Four and Twenty Beds

by Nancy Casteel Vogel

"Well, that's just what Banning's got."

"Sure it has! But they don't know it. They take it for granted the nights in Banning are just as hot as nights on the desert. They look for 'air conditioning' signs, and they don't see one. We don't need air conditioning, but people don't realize it. If we'd get air conditioning once, and a big neon sign to let them know we've got it, they'd come pouring in here all summer long."

With business slowing down, we resumed our old practice of renting doubles as singles whenever it was necessary. If, after all our singles were gone, a couple appeared who wanted a single, we locked the back door of one of the doubles (so they wouldn't think they were getting twin beds for the price of a single, and use both beds!) and rented them the front room as a single. If it were a man alone, however, we didn't bother locking off the back room, as there wasn't much danger that one man would occupy more than one bed. Once, however, we got fooled; after renting a double cabin to a man alone, we found in the morning that both beds had been slept in. We never were able to decide which was more likely--that he had gotten up in the night to go to the bathroom and, becoming confused, had returned to the wrong bed; or that he was an exceptionally delicate and finicky person whose esthetic senses demanded a change of linen during the night.

We began getting "day sleepers" again--people who traveled the desert by night, to avoid the intense heat, and came into the motel at dawn or before to sleep in the daytime. We couldn't help laughing to ourselves whenever such customers had small children in the car. We knew, even if it hadn't occurred to them yet, that their children had been dozing in the car all night, and would be refreshed and ready to greet the new day with the leaps, yells, and fights that distinguish children from the young of any other species. Any sleeping the adults might accomplish during the daylight hours would be purely coincidental.

The bigger and healthier and noiser our own children grew, the more cramped and tiny our living quarters seemed. Expansion, though, appeared to be almost impossible. To expand in a northward direction, by cutting a door in the wall of our living room that would lead into cabin two, would be the simplest method of adding two rooms, but it would also be very expensive, chopping down our income by about one thirteenth. To expand south, to the front, would be illegal. All the buildings for about half a mile on each side of us were set back sixty feet from the highway, and none were permitted to be built closer to the highway. To go west would be to protrude into the wide, inviting driveway that was supposed to lure customers in, and would destroy the symmetry of the motel. To go east, toward Featherbren's motel, would be futile, since our land extended only four feet past the sides of the buildings. "There are just two directions left," Grant said. "Down, and up. A cellar, or a second story."

A second story seemed to be our best bet, but it would be expensive to add a couple of rooms upstairs, and it might necessitate strengthening the present ceiling and roof in order to make them support the burden. We decided to file the idea away in our minds for future consideration.

We alleviated the space situation to some extent, temporarily at least, by getting bunk beds for the children and moving our bed into their room. That left the living room as a living room, not a combination playroom, living room and bedroom. The bunk beds were along one wall and our bed was along the opposite wall, with the foot of it near the east window that overlooked Featherbren's new lawn and his row of oleanders. Between his cherished, thrice-daily watered lawn and our window was the four foot expanse of land that the building code demanded should be left at the sides of the land when the buildings were constructed.

Grant finally got around to carrying out a plan we had made whereby Donna wouldn't be underfoot all the time, and whereby she could go outside in the sunshine without constant supervision. He fenced the whole four foot strip, from under the bedroom window clear along the cabins from number 2 to 6. Out in the field behind the cabins, he let the four foot strip widen into a fenced yard about twenty feet square. Later, when Donna was big enough to need a larger yard, but not yet big enough to be trusted to run around loose, he would fence our entire field behind the cabins for the children to play in.

The biggest complication now, of course, was that there was no back door through which Donna could go into her four-foot runway. Grant could have taken out the east window and substituted a door for it, but it would have been a lot of work and expense.

"She can climb up on the foot of our bed," I suggested, "and then---"