"Call who, Mrs. Goudeket?"
"The electric company, Dave!" He shook his head. "Go call them! No, wait—better I'll call them myself." Let him talk to the guests a while, she told herself grimly. Perhaps when the lights were on again and things were back in their normal swing she would want to talk to her guests again. Or perhaps, she thought, hurrying across the dark and deserted entrance lobby, she would go up in her room and lock the door and pull the covers over her head, as she wanted to about once an hour from May through September of every year since Mr. Goudeket died.
The phone was working all right, but it wasn't working well. Mrs. Goudeket got the Hebertown operator and asked for the number of the power company's repair service, but there was so long a wait after that, filled with scratchings and squeals on the wire, that she began to think something had gone wrong. She pulled out the jack and tried again on another line.
All it took was waiting, it turned out. While she waited Mrs. Goudeket had plenty of time to think of the meaning of the long wait to get connected with the repair service. Not that that was any surprise, actually, because she had been through storms before in the majestic Shawanganunks; but always before it had been maybe a quick, violent thunderstorm coming up after a hot spell, and it was a lark for the guests because it was a change, or maybe a violent autumn storm when only a handful remained. But here were a hundred and sixty-five who had been penned in the hotel for days already and....
"Hello, hello?" She tried to hear the scratchy voice at the other end. "Can you hear me? This is Mrs. S. Goudeket, from Goudeket's Green Acres."
The scratchy voice was trying to say something, but she couldn't hear; evidently, though, they could hear her so she went right on: "Our electricity is off. Can you hear me? Our electricity has been off for two hours. They fixed the phone lines, why can't you people fix the power lines?" More scratchy sounds. Mrs. Goudeket listened to them—first casually, out of politeness, then very, very hard. Then there was a click.
Mrs. Goudeket looked thoughtfully at the switchboard for a moment.
This is new, she thought. Her mind was cold and alert; she knew she could not afford rage. The electric company here is not a good company, not like the wonderful Consolidated Edison in New York City. Here they overcharge you—by mistake, they say—and here the meter readers are underpaid and insolent, even with good customers like me. Their repair men are unshaven and lazy and when they finally get to you they stretch out a job forever so they don't have to hurry on to the next. But this is new, this hanging up. I'm no fool, not after thirty years in the resort business; I know their phone girls are under orders to kid the customers along, promise anything, not to hang up.
Something must be happening, something bad.
She walked slowly into the lobby, with a mechanical smile for each sullenly accusing guest. At the cigar stand she told little Mr. Semmel: "A pack of cigarettes. Any kind."