I brought out our catalogue and handed it to her. She flipped through the unmentionably medical section, through the lingerie section, and finally pounced with triumph on a page that displayed brassieres. The color in her face deepened still more as she pointed to an illustration, at the bottom of the page, of bust pads.
"Have you found any of those, left in one of the cabins?" she asked.
I remembered vaguely that Mrs. Clark had mentioned, recently, finding a pair of "funny lookin' satiny things." I could well imagine that the robust cleaning woman would have had only a vague, thoroughly vicarious idea of their use.
When I had found the bust pads, which were in the linen closet in the stack of left-behind articles, and returned them to the woman, Mr. Buxley, the owner of the Westward Motel, stopped in to talk to Grant. I sat in the living room with them, working on a rag doll I was making for Donna's second birthday, and listening idly while they discussed business and advertising.
The conversation turned finally to short stops. Motel owners are so accustomed to short stops, and to discussing details about them, that they never consider mixed company a deterrent to such a conversation. Mr. Buxley, it seemed, had built up a small, substantial short stop trade. Far to the west of town, his motel offered the privacy and seclusion that most short stop customers wanted, and apparently the grapevine kept his lowered quickie rates on file.
Mr. Buxley was a short, plump, amiable man. Settled comfortably on the davenport, he polished his glasses with a hanky while he told us how his short stop customers, aware that they would get reduced rates if it were known that they wouldn't stay long, identified themselves.
"Most of 'em," he explained, "say they just want to clean up, and won't be there long. Some of 'em come right out and say they want a cabin for a couple of hours--how much?"
He held his glasses up, squinted through them critically, and huffed his warm breath onto them.
"Sometimes they come an' don't say anything. Maybe they don't want anyone to know what they're comin' for, maybe they just don't realize they'd get the cabin cheaper if I knew. I'd like to know so I can give 'em the reduced rate so they'll come back, but I don't dare give 'em the reduced rate if I'm not sure they'll leave, 'cause that might tie up a cabin all night for half price. Like one young fella last night, came in about ten, they sat out in the car for a few minutes before he came into the office, and when he came in he was all smeared with lipstick. Been drinkin' a little, too. Well, I figured sure that was a quickie, so I let 'em have the cabin cheap. Next morning they were still there, pulled out about noon, and I found out they were married and had a couple of kids with 'em. The kids had slept on the floor all night."
Mr. Buxley put his glasses back on. "I've got a new system I'm going to try, starting tonight," he said. "If I'm not sure if they want to stay all night or not, I'll just tell 'em I have two cabins left, but one's reserved for some people coming in at three a.m. An' I'll tell 'em they can have the cabin half price if they can manage to pull out that early. Otherwise they can have the other one, full price. That'll save their face in case they're only goin' to be there a little while and would like to do it cheap."