin' in your cabins," but she seemed to
enjoy the work of cleaning the cabins, and did it with a zest and speed
I could never have equaled. When I got the children fed and dressed and
the baby in her playpen, I decided to tackle the mountainous heap of
laundry. The laundry truck was due in a couple of hours; and I felt
sure that, on the first day at least, it would take me almost as long
to sort and count and list the dirty things as it would have to
actually wash and iron them myself.
In the garages between cabins number 2 and 3 there were several strips
of leftover linoleum standing against the back wall. I rolled these
flat on the floor and brought armfuls of dirty linens from a
compartment in the linen closet, putting them on one side. Then I
sorted the things into six different piles--sheets, slips, hand towels,
bath mats, wash cloths, bath towels. My arms began to ache from lifting
each sheet and shaking it to be sure no smaller articles were wrapped
up in it. Then I stuffed the sheets into a laundry bag, counting them
carefully. There were sixty sheets, and I had to get a second laundry
bag out of the linen closet.
The linen closet was a huge, roomy affair built against the back of the
garage adjoining cabin 2, and it left plenty of room for a car in the
garage. There were three gigantic shelves in it. On the bottom shelf
were extra blankets and bedspreads, cleaning equipment of all kinds,
and supplies such as soap, toilet paper, small boxes of matches, and
water pitchers. On the middle shelf were stacks of clean linens--about
two hundred of each item. On the top shelf we had stored as many of our
personal belongings as we could get along without temporarily, since
there was no room for them in our cabin.
I was exhausted by the time I had counted all the laundry, stuffed it
into bags, and listed it in the laundry book. Just as I finished, the
laundry truck roared into the driveway and stopped suddenly in front of
the garage where I stood, gravel flying in all directions. The driver
got out. He was a likeable, lanky, red-haired youth with a very few
tiny patches of white skin showing between his freckles.
"How d'you like the motel business by now?" he asked me, as he lifted
the heavy bags into the back of the truck.
"It's fun," I said, "all except cleaning cabins, and sorting laundry,
and keeping books, and getting up in the night to rent cabins!"
He laughed, and rubbed his brown-speckled nose. "You'll get used to
it," he said.
That night wasn't as bad as my first night alone had been. I rented
five cabins before I went to bed, and I did it with so much nonchalance
that I was proud of myself.
Once I got into bed, though, reaction from two days of worry and hard
work and a night of very little sleep set in. I slept deeply,
dreamlessly, without moving, until the shriek of the office bell
shattered my sleep.
Dazedly I went into the office, snapped on the light, and unlocked the
door. Two young men came in. "We want a cabin with two double beds,"
the taller man said.
He filled out the registration card which I shoved sleepily toward him.
"How much?" he asked.
"Five-fifty," I replied. Our rate for a double cabin with two double
beds was five and a half or six and a half dollars, depending on the
number of people that were to occupy it. We had decided to charge that
much or less, depending on the demand for cabins and the number of
"vacancy" signs along the highway, following the custom of the former
owners.
Each of the young men laid a five dollar bill on the counter. I looked
at the bills groggily. I was still half asleep.
"Just one of those will do, with fifty cents beside," I said.
"We want to pay separately," said the shorter man. "Give us each
change, please."
I missed Grant, with his quick mind and his easy competence, more
intensely at that moment than I missed him yet. I smothered a yawn and
tried to concentrate on the difficult task before me. My reasoning, if
you could call it that, was hazy and confused.
"Well," I thought, opening the cash drawer and looking at the array of
five and one dollar bills, and fifty cent pieces and quarters, "they're
each paying half of five and a half. How much is half of five and a
half, anyway? Half of five would be two and a half, so half of five and
a half would be a little more than that. How much more? Well..." At
that point I lost the thread of the whole thing and had to begin over.
"Suppose," I thought, starting on a new tack, "I would give each of
them a dollar. That would mean they each had paid four dollars, which
would be too much. Well, then, suppose I gave them each three dollars.
That would mean they had each paid me two dollars, which wouldn't be
quite enough. But how much would it lack of being enough?"
Arithmetic had always stirred up a swirling fog inside my head. My
eyelids were drooping more and more, and yet I was beginning to feel
beneath my drowsiness a desperate panic. The men were growing impatient.
I frowned and stared more sternly at the money in the cash drawer. I
summoned all my powers of concentration. I handled the money in the
drawer ostentatiously, as a bluff, so that they would think I was
beginning to go into action.
I still don't remember how I did it--unless maybe it was by doling out
the money slowly and watching their faces until their expressions
suggested they had received the full amount--but somehow the awful
situation ended and the men went to their cabin.
The following morning when I did the day's bookkeeping I found that
there was fifty cents too much in the cash drawer. Still, I didn't feel
that the system I had used the previous night had much to recommend it,
and I resolved not to try it again.
Traffic noises along the highway were loud and almost ceaseless--they
quieted down a little just often enough to give the next crescendo the
greatest possible impact. Planes roared up and down from the airport
which was about a block to the southeast; trains whistled and roared
along the track that was a block to the south; cars and trucks and
busses roared along the highway. The whole highway, in fact, was one
big, solid roar.
After the first few days, though, the noise faded to the back of my
consciousness. The peal of the office bell would rouse me instantly,
even if I were working in a cabin several doors away, but the
sky-shattering whine of jet-propelled planes made no impression on me
at all.
Travelers and newcomers to the vicinity nearly always commented on the
noise. Often they'd have to raise their voices to be heard above it. I
got so used to the noise that when someone would yell above the din,
"What an awful racket that train makes'." I'd shriek back, "What train?"
I was beginning to become acquainted with some of our neighbors. Moe,
the bald, thick-set, beak-nosed man who owned the restaurant next door,
had a son, Moejy (no doubt a corruption of Moe, Jr.) who was about a
year older than David. The first moment I laid eyes on Moejy I had a
premonition that he would turn out to be the most obnoxious child I had
ever encountered--a premonition which, as later events were to prove,
was correct.
He was a wiry boy with a small head, close set ears, and eyes that
darted about continually in search of insects to be dismembered or
walls to be scribbled on. He was about a head taller than David, and in
the second grade. For the first few days after we took possession of
the motel, he and David were inseparable.
Directly to the east of us, between us and the imposing Peacock, was a
four-unit motel that was unfinished and had no neon sign. The owner of
the place was a tall, gaunt black-haired old man with a curiously pink
chin. His name, I had learned, was Featherbrain; and I reflected that
he must posses more sterling and endearing qualities than were
immediately visible, to have inspired in the woman who married him such
affection that she was willing to accept him, name and all.
He worked each day on his little motel, painting and hammering, while
his wife, always with a cigarette in one hand, planted shrubs, lined
the driveways with big rocks which she painted white, and did the
watering--an important job in this part of the country. Our own shrubs,
the islands of grass and the geraniums beneath our sign needed a
thorough watering every day. We discovered that watering every other
day was not enough; the grass would turn brown and die in spots unless
it received a daily watering.
There were advantages to the heat and dryness, though. Besides being
contributing factors to what must be one of the most healthful climates
in the world, they made it possible for one to hang clothes up on a
line, stand and wait a few seconds while the things were whipped by the
wind, and take them down, completely dry.
I never had to worry about not having enough clothesline space, even
though there were only three short lines between the posts Grant put up
behind the rear cabins a few weeks after we took over the motel. When
the three lines were full, the first line of clothes was ready to be
taken down, making room for the rest of the wet things.
Donna, even though I had less time to be with her, and she had to
remain in the safety of her playpen for the greater part of the day,
was growing and developing rapidly. She was becoming more agile, and
she could climb on and off the furniture--something she hadn't yet been
able to do when we left Los Angeles. It was a problem what to do with
her when a customer came while she was out of her playpen. I never
dared leave her alone in the house on such occasions, for fear she
might somehow get outside and onto the highway. If I chucked her
suddenly into her playpen, though, and went to talk to the customer,
she would howl with indignation. Since her playpen was in the
unfinished bedroom right behind the office, where her howls would be
plainly audible, that had to be prevented. So I put a bag of cookies on
the bookcase, and whenever I had to rush her to the playpen suddenly, I
gave her a cookie in each hand. She became too absorbed with enjoying
her feast to protest over where she had it.
I bathed her sometimes in the kitchen sink, sometimes in the dishpan.
Our cabin, like the other thirteen, had a lovely tile shower, but no
bathtub. One morning I had just set her in the dishpan of warm water on
the kitchen table when the office bell rang. It must be a salesman, I
reasoned; we very seldom had customers this early in the morning. I'd
get rid of him in short order. I picked up the baby's celluloid duck,
which was on a chair beside the table, and gave it to her to keep her
entertained. Then I hurried into the office.
Three very distinguished looking men stood there. They introduced
themselves; they were representatives of some motel and apartment house
association, which they wanted us to join.
They launched into an exposition of the various benefits connected with
belonging to their organization, and described the exalted position of
the member. The principal spokesman of the group, a dignified creature
with a glistening bald head, was waxing very eloquent indeed when
suddenly he stopped, coughed, and delicately adjusted the white
handkerchief in his pocket. Obviously he was rattled about something,
and behind his close, even shave a faint red was rising. The other two
men laughed uncomfortably, and I realized they were looking at a point
behind me. I turned, to see what they were looking at.
There, with her celluloid duck in one hand, stood Donna, as naked as
the spokesman's head, beaming graciously and impartially upon the three
men.
It was so hard to handle the baby and the motel, doing half of the work
of cleaning cabins, taking care of the laundry, answering customer's
questions and listening to their views on life when there were a dozen
other things I should be doing, that I persuaded Grant to quit his job.
Business was good, even better than we had hoped it would be, and every
night our garages were filled with sleek, shiny automobiles from every
part of the country. The income from the motel was almost as much in
one night as Grant was earning in a week. Unless something went
terribly wrong, there was no reason why we wouldn't make a financial
success.
So Grant left Southgate (the suburb of Los Angeles in which the General
Motors plant was located) and came to Banning, bag and baggage; and I
shucked my new capability, that had been born of necessity, and
reverted to being my old helpless self, which was more natural--and a
lot more fun.
Grant and I had discussed Mr. Gorvane's offer to buy the place, and had
decided that we wanted the motel more than we wanted the quick, easy
profit.
That is, Grant decided that--I had known all along that that was how I
felt about it.