Grandma.
I'd have all the renting to do, I'd have to supervise and help the cleaning woman, on alternate days I'd have to do all the cleaning; I'd have the two children to take care of, I'd be completely responsible for anything that might go wrong with the motel. The lights might all go off again, or the plumbing might get stopped up. I had visions of careless customers tossing towels and hairbrushes blithely down the toilets.
Many authors mention, when they want to portray intense feeling, that their heroine views a certain happening with "mixed emotions." Well, my emotions as I watched Grant drive off the gravel onto the highway weren't mixed in the least. They were all the same. I was scared to death.
CHAPTER THREE
FORTUNATELY I HAD the children in bed, where I didn't have to worry about them, when the next customer drove in. He was a brisk-looking, gray-haired man in a new coupe.
Often during my life I had heard people speak of "buck fever." It had seemed strange to me that any hunter should, at his first sight of a deer, tremble and shiver and find his fingers too numb and unresponsive to pull the trigger.
Now, though, I understood. With no capable, confident husband to talk to the man, I would have to do it myself. My fingers were icy as I opened the door, and I forced my lips apart in what I hoped looked like a pleasant smile of greeting.
My knees were quivering (visibly, no doubt) and my voice, when I squeaked "hello" to the man, was so like the sound of a rusty hinge that I glanced around in surprise.
The tall, gray-haired man looked at me strangely and asked if I had a vacancy.
I throttled the moronic impulse to gibber "I feel like there's a great big one in my head!" and carefully mouthed the words I had rehearsed for such an emergency as this.
"Yes, I have," I chirped. "Would you care to see it?"
"Please," he replied, with a pained expression that seemed to say, "Well, what in hell do you think I'm here for?"
I led the way to one of the single cabins in the rear. He followed close behind me. It was about three hundred feet from the office to the single cabins--much too far for two people to walk together without saying a word. Coyotes were howling in the blackness of the hills, and I felt like howling with them.
I was hot with embarrassment as his footsteps padded along behind me. I cast about frantically in my mind for a topic of conversation. If only I had noticed the state on his car license I could ask him how the weather was where he came from. But I couldn't risk saying merely, "How's the weather where you came from?" He might sneer, "Same as it is here. I just came from the other side of town."
He tramped along close behind me, without saying a word. We still had more than half the distance to go to get to the cabin. Suddenly I had an idea. Maybe something in his costume, or an emblem or pin he might be wearing, would give me a topic for conversation. I turned and looked back at him, searching for pins or ornaments in his lapel and working slowly up to his face, which was ten or twelve inches higher than my own. The yard lights, bright lights on a pole on one of the grass islands, made the details of his clothing visible. Just as I got up to his eyes I was struck by his expression. He didn't say it, but I could literally feel him thinking it: "Well, what the hell are you staring at?"
We went the rest of the way in silence--still more of it. I sighed with relief as we reached the door of the single cabin--at last the ordeal was over.
And then I realized I had forgotten to bring the key!
His eyes were on me, impatient, obviously bored with my stupidity and slowness.
"I--I forgot the key. I'm very sorry. I'll go get it," I stammered.
Throwing dignity to the Banning breezes, I broke into a run as I headed back toward the office. Not only was I in a hurry to get away from the pitying contempt in his expression, but I was afraid that if he didn't get a little satisfaction soon he'd just get into his car and drive away. It would be terrible if I lost my first customer, especially after such a bad start. I'd never have the courage to tackle one again.
Seizing the master key out of the desk drawer, I rushed back and opened the door, snapping on the light and motioning him into the cabin.
His eyes flicked over the maple furniture, the red carpet, the Venetian blinds, and back to me.
"Well, the cabin's okay," he said.
We embarked on the trip back to the office, while I pondered over the inflection of his words.
He filled out the registration card, paid me four dollars, accepted the key from my frigid hand, and turned to give me one last contemptuous glance before he stepped out of the office.
I sank onto the davenport, weak with relief that my initiation into the horrors of cabin-renting was over.
I suppose the affliction from which I suffered would be called customerphobia. Such a word, if it existed, would be defined in the dictionary as "a morbid fear of customers." No doubt in extreme cases the victim would run shrieking at the sight of a customer. (As a matter of fact, I had had to exert a lot of self-control to keep from doing that very thing!) I grace the ailment by the coining of a name only because I discovered others can suffer from it too. Grandma, later, was to go through a violent attack of it, with much more disastrous results.
The next car that drove in that night disgorged a dark, trim looking man with big ears who demanded, "How mocha get two people?"
"Four dollars," I said.
"How mocha get three people, four people?"
"Five dollars and a half; six-fifty for four people," I said. "I wanna to buy it," the man declared.
"All right," I said indulgently. "Just fill out this registration card."
"No, no--no, no no!" he cried, shoving the registration card away in horror. "I means, I wanna to buy it, I wanna to buy it to belong to me. I got thirty thousand dollars down pay. You wanna to sell your motel?"
"Well," I hedged, "we hadn't really thought of selling. How much did you want to pay?"
He fingered one huge ear, and I saw the glitter of a diamond on his finger. "Let's let me look at it, first. Then I make you offer."
I showed some of the empty cabins to him and his wife, a meek little woman who clambered out of their car and trailed along after us. I led them out to the land behind the back row of courts. It was just a gigantic splotch of blackness at this time of night, but I described it to them. They were very much impressed.
When we were back in the office Mr. Gorvane--for he had introduced himself by now--said, "I been looking around, this is nicest court in Banning. I wanna it to belong to me. I offer you seventy-five thousand."
I gasped. By selling, we would make eleven and a half thousand dollars profit. That was a lot of money, especially considering the short length of time involved.
I promised him I would talk it over with my husband the following weekend. I took his address--he lived
