Four and Twenty Beds

The brothers confronted me together then, the first beaming with friendliness and a tail-wagging anxiety to please, the second smiling in the manner of a movie actor meeting the president of one of his fan clubs. They were almost identical in appearance, and looked as though they had been cut off a cough drop box.

There was a long, uncomfortable pause then, while we all tried to think of appropriate remarks. I felt an insane impulse to murmur, "What nice big beards you have," and an equally insane fear that they would reply "All the better to tickle you with, my dear."

At last I said lamely, "Well, I brought your pie tin back."

"But I must introduce you!" exclaimed the first brother, clapping his hands together with energy. "This here is the wife of the nice young man who stopped in and talked to us for awhile this afternoon. We are the Purtel brothers."

He leaped toward a chair, sat on it and bounded up. He made wild gestures of apology and self-reproach and indicated that I should sit on the chair.

The second brother said languidly, "His name is Purtel, if he so chooses. But my name is Purtel. Please remember that." Mr. Purtel laughed heartily, wrinkles fanning out from his eyes across his cheeks. He smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand.

"Usually it's women that change their names when they get married, but Si here changed his when he got married. Always before, he was satisfied with Purtel, but ever since he got married it's had to be Purtel. That's why our sign says "Purtel and Purtel" instead of "Purtel Brothers"–so people can pronounce it Purtel and Purtel."

"Purtel and Purtel," corrected the second brother, brushing a speck of something daintily off his shirt sleeve. He lit a cigarette, and I watched in fascination as the flame curled near his long black fire hazard.

Mr. Purtel disappeared into the rear part of the building again, but Mr. Purtel gave me a refund for the pie tin, and then asked me if I had any children.

"Yes, two," I told him. "A boy and a girl."

He reached into the show case. "Take this for the boy," he said, bringing out a huge sugary doughnut. "And this for the girl." The second gift was a luscious cream puff. My mind's eye presented me with a swift foreglimpse of Donna, her hair stuck into thick strands, her face covered by whipped cream and a blissful expression.

I told Grant that one of the brothers was nice, but that I didn't care much for the other. And until bedtime I wondered why Mr. Purtel's marriage had caused him to become dissatisfied with the name he had grown up with.

At last, just as I was getting into bed, I thought maybe I had it.

"I'll bet," I thought happily, "his wife's name is Myrtle."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

WHEN BUSINESS SLOWS down for Banning motels due to the scarcity of tourists, it naturally slows down for the service stations and highway restaurants as well. Moe, the beak-nosed owner of the cafe next door, was very annoyed because business was so seasonal, and he decided to sell his place and take his family back to Los Angeles, where the demand for restaurant meals was more the same all year around, and where it wasn't necessary to comb the want ads and employment agencies for enough help part of the time, and the rest of the time to fire perfectly good employees because there wasn't any work for them to do.

The day after Moe put up a big "For Sale by Owner" sign in front of his restaurant, he stopped in at the office, and told us the place was sold. He was holding the sign, which he had just taken down, in his thick fleshy hands.

"Sold it just like that!" he exclaimed. "Fellow stopped in an hour ago, looked it over, liked it, and gave me a check for the full down payment. Just one catch–he insists on taking over right away tonight, even though we won't put it in escrow until Monday. I said okay, I didn't want to louse up the deal over a little thing like that. So me and the wife's going on a weekend trip, and he can run the darn thing all by himself."

It was five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon then; by nine o'clock that night Moe was gone, the new owner had taken over, and big hand-made signs tacked up all over the outside of the restaurant announced: "Opening Night. Everything on the House! Come in and have fun!"

People, in flocks and bevies and droves, were thronging into the place to see if the signs really meant what they said. Apparently they did, because the people who went in stayed in, and reinforcements kept pouring in behind them. Cars that were speeding along the highway stopped and spewed out occupants who only a few moments before had been intent upon faroff destinations. The habituees of the bar decided to see the fun, and the customers of all the surrounding motels, having heard rumors of the gala–and free–opening night, straggled toward the restaurant.

I straggled toward it myself, after getting the children to bed and extracting a martyred statement from Grant to the effect that nope, of course he wouldn't mind in the least if I wanted to leave him all alone and go away and have fun without him. For moral support, I joined Mr. and Mrs. D'Aura, a quarrelsome couple who were celebrating their tenth anniversary with a short vacation in Banning. They had been renting one of our cabins for three days. From their attitude toward one another, it was hard to understand why they considered an anniversary an occasion for a celebration.

They were a medium-sized, rather nondescript couple. His main claim to distinction was the fact that nine or ten long coarse black hairs grew out of the very tip of his nose; and the only things outstanding about her were that her eyes did not seem to focus correctly or in unison, and that she had extremely broad, well-padded hips.

The night they first rented the cabin, they were arguing about her figure while he signed the registration card. "I tell you I've lost ten pounds," she crackled.

"Yeah?" he asked, casting a skeptical glance over her. "Where?"

"If I knew where I lost it, it wouldn't be lost, would it?" she snapped. "At least that's what you always say when you've lost something."

He chortled while he finished filling out the registration card. "Witty, ain't she?" he asked me. Reflectively he pulled the hairs on the end of his nose while he searched his memory for his license number. "She ain't much to look at, but she's smart, and she's got a well-rounded personality." He laid the pen down and smacked her hard, in the region of her lower back. "And that ain't all she's got that's well-rounded, bless her heart!" he roared.

I wondered if she was going to let him get away with that. I should have known that, being a woman, she'd have the last public word. She did, and it was rather a subtle last word. "My attitude toward you," she said icily as they went out the door, "is that of nature toward a vacuum."

I caught up to them now as they were opening the door of the cafe.

"You're certainly developing a beautiful head of skin," Mrs. D'Aura was saying scathingly to her husband just as I joined them.

"Bless her heart, she's clever, ain't she?" Mr. D'Aura asked me as we went in.

The air inside the restaurant was heavy with smoke and loud, hilarious conversation. Every available seat in the dining room and around the shining black counter was occupied by a thirsty, voracious human being; food and beer and wine were disappearing at such alarming rates that I wondered if the new owner wasn't regretting his impulse to throw an impromptu party.

I saw him standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen, beaming and genial, slapping waitresses and guests alike in hospitable good fellowship. His stance and expression proclaimed him to be the new owner, and he seemed to be having as good a time as any of his noisy guests. His plump face was red and his small eyes were shining. He saw me staring at him, and he waved at me over the sea of guzzling heads as though we were old friends.

Two men, making vulgar noises of satisfaction, left the restaurant, vacating two rickety chairs that were near the door. Mr. and Mrs. D'Aura slipped into the empty chairs and began to quarrel in low, intense voices.

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 t