Nancy Vogel - Four and Twenty Beds

"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 be able to share them with other people." I smiled vaguely.

"Dreams are important, you know," she said, lowering her voice mysteriously. "Much more important than most people realize. Anyone who can interpret them correctly can forecast coming events. I'm learning to interpret them."

"Oh, you read those dream books?" I asked, rinsing the soap off Donna's plump, firm little body and brushing the hair away from her eyes.

"Oh, no!" Miss Nesdeburt cried. "I was studying under Eimo, who is known as the famous somnologist, until I started getting this asthma. His method is entirely new. Why, he–"

"Tell me about your dream," I interposed hastily.

She clasped her little white hands. "Well, it was like most of my dreams. I was alone, walking through a big empty place, and then all of a sudden there were a lot of other people, couples, all around me, but they stayed just beyond me, and I couldn't reach them, no matter how I tried. Now, I'll interpret that for you, according to Elmo's teaching. It means that I'm going to make a trip soon and go where there'll be crowds of people!"

I don't pretend to be a dream interpreter, but her dream sounded to me more like the dream of a frustrated, man-starved old maid than anything else I could think of.

That line of thought prompted me to ask whether Mr. Hawkins had called on her the previous night.

Her blue eyes brightened, and she took off her glasses. She smiled, and her smile had lost its first timidity.

"Yes, he did," she confessed. "He's a very nice man, really, even if–well, he does have a strange sense of humor." She flushed a little, apparently remembering whatever it was he had done soon after they met, and I ruefully remembered the black spider. (I had left it in the cash drawer, but it didn't draw even a gasp from Grant. Reaching into the drawer for some money, he had said, "Well, look here once! Someone's left a fake spider in the drawer! Lucky I found it instead of you. You'd have been running yet.")

"I hope Mr. Hawkins was more gentlemanly last night," I said. I am, I must admit in all modesty, an expert at drawing forth information without appearing to pry. Actually, I employ this gift principally because a writer needs to know as much as possible of the thoughts and actions and experiences of other people. What many of my friends and relatives call my accursed curiosity has dug out for me plots which eventually, garnished a little, appear in magazines. I suppose I should confess that my curiosity isn't completely scientific, though; a fraction of it–(about nine-tenths) is just the plain old garden variety.

"Last night . . ." Miss Nestleburt began reminiscently, wheezing a little. "Well, I don't know whether you'd say he was gentlemanly or not. He–he brought me a large bag of tomatoes, which I thanked him for and put on the bed. Then, just as I was sitting down on a chair, he grabbed the bag and shoved it under me, like lightning. I couldn't help sitting on it and squashing the tomatoes."

Miss Nestleburt sighed and replaced her glasses. "He laughed and laughed, and then he said in that gallant way of his, 'I apologize deeply, madame! I had no idea you were going to sit in that particular chair! It was a most unfortunate coincidence!' And then, while I stood there dripping tomato juice, he started laughing again, and he laughed until the tears rolled down his face." The fine lines under Miss Nesdeburt's eyes crinkled with reluctant amusement.