EVERY NIGHT WHEN Grant goes to bed he lays out his clothes in exactly
the places and positions where they will be easiest to get into in a
hurry. (Except on the nights when all the cabins are full by bedtime;
then, knowing he won't have to get up to answer the doorbell, he
reverts to type and tosses all his things in a heap on the floor!)
But on the nights when our "vacancy" sign is on, he likes to be
prepared for the inevitable summons. He wears his underclothes to bed.
His trousers hang over a chair beside the bed, and are the first
garment he grabs when the bell rings. He thrusts his legs into them
quickly, hobbling across the room toward the office at the same time.
In the middle of the room is his shirt, hanging on another chair which
has been carefully placed halfway between the bed and the doorway to
the office. Halting his clumsy gait long enough to seize the shirt, he
puts it on and tries to button it with one hand while he zips his
trousers with the other. By this time he has reached the doorway which
separates the office from the living room; and there wait his slippers.
He steps into them hastily, hurries to the outer office door, and opens
it--to face a customer who is on the verge of giving up and leaving.
I've often tried to talk him into going to the door in his robe, which
wouldn't take a tenth as long to slip into. But he insists that that
would look sloppy.
"Any sloppier than going with your pants half zipped, and your shirt
buttoned into the wrong buttonholes?" I ask. I don't complain or make
suggestions too much, though, because I realize how lucky I am that he
takes it for granted it is his job to wait on the customers who come
during the night.
Mr. Featherbrain probably never had to untangle his tall frame from the
bedclothes to wait on nocturnal customers for the first couple of
months after he opened his place. The people who were attracted by his
little place were very few and far between. One morning, though, Mrs.
Featherbrain called me over, and I sat with them in their nicely
furnished living room. It was the day after a highly advertised
celebration had been held in the desert northeast of Banning, to which
movie stars and humbler creatures had flocked to watch the laying of
the cornerstone of what was to be Pioneertown, the future setting of
the cream of Hollywood's horse opera crop. Every motel in town had been
full.
"We wented four cabins last night!" Mrs. Featherbrain told me
ecstatically, waving one of her ever-present cigarettes. She is a
plump, dark woman with a very mobile face. She smiles, frowns, raises
and lowers her eyebrows, and blinks rapidly while she talks. She is
probably twenty years younger than Mr. Featherbrain.
"That's wonderful!" I said warmly. And then I realized what she had
said. "Four?" I repeated. "Why, you only have three units to rent."
"Of course, but one couple left about eleven last night, and we wented
their cabin over again."
"Really? What time had they come?"
"About ten."
"You mean they left the key, and took all their stuff, and really
checked out?"
"That's wight," Mrs. Featherbrain replied, the wrinkles in her forehead
appearing and disappearing.
"Did they ask for part of their money back?" I persisted.
"No."
"Well--that's odd," I said.
"Why, that must have happened at your court lots of times!" she
protested, a cloud of smoke pouring out from her fluttering nostrils.
"Hasn't it? Do you ever go out and look, about midnight, to see if some
of the cars haven't pulled out?"
"Why--why, no," I said. "I can't imagine why they would leave. After
all, they've paid their money, and if they didn't want to spend the
night before traveling on, why would they--"
Mr. and Mrs. Featherbrain exchanged glances. "Have you ever seen any of
the motels on Ventura Boulevard, in Los Angeles?" Mrs. Featherbrain
asked.
"Mmm--yes, I think so," I said. "There are quite a few of them, aren't
there? I remember wondering, in fact, how they could possibly get
enough tourists to keep them filled up, right in a big city like that."
My hostess shot a look at her husband, and blinked rapidly several
times.
"Well, sir," Mr. Featherbrain began, speaking with apparent difficulty,
"Yuh know, not ewybody that stays in motels is tourists."