Four and Twenty Beds

Nancy Vogel

Nancy Casteel Vogel

Four and Twenty Beds

CHAPTER ONE

ANYONE CAN MANAGE a motel successfully–anyone who can subsist on meals snatched a mouthful at a time, and requires no sleep; anyone who is a mechanic, gardener, publicity agent, handyman, psychologist, carpenter, and midwife combined; anyone who can cheerfully greet as "Mrs. Beaulabottom" each of the various women who accompanies salesman Mr. Beulabottom on his frequent trips; anyone who is gregarious to the point of welcoming the strangers who will witness, interrupt, and discuss the intimate details of his life.

I'm shy, poor at dealing with people, helpless, lazy, and definitely the clinging vine type. The extra-curricular activities of the average husband shock me. I like to eat leisurely meals, and to sleep nine or ten hours a night; and the prime requirement of my soul is privacy.

I love the motel business.

My husband, Grant, is the one who possesses the qualifications that make our partnership in this business a success. He is efficient, patient (if there is money in it) and ingenious–and buying a motel was his idea in the first place.

It was all very sudden.

For a month Los Angeles had been having the kind of weather the Chamber of Commerce members mention only in whispers. Grant and I and our two children had colds, already a month old, which the fog and dampness were cherishing lovingly. Memorial Day and a weekend had been courteous enough to get together and arrange a three-day holiday; and so we decided to take a trip to the desert.

We stopped in Banning, a little town on the edge of the Mojave desert which boasts both altitude (2350 feet) and dryness, and which is popular with sufferers from all kinds of bronchial and respiratory troubles. Banning is about ninety miles from Los Angeles, and has a population of under eight thousand. It has a lot of motels, and of these we selected the one we considered the most attractive, and engaged a cabin for the next three nights.

The Moonrise Motel was a big, new, sparkling-white, green-shuttered structure, shaped a little like a horseshoe with its open end toward the highway. Wide graveled driveways curved in front of the cabins and around three central islands of grass. The interior of our cabin–artistically plastered, carpeted, well-furnished, and with superlatively rich details–was in keeping with the exterior. From the beginning I was awed by the beauty and the size of the motel, but no premonitory tickle hinted to me the incredible fact that within two months it would be ours. After unloading the car, we put David and Donna into the back seat again and drove around idly exploring Banning. Trees and flowers flourished everywhere, and high, rocky, beautiful mountains towered close toward the north and south and more distantly in the east.

"Let's move to Banning," I said. "Perfect scenery, perfect climate–what more could we want?"

Grant looked at me. He has a habit of simply looking at me on the occasions when he thinks I am more stupid than usual–a look that any fair-minded judge would consider ample grounds for divorce. Fortunately his endearing qualities so far outweigh his annoying ones that I have never considered testing any judge's fair-mindedness. The last time Grant gave me that look was when I came home from an antique shop with five perfectly matched silver deer bookends. The deer were bent forward in attitudes of straining, so that when their antlered heads were placed against a row of books they appeared to be holding them up by sheer force of muscle.

"But why five bookends?" Grant had asked, exasperated.

He is very unimaginative and practical. There's no use in trying to explain to a person of his type what effect the contents of an antique shop can have on a susceptible browser. Besides, I always get too mad to say anything at all when he looks at me like that.

And now he was giving me that same look.

"I'll speak to the manager of General Motors about moving the Los Angeles factory to Bann