I was curious, though, to see whether she had put the key into the slot, so I stepped outside to look in the box. I was reaching for the safety pin so that I could let down the flap when I noticed something hanging from the pin. It was the woman's key!
There are people who can get into all kinds of difficulties over such an apparently harmless and simple an object as a key. Nearly every day some brilliant soul, after opening the door of his cabin and deposting one suitcase (and his key) inside, locks himself out when he starts back to get the rest of his belongings from his car. I have so thoroughly learned the expression that accompanies this predicament that when anyone wearing it comes into the office I hand him a master key before he speaks, and say "This key will open it."
Then there are the people who look at their key tags upside down. The key to cabin 2, upside down, can be mistaken for that of cabin 7, and vice versa; and, of course, 6 and 9 are always easy to confuse. Every once in a while a customer who has been assigned to cabin 7 comes to the office in a huff because he can't get into cabin 2.
The thirteen keys, one numbered for each cabin, were somehow the tangible symbol of our work. They were woven into the very fabric of our lives. Early in the morning, before daylight, Grant usually got up to see if anyone had left a key and checked out. If there were an empty cabin, he cleaned it up and rerented it.
It was the keys which absorbed Mrs. Clark's first attention every morning when she came to clean the cabins. A quick perusal of them told her which cabins were ready for her to go into. It was the remaining keys we surveyed each night as a quick way of knowing how many vacancies were left. Frequently a key that a customer had carried away by mistake would turn up in our post office box, having been dropped in "any mailbox" in accordance with instructions stamped on the metal tag attached.
And it was one early afternoon while I was hanging up the keys, after Mrs. Clark had finished cleaning the cabins and Grant had left to take her home, that there occurred one of the most frightening episodes of my motel career.
We kept the keys hanging on hooks on a large board placed under the office desk, where customers could not see them and where it was necessary to stoop only slightly, to slip one of them off its hook.
Just as I finished hanging the last key the office door opened and a pale, rabbit-like little man walked in. I smiled to myself at the whimsical notion that he seemed out of place in skin and cheap, striped shirt and trousers. He should have been clothed in soft white rabbit fur. He was probably, I thought, the type who would prove almost too timid to ask for a cabin.
I was to learn, though, that he wasn't too timid to ask for a great deal more than that.
"Yer husban' home, sis?" he squeaked, sounding like a smart-alecky, frightened child.