After two nights we were convinced we weren't robbing Featherbrain of anything; no one stopped at his little Palace Motel anyway. And it was heartbreaking to let all those prospects go by without doing anything to bring them in. So Grant resumed his old tactics, and business improved again after its two-day slump within a slump.
Grant was full of plans for what we would do when we had saved a little money. We'd put in kitchens; we'd have a bigger, more eye-catching neon sign; we might make the back half acre into a deluxe trailer park. With all that and the repeat trade bound to come to a new motel that's clean and well-managed, we'd never suffer another summer slump like this one, he prophesied. And, knowing him and his ability to devise ways of doing what he wants done, so that the ultimate results on which he sets his mind are achieved, I knew that his prophecy was right.
Miss Nestleburr came into the office three days before the date set for the wedding, to pay up her rent for the remaining days.
"We got our license this morning," she told me tremulously, taking the bills I gave her in change, and tucking them into her purse--a new, shiny black purse that glittered against the pale blue of her suit. Her entire outfit was new, and in contrast to the dull, unnoticeable clothes she had always worn before. The fine network of wrinkles beneath her eyes was almost hidden by a well-applied layer of pancake makeup, and the whole office tingled with the scent of her perfume.
"I made a simply wonderful discovery while I was filling out the blank for the license," Miss Nestleburt said. "I happened to take my glasses off just before I started to write, and--" she paused impressively. "I don't need glasses at all!" I laughed. Everyone but Miss Nestleburt, apparently, had known that all along.
In the few days that intervened before the wedding, we had a lot of bad luck--so much, in fact, that I began to get discouraged.
"Maybe this motel is jinxed," I said to Grant. "Maybe we were never meant to be in the motel business."
First it was our electricity. A high truck, going to the parking lot directly behind Moe's restaurant next door, tore down the wires that led from the row of cabins beside the restaurant to the main lines. One whole side of our motel was without electricity, and therefore unrentable, for two days and two nights, until the understaffed electrical department could send some men out. And Grant had a battle on his hands to keep from being stuck with the expense. The truck driver who had done the damage was gone; if Moe knew who he was, he wouldn't admit it. Truck drivers gave him the better part of his income, and he didn't want to anger any of them.
Finally, on the grounds that the wires must have been strung dangerously low in the first place, Grant succeeded in making the electric company repair the damage free.
I hadn't worried that we would have to pay for repairing the wires, even when I knew that there was no trace of the truck that had done the damage. I knew Grant would work out some way to get them fixed, without its costing us a cent. I had no idea how he'd do it, but I knew he would do it.