The woman was not appeased. Her gloomy eyes swept over the nearby "no vacancy" signs, visible from the office windows, and she sighed. "In Palm Springs, we had a potty, right outside da door," she stated.
Her husband came back to write his license number on the card, and she didn't say another word.
I felt a little uneasy after they had gone to their cabin. It is a policy of ours to give extra service and courtesy to every single customer, as the best insurance for our future business. Even to shoppers--those infuriatingly bland creatures who ascertain the price, inspect the cabin, and depart to look for something better--we are unfailingly polite.
The greatest strain on my politeness occurs when shoppers test the potential comfort of the bed by feeling it violently with their hands or by sitting on it and bouncing. To straighten up, before their eyes, the havoc they cause, would be too pointed a reproof; therefore, if they decide to "look around" a little, I must trot back later to the cabin to rearrange and smooth the bed.
One of my favorite daydreams is made up of the many satisfying retorts I could give to irritating customers and shoppers. When one of them is rude about our rates, it is an effort for me not to say something like "You'd better look for a cheaper place--a shack, in fact. You'd feel more at home there." But instead, habit and good sense force me to murmur something sweet and unresentful.
The only customers--or, rather, people--who unfailingly make Grant angry are those who use our driveway as a traffic circle. Several times a day a car from the east will swing into one of our driveways, making us think we have a prospect--only to swing out the other driveway and head back toward the east. Or a young fellow plummeting along the highway from the west will belatedly heed the words of Horace Greeley, and will splash gravel in all directions as he whirls into our driveway.
Such use of our driveways makes Grant seethe, but there doesn't seem to be anything he can do about it.
I knew that I could, if I wanted to, satisfy the strange longing of the woman who had just rented our last cabin. As I took the cover off the "no," fighting to keep my balance against the insistent thrust of the wind, I decided that I would do it.
I took Donna's little pink potty, and marched back toward their cabin. I set it just outside the door. I tapped on the door, and when the woman's voice called "Yes?" I answered, "Here's the potty you wanted!"
All evening I pondered the woman's strange whim, and in the morning when they brought the key into the office I waited for her to thank me for accommodating her. She didn't speak, so as they were about to go out the door I called, "Was everything satisfactory?"