Four and Twenty Beds

I sometimes think that if an earthquake should suddenly shatter our motel to a level with the ground, if I should run away with another man, if David should put all our possessions into a glorious bonfire, and Donna should get her hand caught in the wringer of the washing machine–all simultaneously–Grant would be able, by a few incisive words or actions, to bring the entire situation back to normal. In case, since he is my husband, this sounds like bragging, let me add that there is nothing so deflating to the ego, so utterly crushing to one's sense of having any worth or value, so completely paralyzing to one's latent, potential abilities, if any, as being married to such a paragon of accomplishment.

After our electricity was fixed–on the house, as it were–our neon sign went bad again. It flickered uneasily for a while, and finally went off altogether. We called the cherubic-faced Oian Roscoe again, and he fixed it for us promptly; but we were beginning to get disgusted. This neon sign was costing us a lot of money.

And business hadn't yet picked up to a point where we were taking in much more than enough to make our payments. Then some boys stole David's red wagon–a shiny, deluxe job we had given him for a Christmas present, when we were still in Los Angeles.

David had left it out behind the single cabins, by his tent. He and Moejy, who had been throwing gravel at each other behind Moejy's father's restaurant, came running in to tell me that they had seen a bunch of big boys pulling the wagon away.

Grant had gone to the bank. I knew that if the wagon was to be recovered, it was up to me to do something–and do it quick.

Donna was in her playpen. Telling David to stay with her, I loped out toward the tent. Sure enough, there in the distance, across Williams street, and with what seemed like a mile of fields between them and me, were the boys with David's wagon. It looked like a tiny toy, sparkling red in the sunlight.

I ran determinedly toward the boys, and I could see them pulling the wagon after them as fast as they could go.

I was soon out of breath, and nervous at the thought of leaving the motel and the baby for so long, but I plugged on. I couldn't see that I was gaining on the boys, but they must have thought I was, because finally they let go of the wagon and ran on without it, disappearing behind a group of houses.

Then I still had to trot the remaining quarter of a mile, or however far it was, get the wagon, and trudge wearily homeward with it.

When I got home I discovered that Moejy, who had stayed with David, had locked the office doors and the bathroom door, and hidden the keys. When I tried to make him tell me what he had done with the keys, the wiry little creature ran outside and down the edge of the highway toward the Peacock. David had been giving the baby a piece of bread, he said, when Moejy hid the keys; he hadn't seen where he put them.

I was frantic. If a customer should come, what would I do? With the outer office door, and the one leading to the living room, locked, I wouldn't be able to get the keys to the cabins or a master key. I wouldn't be able to show a cabin to a prospect; even if I could, I wouldn't be able to get at the change or the registration blanks. "I won't be able to even show one cabin!" I wailed.

And as for the bathroom being locked–well, that situation, too, might become acute. But so far I wasn't worried about that.

Just then a bright red roadster pulled into our driveway. I opened the living room door and stepped out, so that they wouldn't go to the office.

"Gotta single?" asked the driver.

I gulped helplessly.

Just then David nudged me from behind, and handed me the three keys Moejy had hidden.

"I just remembered," David hissed, "Moejy was fooling around by the fork drawer in the kitchen. I looked, and there were the keys! And you split your infilitive a minute ago."

That wasn't the end of our run of trouble. The night before the wedding, the fields out back caught fire. Someone driving along Williams street must have thrown a cigarette or a lighted match from a car window. Any fire in Banning is a menace because of the brisk, whipping wind, and this one was no exception.

Grant was shaving when David clattered in to tell me about the fire. I called the fire department quickly, after a glance out the door; the licking flames were dramatic and beautiful out there in the blackness behind Moe's restaurant.

I ran toward the fire with David, beating Grant to the draw. One of us, naturally, had to stay with the baby and the motel, and I knew I'd be the one if I didn't hurry!

The fire department was there within five mintues, and before long they had the blazing weeds under control. The next morning we went out to inspect the path of the fire, marked by black weeds and burnt earth, and we saw that the fire had come up almost exactly to our property line, where it had been stopped.

"See, we aren't jinxed, after all," Grant said.

We realized how lucky we had been. If the wind had been blowing in another direction, or harder, and if the fire department hadn't been so prompt, the rear section of our motel–the four single cabins–might have burned.

Thursday was the day set for the wedding. Mr. Hawkins' well-built body was encased rakishly in a striped suit, and his brown eyes were sparkling with his characteristic sly amusement when he came into the office. I smiled, remembering Miss Nestleburt's remark about hoping he wouldn't embarass her by playing a practical joke or doing something eccentric at the ceremony. I couldn't blame her for not quite trusting him.

Mr. Hawkins swept off his hat. "I know, madame," he said, "what you think about me. I know what you're thinking right now. It is my fond hope that I can at least partially obliterate the bad impression I have made upon you. There are two hours yet before the ceremony, and in those two hours I propose to work for you. If you will give me cleaning equipment and fresh linens I shall clean my cabin from ceiling to floorboard, until it is so spotless it will look as though it had never been occupied."

Since Grant, who cleaned each occupied cabin each day, whether or not the occupants were staying over, had cleaned Mr. Hawkins' cabin the previous morning, it wasn't as much in need of a thorough cleaning as he implied.

We hadn't cleaned his cabin yet today, though. Since this was to be his last day here, we planned to wait until he left, and then to get it ready for a new customer.

I had tried to persuade the pair to stay at our motel for their honeymoon. Mr. Hawkins, though, insisted that they should travel for a few weeks, and then settle down in Burbank, where he had a nice home that had been rented out since the death of his first wife five years ago. Mr. Hawkins would have liked to spend a comfortable honeymoon in Banning, probably, but he didn't trust me. He knew that, although I had laughed off the rubber spider and several other of his little whimsicalities, I had never forgiven him for the tooth brush incident. He was afraid that I would seize upon his wedding night as an opportunity to revenge myself in full.

If he really wanted to clean up his cabin in readiness for a new occupant, I certainly wasn't going to stand in his way. I led him out to the linen closet, where I loaded him with a bucket of soapy water, disinfectant, a broom, a dustcloth, and clean linens.

"Don't get that gorgeous new suit dirty!" I called after him as he carried the load back toward his cabin.

Grant was mowing the grass on the last of the three white-curbed islands. The approach of winter had slowed down the growth of the grass, so that it didn't need as much mowing as it had a few weeks earlier. It didn't need so much watering, either. Some of the leaves of the Chinese elms were turning golden or red and dropping to the ground. It was the basis of a prolonged debate between Grant and me. Would the elms, or wouldn't they, lose all their leaves for the winter? "Yep," said Grant.

No, said I. With all the varieties of non-shedding trees in California, the people who built the motel wouldn't have been so foolish as to plant trees that would be bare sticks all winter long, when business was heaviest and it was most important for the motel to look attractive.

Whenever we couldn't think of anything else to talk about, we argued about that. And every day there were more leaves on the grass, and the trees were in a more advanced phase of their strip tease.

Mr. Hawkins returned the cleaning equipment about an hour after he had taken it, and invited me to inspect his handiwork. He had done a good job, all right. The place was spotless; the furniture all shone as though it had been polished, and even the Venetian blinds seemed cleaner than we had ever been able to get them. A new book of matches was in the ashtray; two new, fragrant little guest-size bars of Cashmere Bouquet soap were on the sparkling sink. The bed was made perfectly, without a wrinkle in or under the spread, and the soft, blue woolly extra blanket was folded precisely at the foot of the bed, as neatly as any of the extra blankets on the beds in the other cabins. The cabin would be ready to rent to the most discriminating customer as soon as Mr. Hawkins removed his suitcases and a few of his clothes that were hanging in the closet. They would return and get all their belongings after the ceremony, he said.

"The cabin looks wonderful," I said sincerely. "You've certainly saved us a lot of work." And I was beginning to think that I had perhaps misjudged his basic character, when he produced the piece de resistance. "A gift for you, madame," he said grandly, taking a small box from his pockets. "A little token of my regard for you and my appreciation for your forebearance."

Overcome, I was about to open it when Miss Nesdeburt fluttered into the cabin. She was resplendent in a pale blue satin dress, with four strands of pearls around her neck. Rhinestone earrings rivaled the pearls for glory, and her eyes rivaled the rhinestones.

"I can't get this dress zipped! Will you zip up the back of it?" she appealed to me.

I zipped it for her, and said, "Isn't it supposed to be bad luck to let the groom see you in your wedding dress before the wedding?"

"Bad luck? Mais non!" she scoffed. "I'm not superstitious."

She must have seen my incredulous smile. "I don't believe in dreams any more either," she went on. "I've decided Elmo's teachings about the meaning of dreams is just a lot of nonsense. None of the things that my dreams prophesied, according to his teaching, came true. I think," she confessed, her fair skin turning pink, "I just had all those dreams because I wanted to marry Mr. Hawkins!"

"Well, I suppose that's possible," I conceded.

They were married at the home of one of Banning's ministers. I was a witness; and after the brief ceremony (during which Mr. Hawkins behaved like a perfect gentleman) they drove back to the motel, to let me off and to stow their luggage in the car. Miss Nestleburt's car was stored in a garage; they hadn't figured out exactly how or when they were going to get it, but they didn't want to go on their honeymoon in separate cars!

They let me off at the office, and drove back toward the cabins they had been occupying. Fifteen minutes later they drove out, paused by the office to honk a raucous farewell, and began to edge into the line of traffic on the highway. Grant and I went outside to wave at them; Mr. Hawkins waved back, and from his hand hung what looked like the corner of a woolly blue blanket.

I stared after the car as it swung onto the highway, and then I said to Grant, "Did you see what I saw?"

But Grant had already started toward the back row of cabins. I followed him, and we burst into the spotless cabin that Mr. Hawkins had lived in. It was still beautifully neat, especially since his luggage and his clothes were gone–but now the extra blanket was gone from the foot of the bed! "He took our blanket!" Grant exclaimed.

"Let's be sure," I said. "Maybe it's just another of his jokes. Maybe he just wanted us to think he did." We searched the place thoroughly; we looked under the bed, in drawers, on the closet shelf. We even glanced into Miss Nesdeburt's cabin. We couldn't find the blanket.

"I guess he took it, all right," I said at last. "Well, he isn't going to get away with it. I'll go after him."

I would have let Grant, as a representative of the sterner, stronger sex, handle the situation, except that I was so furious with Mr. Hawkins that I couldn't bear to let anyone else have the pleasure of dealing harshly with him.

I got into our car, backed it out of the garage, and drove quickly to the highway. I turned left, in the direction in which Mr. Hawkins had gone, and pressed my foot down hard on the gas.

Mr. Hawkins must have been driving fast, too. I didn't catch up with them until we reached the side road that led to Twenty-Nine Palms. They were hesitating there, apparently trying to decide whether to go straight ahead or to have a look at Twenty-Nine Palms. About the time they decided to go straight ahead, I drove up beside them. "Pull over!" I yelled.

"Look, dear, a lady traffic cop," I heard Mr. Hawkins observe loudly; but he pulled meekly off the highway, near some clumps of sagebrush. The desert rolled in swells around us, its sands sparsely covered by cactus plants and by an occasional grotesque Joshua tree. Sharp mountains, partly covered with snow, walled us in, and ahead of us the highway disappeared into sloping hills.

I parked behind them, and got out of the car. I felt selfconscious as I stalked toward them. I was acting just like a traffic cop.

Mr. Hawkins narrow brown eyes were laughing at me as I said icily, "I'd like to have that blanket back, if you don't mind."

Miss Nestleburt drew in her breath in a sharp gasp. "What do you mean?" she asked, her tiny white hands going to her mouth.

"What blanket, madame?" Mr. Hawkins inquired courteously.

"The blanket you took from our motel!" I snapped. "There it is! Right on the seat between you!"

Mr. Hawkins didn't glance at the blanket. "Your suspicious nature grieves me," he stated. "Why, simply because I have a blanket, do you assume that it is your blanket?"

"Because the extra blanket is gone from your cabin, as you know."

"Madame," he replied, "I fear that you are mistaken. I am quite positive that the blanket to which you refer is still in the cabin it has been my happiness to occupy for awhile. Why don't you hurry back and look more thoroughly?" He started the motor of his car.

"Give me that blanket!" I cried.

"This blanket," he said, "is mine. It was a–a wedding present." His eyes shifted as he spoke, and his face wore a furtive, guilty expression.

Angrily I stepped on the running board, put my arm through the window and reached across him, seizing a corner of the blanket. I pulled. Mr. Hawkins held the rest of the blanket, and he pulled also.

Miss Nestleburt–she would always be Miss Nestleburt to me, even though she had made the mistake of marrying this sly, underhanded thief–clasped her little hands in distress.

After a brief tug of war Mr. Hawkins made what came as close to being a courtly bow as possible, under the conditions and in his position. He released the blanket, and I gathered it into my arms triumphantly. Mr. Hawkins sighed.

"If you are so determined to have my blanket, all right. I suppose, in the motel business, you must get supplies in any way you can. But there's just one thing," he said mildly. "Before you take it, will you identify it, or try to? I just want you to admit, before we part, that you know it isn't yours."

"But it is!" I cried. "Do you think I'd be so interested in getting it away from you if it weren't?"

"Frankly, yes."

Fuming, I held up the satin edges of the blanket. "It has 'Moonrise Motel' stamped on the edges somewhere," I said. "All of our blankets do. Just wait. I'll find it right away."

I searched fruitlessly for a few minutes, while Mr. Hawkins sat watching me, a widening grin on his face.

I kept on hunting for the "Moonrise Motel" stamp. I couldn't find it.

Finally I looked up at Mr. Hawkins. If I had been angry before, I was raging now. He had made a fool of me again.

"You knew perfectly well that wasn't my blanket!" I accused him.

"My dear madame, that's what I've been trying to tell you all along," he pointed out reasonably. He took the blanket from my numb hands, and they drove off, leaving me in a shower of sand.

When I got back to the motel I went again into the cabin Mr. Hawkins had occupied and looked about thoughtfully. Where could that blanket be?

It must be on the bed, smoothed out under the spread with the other blanket. I peeked under the spread, but the extra blanket wasn't there. Nevertheless, I felt that it must be secreted about the bed somewhere; there absolutly wasn't any place else in the cabin it could be!

I gazed at the bed for a while, and then, moved by some unaccountable impulse, I lifted one side of the mattress and peered under it. There, between the mattress and the box springs, was the blanket. .

I pulled it out, smoothed the bedspread, and put the blanket neatly at the foot of the bed. I left, making a mental note that the cabin was ready to rent.

After I went back into our own cabin and told Grant ruefully what had happened, I noticed the little package Mr. Hawkins had given me, still on the desk by the telephone where I had put it before going to the wedding. I picked it up warily.

"I wonder what is his idea of a gift," I mused. "'A little token of his regard for me.' Is it more likely to be a baby rattlesnake, or a tear gas bomb?"

"Open it and see," Grant suggested, brushing back his brown hair with his thin fingers.

I tore the wrappings off the package gingerly, perched on the edge of my chair ready to throw the whole thing away quickly if necessary. I held a small, innocuous-looking box in my hand. Slowly, carefully, I opened the box.

Inside was the silver figure of a nude man, about four inches high, standing on tiptoe with his arms upraised. On the tips of his fingers was a balloon, with which he was, apparently, supposed to be playing.

"H'm," I said, "Rather immodest, and I don't know what it's for–an ornament, maybe–but I guess I didn't have to be so nervous about opening it."

Grant, with his quick perception, had figured out exactly what the thing was for before I had even completely made up my mind that it was harmless.

"It's an atomizer," he said. "The balloon is the bulb. It smells like there's perfume in it right now. Squeeze the bulb and see."

I squeezed the bulb, and we were sprayed with fragrance.

I stood the little silver man on top of the bookcase. He's there right now, the object of the admiration and titters of those who visit us. His silvery body still gleams brightly, he is as merrily nude as ever, and a little pressure on the balloon he is playing with still brings forth a gentle squirt of perfume–but where the perfume squirts from, I refuse to say.

CHAPTER NINE

THERE IS AN indefinable air about every motel cabin that is felt, I imagine, by all but the most insensitive of motel owners. It's the composite spirit of all the people who have slept in that cabin. It's nothing more tangible than memory, actually, yet it's very real.

Miss Nestleburt and Mr. Hawkins had been with us so long that their presence still seemed to cling to their cabins. I felt almost guilty the first time I rented their cabins to other people after they left. A stern, rigid old couple fell heir to Mr. Hawkins' cabin, and I couldn't help contrasting their stiff seriousness with the sly humor of the former occupant.

Grant and I sat on the davenport that night after the children were in bed, and discussed the motel business. It was raining, so he wasn't going to go outside to bring any customers in.

"What we need is a rifle," Grant observed, lifting up the top slice of bread of his sandwich to make sure that the peanut butter, Worcestershire sauce, and apple jelly were still there. I averted my eyes, and asked him what we would do with a rifle if we had one–shoot people who tried to go into any motel but ours?

"Shoot out all the signs around us," he replied, his cheeks bulging. "Then we'd fill up right away. As soon as we filled up we'd quick shoot our own sign out, so the other motel owners wouldn't get suspicious the next morning because ours was the only sign that hadn't been shot out. We'd make twenty or thirty dollars extra that way; we'd pay Rosco seven-fifty to fix the sign, and that's all there'd be to it."

"You're wonderful," I said admiringly.

"We should at least change our own sign once," Grant went on, licking his lips. "The Winking Eye's sign, with its big eye flashing on and off, is almost as much of an eyecatcher as the Peacock's. Here we are between them with a sign no better than Featherbrain's."

"Maybe we could have a picture on top of the word 'Moonrise,'" I suggested. "A big orange moon–only half of it showing because it's supposed to be rising–all made out of bright neon."

Grant took another bite of his sandwich. "Have to talk to Oian Rosco about that," he observed. "He'll know if it can be done, and how much it would cost. I'll have to find out about neon myself one of these days. I don't like to have to hire anyone to make repairs."

We were silent for a while. "Another way to get customers," Grant mused, "would be to put up a sign outside: 'Limit–one cabin to a customer.' They'd come rushing in then, I'll bet."

We talked for a while about what different characters and personalities people possess–differences evidenced by the very manner in which they ask for cabins. There are several general types of opening remarks. There's the one that goes something like this: "Have you a nice, soft bed for a poor weary traveler to lay his tired body in?" The person–almost invariably a man–who asks for a cabin in this manner is without doubt good-natured, easy-going and generous, and has a good sense of humor. Then there's the thin-nosed man who thrusts that slender appendage a cautious inch inside the office doorway and demands, "Whatcha get for your cabins?" And there's the woman–too many of her–who inquires thoroughly into every detail before she will condescend even to examine a cabin.

"Have you bedbugs?" she inquires. There are two appropriate responses to such a query that, so far, I've been able to hold back. One is, "I'm sorry, we haven't any, but I think you can get some at the little store across the street." The other response would be a sigh, a confidential motion to her to come closer, and the words: "No, but I'm eaten alive by lice. Have you found any good ways to get rid of lice?"

Not only is a woman of this type not satisfied with asking about bedbugs, but she must also ask whether there is hot water (really hot?) and whether we actually wash the sheets, or whether we just iron the wrinkles out each time they are used and put them back on the beds.

But the most common four words–I've heard them so often I can almost tell by a prospective customer's expression when I am about to hear them again–are: "Have you any vacancies?"

Obviously, since our sign is proclaiming to all the world that we have, the question seems superfluous. The question irritated me at first, until I realized that everyone who asks it knows perfectly well that we do have a vacancy, but can't think of a better way to start the conversation.

The telephone interrupted our discussion and reverie, and Grant answered it.

"A reservation for two?" he said presently. "Yep … I got that . . ." He began writing on a piece of paper by the telephone.

"The twin beds!" I hissed. "Ask them if they want twin beds!"

Our two twin bed cabins often seem to be a drug on the market, even though, except when business is rushing, we lock off the back bedroom, with its double bed, and rent the twin beds for only a dollar more than the price of a regular single cabin for two. When we remind people that we have twin beds, or ask them as they register if they wouldn't prefer them, we have better luck in getting rid of those cabins.

We often have trouble remembering to ask them, though. I prodded Grant in the back and hissed again, "Ask them if they want twin beds!"

"Do you want twin beds?" Grant said into the telephone mouthpiece. And then, to my amazement, he began to blush. He concluded the conversation hurriedly and with confusion, and then he turned to me.