He offered a compromise. "We'll take turns once."
"All right. Me first!"
I hovered over the switches with loving indecision. Finally I pushed up the one on the extreme right.
The office light beamed suddenly on us from the ceiling. "Oh, that isn't fair!" I cried. "I didn't know that was the office light--I didn't--"
"You had your turn," Grant said firmly. He reached out one thin brown finger and flipped up the switch that was second from the left. I looked out the window woefully. Sure enough, he had lit up the "Moonrise Motel" part of the sign.
"You've been experimenting," I accused him. "You knew that was the right switch."
I should have realized he'd know all about the switches. He always investigates everything, and if there is something he doesn't know how to do, he learns how. He's a jack of all trades--and a master of all of them, too! Usually that makes me very proud of him, but right now I was just exasperated. "Now I'm going to turn on the 'vacancy' sign," I said, jabbing grimly at another switch.
Grant laughed. "You turned on the porch light outside the office door." He put his finger on a switch. "Now look out the window."
I looked out, and saw the green "vacancy" spring into brilliant being.
Furiously I flipped up the other switch. That, it developed, lit up the red "office" sign outside and above the office door.
It was a beautiful evening. After the hot day the breeze was cooling and refreshing. The branches of the slender little Chinese elms waved gently.
When I had put the children to bed Grant said, "It's too nice to be inside. Let's go outside once." We sat on the curb of the front island of grass and watched our sign proudly. The island in which the sign stood was planted in myrtle and bright Martha Washington geraniums, and now, with the reflection of the soft neon light on them, they were a mass of color.
Cars were thick in front of the cocktail lounge across the street. Every once in a while a car, leaving, would make a turn in the highway preparatory to going back to the business district, and we'd catch our breaths.
"I thought sure that one was coming in," Grant remarked, at intervals, about five times while we sat there. And then suddenly the neon lights flickered and went out, leaving a complete and utter blackness.
We sat there, horrified. Without a neon sign, there wasn't the slightest possibility that any of the cars on the highway would stop at our motel . . . indeed, their drivers couldn't possibly realize that there was a motel here at all.
By the light of a match. Grant called up the electricity company. No doubt twenty other people were calling them, too, but he wanted to be sure they'd have the lines repaired at once. I happened to remember that I had put some candles on one of the shelves under the kitchen sink. We lighted two candles, setting one in a saucer on the desk in the office, and the other in the living room.
The electricity was off until after eleven-thirty. It wasn't the whole city of Banning that was affected; just an area of about two blocks, starting with us and extending west, toward the business district. The Peacock's sign was blazing twice as brightly beside all that darkness, and every once in a while a car left the surge of traffic and slipped into the Peacock's driveway.
And then, at nearly midnight, our sign flashed on again. Of course all the other signs did too, but ours was the only one we saw, even though its modest, steady colors were put to shame by the flashing red, white and blue eye of the Winking Eye, the second motel to the west of us. The lights hadn't been on ten minutes when a sleek black sedan nosed into our driveway.
"A customer!" Grant exclaimed.
"You go, you go," I chattered, wondering how on earth I'd manage when he went back to Los Angeles and I'd have to overcome my shyness and talk to our customers myself.
But Grant was already approaching the driver.
I was sitting on the curb of the island, and I couldn't quite hear their voices. But after a few seconds of conversation the man got out of the car and followed Grant into one of the cabins. Then he went back with Grant into the office. "He's registering!" I thought with awe.
Presently the man came out of the office, got back into his car and drove into the garage adjoining the cabin he had looked at. I could see now that there were two people in the back seat.
I hurried into the office, where Grant, with a dazed expression, stood looking at a five dollar bill and a fifty-cent piece.
"Our first money from the motel," he said. "Shall we frame it?"
There was no door between the office and our living room. The whole interior of the cabin was lighted up by our neon sign. When we lay in bed we could see the desk in the office; and, conversely, people standing in the office would be able to see us.
Grant hung a filmy curtain over the doorway, fastening it at the top with thumb tacks. When the office light was on and the living room light was off, we discovered by experimentaion, it was possible to see from the living room into the office, but not the reverse.
That, I reflected as I lay in bed, would be very cozy. I'd be able to lie in bed and watch while people filled out registration cards (which would be a soothing agent to my rather abnormal curiosity)--but they wouldn't be able to see me. This seemed like the ultimate in privacy. And to have a real bed, a soft comfortable bed again, seemed the ultimate in luxury.
After we went to bed people began driving in, thick and fast. Grant had to hop out of bed so many times that finally he decided to stay up. He put on his robe and slippers and sat in a chair in the office doorway. I watched avidly as he rented cabins, admiring again the ease and sureness with which he did something he had never done before.
I had dozed off, in spite of the lumbering of trucks and the zipping of traffic along the highway. I felt someone shaking me. "Come and look once," Grant said.
I followed him sleepily and looked out the window where he pointed.
Our sign proclaimed, "No vacancy!"
"You mean they're all rented?" I cried.
"Every one. It's three o'clock; we rented them all in a little over three hours."
"How much did we take in?" I asked.
"Over sixty-five dollars," he said smugly. "I guess it's a good omen, the cabins being full the first night."
He got into bed and, with his customary annoying suddenness, fell asleep.
I was too excited to sleep. I padded happily around the room in my bare feet. I went into the children's bedroom to see if they were covered. The light from the highway, and the glow from neon signs, made the room so light that I could see them clearly.
David, as sound a sleeper as his daddy, was asleep and covered with a thin blanket. Donna was wide awake, motionless, her big blue eyes watching me fixedly behind the screen of hair that hung over her forehead, as I approached her crib. The traffic, the lack of her accustomed bedtime darkness, and the voices of people in the office, had apparently kept her awake ever since I put her to bed.
I patted her head, pulled the thin blanket snugly around her plump neck, and went back to bed. At five, awakened by the rumble of an unusually noisy truck, I went in again and looked at her. She was still gravely awake. I'm sure she didn't sleep at all that first night.
That ended her tendency to be a light sleeper, though. Since that first night she has slept as well as David.
Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, but the next day was one Sunday when rest was the most remote possibility in the world for us. The people in our cabins were checking out one after the other, leaving their keys in the doors of the cabins or coming into the office and tossing them on the desk. (One man, leaving early, had got Grant out of bed at five-thirty just to hand him a key!)
Now, after a happy, exciting night of renting cabins,