"Wall heaters are all right," she conceded.
"You mean you prefer electric heaters to gas?"
"No, gas is all right. Maybe I should say it's the cold weather I'm not crazy about. It made us stand too close to the heater. My husband scorched the seat of his pants tonight, and that wasn't enough to warn me, I had to go and do practically the same thing. I had a satin slip--y'know how they shrivel up if you try to iron them with your iron too hot? Well, I was standing close to the heater, with my back to it, when all of a sudden it felt like there was something crawling up my--well, my back. It was my slip, shrivelling all up short because I was so close to the heat. You should see it now--it looks like it was made out of crinkly crepe, with accordion pleats!"
She paused, aghast, and stared across me at Grant. The waitress had just brought him the tuna sandwich he had ordered, and he was lifting the top slice of bread and spooning sugar lavishly onto the tuna.
Her plump face looked shocked, but she glanced quickly away and began to talk politely about Palm Springs.
"Er--this sun time, y'know, that they have in Palm Springs--it's confusing, isn't it? Me, I think it should be the same time everywhere."
"It does seem silly for one little town to have its own time," I said.
"The whole idea," she went on, "is to save hours of daylight so the millionaires that go down there will have more time to spend their money. I guess they figure they're giving them more for their money that way too--they go down there for sunshine after all, and if daylight saving can give them more hours of sunshine . . ." her round, plump face looked suddenly perlexed. "How can it, though? How can it really make any difference? I've never been able to figure that out. Anyway, the only really nice thing about it is that the bars can stay open till three, instead of closing at two like the bars in Los Angeles, and around. Palm Springs time, three o'clock, that is--of course, y'know, that's really two, after all. I don't know who they're fooling, unless it's just themselves."
She sipped some of the coffee the waitress had brought her, made a wry face, and set the cup down.
"When we were in Palm Springs seeing about this job we're getting--I'm to be a maid at this resort, y'know, and he's to be a sort of handyman--we happened to see Van Johnson and Errol Flynn--together! Y'know, they're a couple of good looking boys. I wish I'd waited for something like that instead of grabbing the first man that asked me."