"You'll what?"
He must have remembered then that Moejy was quite a bit bigger than he was.
"Oh–nothing, I guess," he said, nibbling gum from his dirty fingers.
But I knew exactly how he felt about Moejy. I felt the same way, myself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"MADAME, I WONDER if you would be so gracious as to do me a favor?" Mr. Hawkins, coming through the office door, put his dark hat on quickly so that he could remove it in a sweeping, deferential gesture.
"Of course," I said automatically, looking up from my morning's bookkeeping. "That is, maybe," I added warily.
His brown eyes, as usual, were sparkling with a private amusement. He always gave the impression that he loved people, but couldn't resist a few chuckles at their expense.
"I fear the matter of the black rubber spider has caused you to mistrust me," he said. "Ah, madame, I apologize deeply if my little joke frightened you. Pray have the kindness to forget it long enough to do for me something for which both my fiancee and I will be grateful."
"Your fiancee!" I exclaimed. "You mean Miss Nestleburt has–you're going to be–"
"Yes, she has done me the great honor of consenting to become my wife. Our nuptials will take place a week from today, when my work in Palm Springs will be done. And today, if your husband can spare you, I would be most happy if you would come with me and help me select a small gift for my bride-to-be."
Grant was just finishing a late and solitary breakfast. (A fried egg, smothered in applesauce.) He could manage, he told me sleepily. David was in school and the baby was playing quietly in her playpen; and not many customers come in the morning as a rule. I got my coat and purse while Mr. Hawkins waited, and then he helped me gallantly into his green coupe.
We stopped at a drugstore on the corner of San Gorgonio Avenue, in the heart of Banning. A sweet smell, compounded of fragrant cosmetics and candy and soda fountain concoctions, met us as we went in.
The drugstore was crowded. Children and a few men were clustered around the comic books at the magazine stand; the seats in front of the soda fountain were full of workers having a morning coke or cup of coffee. Matrons and business men thronged the store, and the clerks were rushing about busily.
We strolled farther into the drugstore, Mr. Hawkins' broad shoulders clearing a path for us, and finally he touched my arm respectfully. He had stopped at a table laden with merchandise. The table held everything from toothbrushes to expensive cosmetic sets. Probably, I thought, he wanted my opinion on whether one of the cosmetic sets would be an appropriate gift.
I was standing there in the crowd, smiling amiably, when suddenly he picked up a toothbrush, waved it in the air, and bellowed,
"What–you mean to say you actually haven't brushed your teeth for three years? Well, COME ON, I'm going to buy you a toothbrush!" And he took me by the elbow and herded me ostentatiously through a staring, shocked, and slightly revolted crowd, to the nearest clerk.
He put some coins into her hand and said loudly, "Don't bother to wrap it up, I'm going to get her home and make her use this toothbrush right away. Did you ever hear of anyone going three years without brushing their teeth? Why, the Board of Health ought to get after people like that!"
I was scarlet with rage and mortification. I summoned up a sickly smile for the benefit of the curious eyes that were around me. But then those eyes all darted down toward my mouth, eager for a glimpse of my teeth. I pressed my lips tightly together–a move which, I realized later, must have convinced everyone that my teeth were covered with enough film to shoot another Gone With the Wind.
I stalked out of the drugstore, and Mr. Hawkins, the toothbrush in one hand, followed, shrieking with laughter.
I got into the car silently and grimly. When he had controlled his mirth enough to start the car I said with venom, "Now don't give me any of that 'I apologize deeply, madame!' stuff."
I glanced sidewise at him. His cheeks were still quivering, and wet with tears.
Chuckling intermittently, he drove the car to a candy store a few blocks away.
He got out and made a flourish as though to help me out of the car. I sat there and stared at him stonily.
"I'm not going into another store with you," I stated. "If you really want my advice on a gift, just bring it out here to the car and I'll tell you what I think about it. I'd even tell you what I think about you, if I weren't a lady."
"Madame, I assure you–" he protested. Then, his words apparently evoking the memory of my expression in the drug store, he turned away quickly. His shoulders were shaking as he went through the doorway of the candy store.
Presently, followed by an anxious salesgirl, he came out, carrying several attractive, cellophane-wrapped boxes. With a regal disdain that must have puzzled the salesgirl, I indicated that a box of chocolate covered dates was the choicest delicacy of the lot.
I was still in a bad mood that evening when I came back from cabin 15 and climbed up on the typewriter case on the kitchen chair, after sprinkling a clothesbasket full of clean clothes and getting them ready to iron. The difficulty of reading, and the headlights which clamored for my attention and turned out to belong to cars which were going so fast that it was obvious they weren't likely to stop, began to irritate me more than they ever had before.
Finally, after I had made three unsuccessful attempts to read one sentence through to the end, I snapped my book shut, sighed loudly for the benefit of Grant, who was reading on the davenport–and leaned hard, with violent disgust, against the back of the chair.
My disgust was much more violent when I found myself sprawling helplessly in the clothesbasket, like a huge turtle on its back. I had forgotten that the height of the typewriter case was enough to make the chair back–short enough to start with–practically nonexistent.
Grant came running to help me out of the clothesbasket. I looked at him sharply. Yes, he was smiling a little.
That settled it! The idea, him sitting and reading, and then laughing at me when I injured myself after working about fourteen hours in one stretch!
I'd fix him. I thanked him graciously for his help, smoothed the clothes in the basket, replaced the typewriter, and resumed my watch.
I glanced around at Grant, after a few minutes. He was immersed in his newspaper once more, and looked very comfortable.
I smiled diabolically. "Eep," I said.
Startled, he leaped up and dashed for the door. I chuckled as he hurried out to put on his act for a car that was going at least sixty miles an hour.
As soon as he returned, acknowledging defeat, and grew absorbed in his paper once more, I cried "Eep!" again. I kept that up until at last he came back wearily into the house and said,
"None of those cars were going slow! Are you getting so you can't tell a slow one from a fast one?"
"It's funny," I said, "but I've been noticing that they all begin to speed up just about the time you start out there."
He looked at me suspiciously and resumed his reading without saying anything. I was jubilant. It was illogical, of course, but somehow this was making up for what Mr. Hawkins had done to me.
Suddenly I noticed two cars creeping along the highway, one behind the other. They were past the Peacock and almost in front of Featherbrain's little motel.
This was too good to miss. Surely one of the two, at least, could be led in here.
"Eep! Two slow ones! Get out there!" I called excitedly to Grant.
For a moment he didn't move, and I was afraid I had cried "wolf!" (pronounced "eep!") too often. But he finally decided I was telling the truth, and hurried outside.
I had followed, to stand in the doorway between the living room and the office to watch. Those cars were going so slowly that they must be going to stop–either at Moe's restaurant or at whatever motel they might select.
Grant was outside, walking back toward the office, rustling his newspaper so the occupants of the cars would be sure to see him. The light of the neon "office" sign shown full on him. The first car turned into our driveway, its headlights silhouetting Grant's tall slender form. The car behind it had turned into Featherbrain's driveway.
I went into the kitchen and looked out the window. The car that had gone into Featherbrain's driveway, I saw now, was Featherbrain's own car. Mr. Featherbrain had stopped his car in his driveway and was getting out.
As soon as I realized he was heading for our place, I went back toward the office. Grant had finished renting a cabin to the driver of the car which had just come in, a man alone who hadn't cared to inspect the cabin before accepting it. The man had left, taking the key of his cabin, when Mr. Featherbrain came charging into the office. His ruddy chin was quivering with indignation above his long, skinny neck.
"That car oughta been mine!" he snarled. "If it hadn't a been for you and your durned old newspaper that anyone could see a mile away, they'd a come in my driveway! You allus been doin' that way, ewy evenin', I bet. No wonder I ain't been gettin' anybody. I oughta bust evvy bone in yer head!"
Grant pointed out logically that a man had a perfect right to stroll about on his own property, with or without a newspaper. He added that if, at any time, Mr. Featherbrain had an inclination to do likewise, he would have no objection whatever.
The old man stormed away without saying another word. And it was to be a long time before he would speak to either of us again.
After that, I felt a little guilty about pulling the customers in. Grant agreed with me that we shouldn't take Featherbrain's potential customers away from him; neither of us had looked at it in exactly this light before.
For two nights we let the slow cars approach unchallenged. A few of them came into our driveway; none at all went into Featherbrain's. The majority went at a turtle's pace past our place, undecided whether or not to stop, and ended by turning into one of the motels nearer town or continuing on through Banning.
After two nights we were convinced we weren't robbing Featherbrain of anything; no one stopped at his little Palace Motel anyway. And it was heartbreaking to let all those prospects go by without doing anything to bring them in. So Grant resumed his old tactics, and business improved again after its two-day slump within a slump.
Grant was full of plans for what we would do when we had saved a little money. We'd put in kitchens; we'd have a bigger, more eye-catching neon sign; we might make the back half acre into a deluxe trailer park. With all that and the repeat trade bound to come to a new motel that's clean and well-managed, we'd never suffer another summer slump like this one, he prophesied. And, knowing him and his ability to devise ways of doing what he wants done, so that the ultimate results on which he sets his mind are achieved, I knew that his prophecy was right.
Miss Nestleburr came into the office three days before the date set for the wedding, to pay up her rent for the remaining days.
"We got our license this morning," she told me tremulously, taking the bills I gave her in change, and tucking them into her purse–a new, shiny black purse that glittered against the pale blue of her suit. Her entire outfit was new, and in contrast to the dull, unnoticeable clothes she had always worn before. The fine network of wrinkles beneath her eyes was almost hidden by a well-applied layer of pancake makeup, and the whole office tingled with the scent of her perfume.
"I made a simply wonderful discovery while I was filling out the blank for the license," Miss Nestleburt said. "I happened to take my glasses off just before I started to write, and–" she paused impressively. "I don't need glasses at all!" I laughed. Everyone but Miss Nestleburt, apparently, had known that all along.
In the few days that intervened before the wedding, we had a lot of bad luck–so much, in fact, that I began to get discouraged.
"Maybe this motel is jinxed," I said to Grant. "Maybe we were never meant to be in the motel business."
First it was our electricity. A high truck, going to the parking lot directly behind Moe's restaurant next door, tore down the wires that led from the row of cabins beside the restaurant to the main lines. One whole side of our motel was without electricity, and therefore unrentable, for two days and two nights, until the understaffed electrical department could send some men out. And Grant had a battle on his hands to keep from being stuck with the expense. The truck driver who had done the damage was gone; if Moe knew who he was, he wouldn't admit it. Truck drivers gave him the better part of his income, and he didn't want to anger any of them.
Finally, on the grounds that the wires must have been strung dangerously low in the first place, Grant succeeded in making the electric company repair the damage free.
I hadn't worried that we would have to pay for repairing the wires, even when I knew that there was no trace of the truck that had done the damage. I knew Grant would work out some way to get them fixed, without its costing us a cent. I had no idea how he'd do it, but I knew he would do it.
Grant can always figure a way out of anything. He is so ingenious that I see no reason why, someday, I shouldn't be swathed in emeralds and diamonds. (None of these have materialized as yet, though.) For instance, one night when he ran out of gas, being able barely to coast into a station before the car stopped, he made the dismaying discovery that the station was closed. Refusing to be cast into the gloom that would have overcome an average person, he got out of the car and emptied into the gas tank the dregs of gasoline remaining in the hoses attached to each pump, amounts which totalled up to enough gas to get the car to a station where he could order, "Fill 'er up!"
On another occasion, after getting a flat tire when we were on an open stretch of highway near Hemet, he changed the tire for his spare, only to discover that there was no air in the spare. He had no pump. There was no civilization around, except for some old ramshackle barns near the highway, beside one of which was a sort of spray gun for painting. It was a huge container with a hose attached. The container was empty of paint, fortunately, and, after toying with the hose awhile, Grant discovered how to make it shoot a jet of air–air that would have been paint, if the container hadn't had the courtesy to be empty. Grant moved the limping car close to the paint sprayer, and after repeated efforts somehow succeeded in getting quite a bit of the squirted air into the soft tire.
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.