Four and Twenty Beds

There were no other empty seats, and more people kept crowding in behind me all the time. Having satisfied my curiosity as to what was going on, I decided to leave.

As I went out I met a plump, whiskered gentleman who stepped aside for me courteously and a little unsteadily. His bright beady eyes held me with an intent regard. I wondered how many of me he saw, and I smiled.

He bristled. "You think I'm half drunk, don't you, lady?" he charged. "Well, you're wrong, absolutely wrong." He paused, for dramatic effect. "I'm not half drunk, I'm completely drunk!"

He bent double with laughter. "I jusht had to come out here for some fresh air. The air in theresh so smoky, itsh so crowded, itsh enough to drive a drinking man to sobriety!"

Seeing that I was about to go on, he clutched the sleeve of my dress. "You know what I am?" he demanded. "I'm a walking binge!"

He called after me, "That'sh pretty good, now, isn't it? A walking binge! You remember that and maybe sometime you can say it yourself and make people think you thought it up yourshelf. Yesshir, a walking binge. Pretty good!"

There were a lot of walking binges in and around the cafe before the night was over. Some of them, in fact, could hardly stagger. The supply of beer and wine must have outlasted the supply of food.

We had two reasons, though, to be glad that the cafe had changed hands. The first and most important reason was, of course, that we would at last be rid of Moejy–although actually the obnoxious little creature spent so much of his time at the Auto Haven visiting the Bradleys, that we weren't much bothered by him. The second reason was that our business, for this one night at least, was greatly improved. A lot of travelers who had been bent on making a hundred miles or more yet before stopping for the night, decided, after relaxing and eating and drinking in the restaurant, that Banning would be as good a town as any in which to spend the night. And, since our motel was next door to the restaurant, we got most of the extra business.

Sunday the cafe was closed–no doubt because everything but the furnishings had been consumed Saturday night, and new supplies couldn't be obtained until Monday.

Monday morning it was still closed. Monday noon we saw Moe unlocking the door and going in, walking as though thirty years had been added suddenly to his heavy-set shoulders. Grant went over to talk to him, and when he came back he told me what had happened. The check for the down payment on the restaurant had bounced. The man who had given Moe the check had disappeared after the hilarious opening night. The restaurant was a shambles, with everything eatable or drinkable gone, and Moe's large stock of beer and wine completely demolished.

When Grant left, Moe was sitting at the circular counter, rubbing his bald head and completely unable to see the funny side of what had happened, trying to figure up just how many hundreds of dollars his trusting nature had cost him.

In spite of Banning's superlatively healthful climate, and her own stalwart frame, Mrs. Clark was besieged and temporarily conquered by a horde of influenza germs–or viruses, whichever they are. Although we were having a few vacancies now, the new window in the office was keeping most of our cabins occupied, and the lush, idle winter had so accustomed us to loafing that we were horrified at the idea of doing our own work, even for a week.

A pretty Mexican girl had been applying, about once a month, for work. I had her name and address on a slip of paper in the cash drawer.

"How about this Veda Gonzales?" I suggested to Grant, pulling out the slip and showing it to him.

We knew it would be a lot of trouble breaking in someone new to clean the cabins–but it wouldn't be as much trouble as cleaning them ourselves!

West of the Blue Bonnet Motel, west of the new bakery, was a bunch of little brown shacks clustered forlornly on the edge of the highway like ragged children gazing into a window bright with toys and tinsel. It was in one of these shacks that Veda lived.

I showed her what her tasks would be, and she learned readily.

The first day she came to work her brown cheeks were rouged, her dark eyes were sparkling, her lips were cherry red. Her black hair was caught back by a white ribbon, and she wore a white peasant blouse, which drooped at the shoulders and had a low neckline.

I accompanied her through the first two cabins, advising and observing–and smoothing an occasional sheet. Veda went about her work willingly and efficiently, and after a while I strolled back into the house.

I picked up my copy of "War and Peace" which I had borrowed from the library on four different occasions, without yet having had a chance to read it. This time I was up to page fourteen.

I was so accustomed to frequent interruptions that I was becoming unable to concentrate even in their absence. Donna had gone outside her window and was playing; David was in school, and Grant was gone–talking, no doubt, with some motel owner he had found who was willing to listen to him for a while. In the unusual silence I felt my mind drifting away from Tolstoy's closely packed pages.

The wheels of a car churned the gravel, and paused while the driver got out and dropped the key into the mailbox. I got up and stood by the window, watching wistfully as the car merged with the traffic on the highway. Every morning cars pulled out, full of people on their way to excitement and joy. Well, maybe they were just on their way back to dull jobs or nagging mates, but anyway, the whole process had the tang of romance and adventure. I always felt a little prick of envy, watching a car leave–a prick heightened, no doubt, by the rarity of our opportunities to leave the motel.

It was a beautiful morning, clear and sunny–the kind of weather that made people stream to the beaches, avoiding the desert and Palm Springs and the Moonrise Motel. Long stretches of good weather, coming in the Spring when there could just as well be lots of bad weather, are disastrous for business. Desert motel owners are among the very few people in business, besides umbrella manufacturers and salesmen of anti-freeze mixtures, who consider good weather a tragedy.

Still standing at the window, I glanced around at the different garages. Across the driveway, there were still cars in 16 and 14; and at the end furthest from the highway, there were cars in front of two of the singles–9 and 7. Two salesmen, I recalled, had rented those cabins.

As I stood there, Veda came out of 11 with her bucket, her mop, and her basket. She headed for cabin 9. I started toward the door, although I knew there wouldn't be time to warn her of the obvious fact that that cabin was still occupied; but by the time I got to the door, she was talking to the salesman.

After a moment she went inside cabin 9, leaving her cleaning equipment outside.

I closed the door slowly, deep in thought. Could it be he just wanted her to remove his used towels, or do some minor cleaning job? Or help him pack his suitcase? Or–?

Half an hour later the salesman came in and tossed number 9 key on the desk.

"I'll remember this here place," he said, winking broadly. "This here is what I call deluxe accommodations."

I watched out the window again. Veda was cleaning cabin 8. When I thought she must be about through, I strolled out in that direction. In a few minutes she came swinging out of the cabin, tossed her basket down beside her bucket, and raised her hand to knock on the door of cabin 7.

"Just a minute," I said. "There's still someone in that cabin."

"I know there is; a man," she said, speaking with that peculiar upswing at the end of her words that is characteristic of many Mexicans. "I just thought I'd see if he ain't about ready to leave."

"Mm. And if he 'ain't' about ready–?"

She tossed her head. "Well, there ain't any law against a girl picking up a little extra money."

There was no law, either, against motel owners' cleaning up their own cabins, so for the rest of the week Grant and I went back to the old routine of mopping, dusting, stripping beds, and making them. Mrs. Clark's dark skin was a little pale when she reported for work the following Monday morning, but to us she looked positively beautiful.

Meetings of the Hotel and Motel Owners' Association of Banning took place every other week. The organization had accomplished a lot before it had been in existence long, erecting signs at strategic points along the highways, advertising in magazines and newspapers, and in general calling the attention of the public to Banning as a health resort, vacation spot, and a pleasant place to interrupt a trip for a night's pause. Grant and I attended most of the meetings together, leaving Mrs. Clark in charge of the motel and the children. One meeting night, though, when Mrs. Clark was expecting company and didn't want to leave home, I drove alone to the meeting. It was held this night at the Linda Vista Motel; and after the meeting had been opened and I had read the minutes of the previous meeting, I looked over the assembled group while a committee member made a rambling and boring report upon a related meeting he had attended. Mr. Featherbren, his tall form draped over a straight chair, caught my eye and winked at me. After a bad start and a few misunderstandings, we were now the best of friends.

I was surprised to see Mrs. Bradley huddled snugly in one of the chairs in front of the table at which Mr. Cruz, the president, and I sat. She had never appeared at any of the meetings; in fact, I had never seen her since the night of the first meeting, when she showed me the egg she said she was planning to hatch.

I learned later that when Mr. Renault of the Mountain Lodge Motel had stopped in, a little earlier than planned, at the Auto Haven to pick up Mr. Bradley, Mrs. Bradley, announcing that her husband was out of town and that she was going to the meeting in his stead, hopped into the car. Actually, though, her husband was taking a shower, and she had seized the opportunity to leave him home while she went to the meeting.

I didn't realize at the time how it happened that she was at the meeting, but I did know that she shouldn't be. As far as I knew, I was the only one present who knew of her eccentricity, and the fact made me feel an obligation to keep anyone else from detecting anything unusual about her.

The wizened, wrinkled little creature was almost buried in layer after layer of clothing that might have first been worn by Noah's wife. A black cloth over the top of her tiny head served as a hat, and her small eyes sparkled brightly as she glanced from me to Mr. Cruz to the speaker, and back to me again.

"Come on over here beside me, come on over!" she hissed, catching my eye and motioning toward the vacant chair on one side of her. The chair she was sitting in was at least ten feet from the table where I sat, and her stage whisper was clearly audible to everyone above the long-winded, dull report that was being given.

I shook my head reprovingly at her, frowned, and feigned an intense interest in the speaker. To my horror, I heard the old lady cackling with amusement. I was relieved when she turned her attention from me, but my relief lasted only for a moment. I noticed that she was whispering to Mr. Dale, the owner of the Cherry motel, who occupied the chair next to hers. Whatever she was whispering, I knew it would be something that shouldn't be heard. I was embarrassed at attracting so much attention to myself during a meeting, but I got up, as quietly as possible, and went to Mrs. Bradley. I told her, in a low voice, that I had to leave now, and that I'd like for her to come with me.

She got up with alacrity, her dark skirts falling in heavy layers down to her ankles. Just before stepping away from her chair she turned and whispered loudly to Mr. Dale, "I didn't finish telling you about my baby. It will be born any day now–and how, it will! You must come to see it. But I have to go now and find out how it's getting along–you see, I left it home in the oven!"

Mr. Dale was aghast.

I hustled Mrs. Bradley out, into the car, and back to the Auto Haven. I knew that Mr. Cruz would finish taking the minutes of the meeting for me, or arrange for someone else to do it. Getting the old lady away from the public, with its cruel curiosity, was more important than taking minutes, anyway. It was a warm night, and after I had seen Mrs. Bradley to her door I drove back toward the Moonrise Motel. I decided not to go back to the meeting; it was too nice out. The meeting would be half over by the time I could get back, anyway, and my reappearance would be anticlimactic.

I stuck my head in the door to tell Grant I had left the meeting early, and that I was going to water the lawn now. Grant was reading, and eating a graham cracker with sliced onion on it.

I was sprinkling the front island of grass when Grant came out and got into the car, calling to me that since I was home anyway, he was going to attend the last half of the meeting. I turned the nozzle of the hose so that the water came out in a steady stream. I flopped the stream up and down idly, trying to catch in it a reflection of the neon lights.

My mind drifted to an amusingly shocking window display I had seen at the opening of a new butcher shop downtown. On the opening day crowds had stood in front of the big window, gaping at the man inside who was operating a big, complicated machine. Into one end of the machine, up a little slanting ramp, walked small dogs–and out the opposite end of the machine popped neat, tautly-stuffed sausages.

The exit for the little dogs, and the point where meat was fed into the machine to be made into stuffed sausages, was concealed behind draperies. A few of the less imaginative people in the crowd were horrified and indignant.

Laughing over my recollection of the scene, I sat down on the edge of the grass island, adjusting the nozzle again until the water came out in a fine spray of mist.

All at once, I stopped laughing. I stood up gingerly. The back of my skirt was soaked. The water from the hose, coming out in a solid stream, had formed a huge puddle right in the spot where I had chosen to sit.

Just then a car drove into the driveway, stopping in front of the office, its merciless headlights on me.

I put the hose down and walked toward the car, keeping out of the beam of the headlights. With one hand behind me, I wrung some of the water out of my skirt, in what I hoped was an inconspicuous manner.

A very young, self-conscious couple sat in the car. They were too absorbed in their own embarrassment to notice mine. I guessed instantly that they were newlyweds.

The groom, a thin, blue-eyed fellow of about twenty, cleared his throat and asked, "Have you got a–can you put up me and my wife for the night?"

"I sure can. Would you like to take a look at the cabin?" In the glow reflected from the neon signs, I could see him blushing.

"Naw, naw, it'll be all right."

He climbed out of the car, and if he hadn't been in such a fog of bliss and confusion, would probably have wondered why I backed away from his presence as though he were royalty. I preceded him, backward, into the office, and ducked behind the desk.

When the young pair had gone to their cabin, I changed my dress. Going out to turn off the hose, I saw the groom driving away, and the bride standing in the doorway waving to him rather mournfully.

"Just one, now, remember," she called after him.

It was almost midnight when there came a timid tapping at our door. Grant, who had just returned from the motel owners' meeting, was in the bathroom getting ready for bed. I pulled my robe over my pajamas and went to the door. It was the bride.

"My husband hasn't come back," she said hesitantly. "He went out for a drink, to celebrate. I don't drink so I stayed home. I–I guess maybe he had more drinks than he should have. We–we just got married, this morning. I was just wondering–you haven't seen him anywhere around, have you?"

I assured the tall, pretty girl that I hadn't seen her husband. Her soft brown eyes filled with tears.

"He always drinks a little too much and then he can't find his way around very well. I know that's what happened tonight–he had too many drinks, and then he couldn't find his way back to me!"

The girl still stood there. "I wonder …" she said uncertainly.

"Yes?"

"Well, I've always lived with my family, and I've never spent a night alone in my life. I'm sure my husband just gave up looking for me, and rented a cabin somewhere else. I wonder–would it be asking too much–I mean, I'm really scared, back there alone. I looked outside the window toward the mountains, and it's so black and uncivilized out there. I even heard some wolves howling up there in the hills."

"Coyotes," I corrected.

"Well, that's almost as bad. Anyway, I'm not used to being alone at night. I wonder if–well, if you'd let me sleep on the floor in here with you tonight?"

When Grant came out of the bathroom I explained the situation to him, and he set up the rollaway bed in our living room for the bride to sleep on.

Toward morning I heard muffled sobbing, as she apparently held the pillow against her face to avoid making too much noise. I stirred, and she whispered, "Are you awake?"

When I whispered back that I was, she lost control of herself, and began to sob audibly.

"For months," she wailed, "I've been dreaming about my wedding night, imagining it, trying to picture how it would be, but–ooh!–I never thought it would be like this!"

In the morning the wandering groom came back to claim his bride, and the marriage probably got off to a good start in spite of that first minor catastrophe.

To avoid any possibility of Jill's becoming a dull girl, I frequently go shopping or visiting when things at the motel are well enough under control for Grant to manage without me. I don't like the idea of going places alone, but it's better than staying home night after night. When I go shopping, though, I am very glad that Grant cannot be with me. He seldom approves of the occasional frivolous purchases I make, and never makes any attempt to conceal his opinion from salespersons, customers, passersby, and whomever else it doesn't concern in the least. One time when a new little curio shop opened in Banning, I browsed happily and thoroughly through it, and finally selected a small item made of what looked like beautiful, glossy petrified wood. It was shaped like an hour glass, with mysterious strings and turrets. It was a bargain, I thought, at three dollars.

Grant didn't see it that way, though. "But what's it for?" he demanded. "What is it?"

I don't see how anyone with such a prosaic, practical nature can get much joy out of life.

I couldn't figure out, myself, what the thing was for, though, so I set it on top of the bookcase beside Mr. Hawkins' nude perfume atomizer.

"It's an ornament, of course," I told Grant haughtily.

Whenever I help out with cleaning the cabins, I have a faintly guilty feeling about being in the cabins in which someone is staying over. The presence of clothes and suitcases, the casual disarray of magazines and cosmetics make me feel as though I am entering a private dwelling in which I have no business to be. And I, like Mrs. Clark and Grant, have often thought about the precarious position we would be in if any of the stay-over guests should complain that possessions left in the cabin while they were gone had disappeared. We are more fortunate than most motel owners, in that we have a maid whose complete honesty is as stanch and unassailable a fact as the existence of the Pyramids. If a guest should tell us that something of his is missing, we never have to deal with the nagging possibility that the maid might have stolen it.

Besides the many trivial things that have been left in the cabins, there have been a few things of real value, including a wallet containing six hundred dollars (which Mrs. Clark turned in to us the instant she found it) and a silver fox coat. We are always glad, in one sense, when such valuable things are left behind; the owners, when they get them back, are so grateful and so impressed with our integrity that they will probably patronize our motel loyally for years to come. The woman who came feverishly back for the silver fox coat was so overwhelmed with gratitude that she promised Grant a job, at whatever time in the future he might need it, at her husband's sanitary belt factory. So in case we ever go broke in the motel business. Grant will be able to go right to work.

One of us accompanies the radio man–at his tactful insistence–when he goes around to take the quarters out of the coin boxes in the radios. It's a task that wastes time, but in a very enjoyable manner. He always wears his shirtsleeves so high that the hinges tattooed on the insides of his elbows are visible, and he talks continually. This time, as we made the rounds of the cabins, he was telling me about a motel in Palm Springs where he had installed some of his radios.

"Ya oughta see the way the dames run around, there in Palm Springs," he said, busily taking the back off a radio. "They wear things they call brassieres with their shorts, see, but it don't do no good. What you can't see sure ain't worth lookin' for. An' most the guys runnin' around in shorts, they're such fat slobs, they need brassieres worse'n the women do. I been around a lot, see, but damned if it don't embarrass me to go to Palm Springs!"

The wiry little man unlocked the coin box and extracted a handful of quarters, dropping them into the cloth sack he carried for the purpose.

"At least, they've given up that silly 'sun time' they tried out a while back. They tried to cheat people out of an extra hour, see, or maybe they was tryin' to give 'em an extra hour, I never figured it out, but anyway it didn't work, so they gave it up."

He pointed his finger at me abruptly, popping the knuckle of his thumb. "Got ya!" he chortled, when I jumped.

He started fitting the back of the radio into its proper place again.

"There's a trailer camp right behind this Palm Springs motel, see, the one where I've got my radios, an' it's full of all these ritzy guys and dames, see. In the morning when they get up–an' that ain't early–you oughta see 'em, lined up to go to the bathroom. They just stand there an' talk, see, an' sometimes they get so interested in what they're sayin', that they just keep on standin' there for a long time, talkin' and talkin'."

The radio man got into his car to go, after all of the money had been divided; I glanced at him, on my way back to the house, when he didn't start up his car immediately.

He had a small can of oil in his hand, and, apparently assiduous and intent, he was oiling the hinges in his elbows.