Your happy vacation hideaway, tucked away in the heart of the majestic Shawanganunks. Golf! Tennis! Riding! Swimming (Two Pools)! Moonlight dancing! That grand Goudeket Cuisine (Dietary Laws Observed)! Under personal direction of Mrs. S. Goudeket.
However, you would have had trouble smoothing it out, because it was soaked; it had been thrown in the middle of both of Goudeket's Green Acres by a dissatisfied customer, raging at the malicious trick Mrs. Goudeket had played on her by causing it to rain for three consecutive days.
Mrs. Goudeket, wearing a set smile that was ghastly even in the candlelight, moved among her guests. She was arch and gay with some of them, apologetic and sympathetic with others, as circumstances indicated; but in her heart she was torn between rage and fear. Now it rains! For two months not a drop, so the grass is dying and the dug well for the swimming pools goes dry, and the guests complain, complain, complain, it's hotter than Avenue A, Mrs. Goudeket, and couldn't you air-condition a little, Mrs. Goudeket, and frankly, Mrs. Goudeket, what I wouldn't give to be back in our apartment on Eastern Parkway right now, we always get a breeze from the ocean. And now it comes down pouring, almost all of last week, and now it starts again so hard the lights go out and the phone goes out, and there's a hundred and sixty-five guests looking for something to do.
She told herself pridefully: Thank God Mr. Goudeket didn't have to put up with this.
Not that he could have handled it; he would have retreated to his room with a stack of Zionist journals, written letters to friends in Palestine, wistful letters saying that maybe next year they'd have enough for a winter cruise—
There had never been enough for a winter cruise; Mrs. Goudeket had efficiently seen to that. First things first. A new roof before a winter cruise to visit Palestine, new pine paneling in the recreation room, things you could lay your hand on. And Goudeket's Green Acres grew. Because of her.
But she had been kind and reasonable. She had let him send a hundred dollars a year for planting orange groves. She had never argued when he talked about retiring some day and going to Palestine—he always called it that, even after it was Israel—to live. She could have argued; she could have told him plenty. That this is America, that here you don't retire and doze in the sun, here you drive hard and get big.
Dave Wax came half-trotting through the dim rooms looking for her. He started to call to her, changed his mind and came close before he half-whispered. "It's the telephone, Mrs. Goudeket. It's working again!"
"Ah!" she exclaimed. "Why are you keeping it a secret? It's good news, let's tell everybody—they can use a little good news. You see—" She turned to the nearest couple—"they've fixed the telephone lines already. I bet they'll have the electricity on in ten minutes, you wait and see. Did you call up, Dave?"