It was five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon then; by nine o'clock that night Moe was gone, the new owner had taken over, and big hand-made signs tacked up all over the outside of the restaurant announced: "Opening Night. Everything on the House! Come in and have fun!"
People, in flocks and bevies and droves, were thronging into the place to see if the signs really meant what they said. Apparently they did, because the people who went in stayed in, and reinforcements kept pouring in behind them. Cars that were speeding along the highway stopped and spewed out occupants who only a few moments before had been intent upon faroff destinations. The habituees of the bar decided to see the fun, and the customers of all the surrounding motels, having heard rumors of the gala--and free--opening night, straggled toward the restaurant.
I straggled toward it myself, after getting the children to bed and extracting a martyred statement from Grant to the effect that nope, of course he wouldn't mind in the least if I wanted to leave him all alone and go away and have fun without him. For moral support, I joined Mr. and Mrs. D'Aura, a quarrelsome couple who were celebrating their tenth anniversary with a short vacation in Banning. They had been renting one of our cabins for three days. From their attitude toward one another, it was hard to understand why they considered an anniversary an occasion for a celebration.
They were a medium-sized, rather nondescript couple. His main claim to distinction was the fact that nine or ten long coarse black hairs grew out of the very tip of his nose; and the only things outstanding about her were that her eyes did not seem to focus correctly or in unison, and that she had extremely broad, well-padded hips.
The night they first rented the cabin, they were arguing about her figure while he signed the registration card. "I tell you I've lost ten pounds," she crackled.
"Yeah?" he asked, casting a skeptical glance over her. "Where?"
"If I knew where I lost it, it wouldn't be lost, would it?" she snapped. "At least that's what you always say when you've lost something."
He chortled while he finished filling out the registration card. "Witty, ain't she?" he asked me. Reflectively he pulled the hairs on the end of his nose while he searched his memory for his license number. "She ain't much to look at, but she's smart, and she's got a well-rounded personality." He laid the pen down and smacked her hard, in the region of her lower back. "And that ain't all she's got that's well-rounded, bless her heart!" he roared.
I wondered if she was going to let him get away with that. I should have known that, being a woman, she'd have the last public word. She did, and it was rather a subtle last word. "My attitude toward you," she said icily as they went out the door, "is that of nature toward a vacuum."
I caught up to them now as they were opening the door of the cafe.