When I was still in the last stages of customerphobia, Grant was dealing with the people who stayed in our cabins, and their often outlandish requests, with ease and confidence. He had at his fingertips the answers to the amazing array of questions customers put to him, and the distances between most of the fairly well known cities in the country. If anyone who had rented a cabin wanted to know the distance to Los Angeles, Grant told him: eighty-nine miles. But if someone who hadn't yet registered wanted the same information, Grant would tell him that it was "almost a hundred miles" (merely another way of putting it) and the prospective customer would usually decide, since it was so far, he might as well stay for the night instead of driving on in.
Grant could describe the location of the nearest (or best-in-Banning) bar, restaurant, skating rink or lumber yard. He could get rid of the west-bound, cross-country truck drivers who, preparatory to going to the bar across the highway for a quick beer, parked their long, two-sectioned trucks so that the rear section blocked one of our two driveways. We had one driveway on each side of our sign; they led from the highway and were the initial source of all our income.
Getting rid of truck drivers was one thing I could never do; and there had been many occasions during the time Grant was still working at General Motors, and later, when he was away during the day on business, that it had been necessary for me to try. I had two approaches, one stern, the other sweet, which I varied. Actually, I guess I alternated them, on the theory that last time one hadn't worked, so this time I'd try the other! My stern approach called forth two general reactions on the part of the drivers, who were always about to descend from their puffing, steaming contraptions as I ran up. My tough expression and sharp, short order to the driver to get his truck away at once!–would bring forth (a) an amused "Look who's talkin'" smile, and a significant glance from the lofty perch of the truck seat, at my slender height of slightly over five feet; or (b) it would kindle an equally warm response, and I'd find myself showered by abuse, epithets, and threats from a mouth twisted frighteningly sidewise, full of tobacco juice, and topping off a frame composed of so much bulging muscle that I'd start back to the cabin without arguing.
My "sweet" approach was just as unsatisfying. There were two reactions to it, too, and neither resulted in the removal of the truck.
"I know you don't realize it," I'd say, my voice dripping saccharin, "but your truck is blocking our driveway. I wonder if you'd mind moving it?" And I'd smile and flutter my eyelashes.
Either the truck driver would exclaim something like, "Well, hi there, honey! You just forget about the truck and think about who's drivin' it. How about givin' me your phone number, honey, so's next time I come through here–"
Or else he'd reply in a falsetto imitation of my too-sweet voice, "Oh, dearie me, is that dreat big bad truck really block ing your itsy bitsy driveway? 'oo just stand there and pout at it while I go get me a itsy bitsy glass of beer."
Both these types of reply were quite beside the point. Truck drivers are one breed of men with whom I can't commune.
Grant, of course, never has any trouble with them. Whenever possible, I watch out the window as he runs up to whatever truck is the offender at the moment and speaks with the driver a few moments. He smiles, the driver waves a hand good naturedly, and the truck moves off. I have never been able to understand how he does it.
Grant is so irritatingly competent, in fact, that I can't help being secretly overjoyed about his one weak point. He has no sense of system or organization, and he can seldom make the money in the cash drawer, when he takes out the day's profits, add up to exactly the amount our penciled list, filled in customer by customer, says it should. When I was running the place alone it always balanced out to the penny, with the exception of that one morning when I found fifty cents too much. When Grant left General Motors and came to Banning, he began adding money to the cash drawer if there weren't enough small bills, taking money out of the drawer on any pretext, and in general getting things so confused that I wiped my hands of the whole affair.
"You handle the money," I said. "I'm tired of trying to keep it straight, with you dipping into it and adding to it all the time. From now on it's your job to make it come out right."
And from that day on I have never worried about the amount of money in the drawer.
Grant's lack of system concerning book-keeping and handling money is characteristic of his general lack of system in regard to everything; with so little sense of order and preciseness, it amazes me that he can always get so much accomplished, and so well. He's always starting something that he knows perfectly well he won't, due to other obligations, be able to finish. And then, of course, so that his initial effort wont be wasted, I have to stop whatever I'm doing and finish what he started. Perhaps, on second thought, I do understand how he gets so much accomplished.
When the broadfelt carpet in one of the rear single cabins–number 9–began to wear out, we bought a new one, a gorgeous thing with a swirling dark red pattern. We would have liked to add a final note of luxuriousness to the cabins by substituting lovely new carpeting for the plain red broadfelt in each–but that would have cost a penny that would be not only pretty, but downright beautiful.
When Grant tried to get the old carpeting up, he made the discovery that it had been glued to the cement floor. He would have left it there to serve as a pad for the new rug, but he wanted to keep the good portions of it to substitute for parts of the other carpets that were on the verge of looking too shabby to be in keeping with the rest of the furnishings.
The glue with which the old carpet had been secured to the floor must have been the strongest in the world. Or perhaps, as Grant suggested, the builders of the place had laid the carpet before the cement of the floor had dried, and the cement had hardened with a firm grip on the fabric of the rug.
Anyway, it took us, working together, about an hour to get each square of the old carpet up. Grant chopping at it from underneath with a sharp, knife-like tool while I pulled as hard as I could on the part that was loose, so that the free parts would be lifted out of the way and he could see in just what spots the rug was still attached to the floor.
My hands ached before I had been on the job long. "I wasn't raised to be a carpet yanker," I remarked at frequent intervals; but Grant, steaming and clenching his teeth, his brown hair hanging over his forehead like Donna's, wouldn't let me escape. "I'll never get the mmm thing finished," he grunted, "if you don't help me."
I tried standing while I pulled, and then sitting in various positions to relieve the strain on various parts of my body. I tried leaning backward and pulling with all my might, relaxing all the other muscles of my body and depending on the rug to hold me up. Of course the inevitable happened; Grant struck an area where the rug wasn't attached so firmly to the floor, the part I was holding yielded suddenly to my pulling, and I sprawled backward with my legs in the air.
When Grant was through laughing we began again. My thumbs were getting sore, and my whole hands ached. I glared out the open door of the cabin at a fat couple sunning themselves indolently on one of the grass islands. That's what's wrong with this country, I thought darkly–too many loafers.
When at last the rug was completely pried and hacked loose, Grant began cutting the new rug to fit the room, while I went up front and administered poison verbally to Moejy, who had brought an armful of glass jars from his father's restaurant next door and was breaking them on our sidewalk. Moejy, in my opinion, had only one redeeming feature: a tendency to spend most of his time at the Auto Haven Motel half a mile west of us. The Bradleys, who owned the court, must certainly be lovers of childhood in general–and in the raw–to be able to endure him.
Miss Nesdeburt fluttered into the office the next morning before I was through bathing the baby. Grant had started cleaning cabins.
I could tell she was in a talkative mood, so I invited her to sit in the kitchen while I scrubbed Donna.
"I had the nicest dream last night," Miss Nesdeburt began. "And I believe people should share their dreams, don't you? I dream nearly every night, and I have a little book I write the dreams in. I do it the first thing when I wake up, because you know how dreams slip out of a person's mind. And if I forgot them I wouldn't