Anyway, the one crowning virtue of black widows is that they're as much afraid of people as people are of them; and I didn't think there was much danger that she'd ever be able to catch one. A glimpse of a child with a face apparently made of brown hair should have been enough to send any bug scurrying for cover, I thought. Donna's hair, although it was growing longer and thicker rapidly, was still too fine and soft to hold a bobby pin, or to submit itself to any kind of confinement that I had yet been able to discover. One day, though, I found that the front part of her hair--the part that screened her eyes from sight most of the time, the part that I had refused to trim into neat bangs--was long enough to braid. Since then she has had a prim little pigtail right in the middle of her forehead--drawn back and secured at the top of her head with a pert bow. She looks very chic now, and her nickname--Little Chief Hair-in-the-Face--has been tucked away into our mental chest of souvenirs.
Grant decided that a big window in the front of the office would do a lot to attract business. The south wall, facing the highway, was solid, and the occupants of cars coming from the east couldn't see the light inside the office until they had gone a little past, where they could see the window in the west wall above the driveway. For the daylight and early evening hours the proposed window wouldn't have much value, but Grant figured that the extra nighttime business it would bring would pay for it in a week's time. Around midnight or later, travelers hesitated to disturb motel owners unless they could see that they were up anyway. The advantage of a window would be that Grant would be able to lure customers in by sitting comfortably in the office reading a paper, instead of having to run outside whenever a slow car approached, so that its occupants would be sure to see him. One summer of that had been enough for him, and I knew exactly how he felt. The idea of a huge window facing the highway appealed to me, too; never again would I have to perch on top of a typewriter case set precariously on a chair, while with one eye I watched out the kitchen window for slow cars from the east, and with the other eye tried to read.
Grant hired a man to cut away the wall and put in the window. He helped the man and watched every move he made, and if ever again in the course of Grant's life it becomes necessary for a window to be installed in a building that belongs to him, I know that he will install it deftly, correctly, and without assistance.
It was like stepping straight from a one-room prison on a desert island, to the geographical center of Times Square. I had never realized how much had been going on, or that we had been missing so much. When the window was finished, we could stand at the office desk and see life whirling by us on wheels; we could see life pulsing and throbbing in the accidents, quarrels, and petty encounters that were an inevitable part of a fast highway neighborhood; we could see life a trifle in its cups, staggering in and out of the bar across the street. We could see busses, cars, motorcycles, trains (on the track parallel with the highway, a block away) trucks, highway maintenance equipment, bicycles, and an occasional weird departure from conventional methods of transportation such as a covered wagon drawn by burros. Horseback riders cantered or galloped past daily, and it was a common, pleasantly exhilarating thing to see the great planes drifting down toward the airport, outlined against the sky and then silhouetted against the crowding mountains.
Even from the living room we could get a clear view of what we had, except when we were outside, been missing. I had never realized how many east-bound cars that had exceeded the speed limit going through town, were stopped almost directly in front of the bar, or how many minor fights originated in the bar and continued after the participants were outside. Major fights, of course, we would have gone out to see anyway, as they would have been announced by the customary loud threats and insults. But now we were able to enjoy the pantomime of these quieter fights also, which we would have missed entirely if the office window hadn't been there. It was like a movie, where the spectator is safe and comfortable as he watches gunfire and robbery or people struggling against blinding snow. In the office, we were close enough to get a good view of what was going on, but far enough away to avoid any danger of connecting with a poorly aimed left. It was better than a movie in one sense: it was real, and the angry expressions on the faces of the performers weren't assumed for the sake of a camera. But there was one thing which even the lowiest B movie has that I missed--explanatory dialogue. It was maddening to watch the quarrelers gesticulate and utter tantalizingly elusive sentences which were, even when I opened the door of the office in hope of eavesdropping, swallowed up in the roar of traffic.
"Why don't you shout?" I wanted to prod them. "If you're really mad, then yell, so you can hear each other--and so I can hear you, too!"
I guess I ought to take up lip reading.
Business did make a noticeable upswing after the window was installed. It wasn't much of an inconvenience for one of us to be in the office, reading or writing, until quite late every night, and the very visible presence of either of us seemed to act as a magnet to undecided drivers.
Grant's idea factory, however, was still producing; it was never slowed down by success. "Why don't we get a big picture of a man," he suggested, "life size, and hang it behind the office desk once? People will see it from the highway, and I'll bet a horned toad they'll think it's a real man. We could have a little calendar at the bottom, as an excuse for hanging it there. After the people ring the bell and we get up and let them inside the office, they'll see their mistake--but by that time we'll have them, so it won't matter."
He mulled over that a while, grinning, and then came up with something even better.