In the morning we drove into the business district of Banning, about a mile from the Moonrise Motel, and went into Pillyer's cafe, for breakfast. Pillyer was a thin, stooped old man with an embittered expression and a few lonely hairs on a broad expanse of skull. "What's he mad about, Mama?" David whispered, when Pillyer had taken our orders and disappeared into the dim regions beyond the counter. "Probably because everyone calls him Pill," I ventured. Grant shifted Donna onto his other knee, feeling her diaper gingerly. He took a sip of water, and drummed his lean fingers on the counter. "How would you like to go into the motel business?" he asked me. I gasped for air. "I've been figuring," he said. "Why, I'll bet a horned toad the Moonrise takes in two thousand a month. Say they want fifty thousand for the place, it would just about pay itself off, interest and expenses and all, in three years. It sounds pretty good to me. What do you think--shall we look into it?" As I said, our going into the motel business was all Grant's idea. While Donna took her nap that afternoon, and David alternately dug in the gravel and drew out from his mouth for inspection a long string of gum, we lay in the sunshine on one of the green islands and talked feverishly. Grant had been wanting to get away from factory work; for a year he had been looking around in his spare time for a profitable business. He had wanted an automobile agency or a farm implement agency, but now he was willing to give up those plans in favor of getting a motel. Ever since our marriage six years ago we had saved our money; aside from our house and furniture, our only big expenses had been David, born five years ago, and Donna, born one year ago. We hoped that what we had saved--five thousand dollars--would be enough for a down payment on a motel. When I saw the manager of the motel digging weeds out of the gravel I sauntered up to him and engaged him in a long conversation that dealt with everything from black widow spiders to the cost of living, and worked itself slowly to the subject of motels. I told him frankly that we were thinking of going into the motel business, and asked if the Moonrise happened to be for sale. He was a handsome, stocky man whose face dripped water continually. Sweat rolled in oily beads from his eyebrows, from his chin, and from the end of his nose, and it ran in a rivulet down the vertical wrinkle above his nose. "Yes," he said, wiping the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. "We've just decided to put it up for sale. The income varies from fifteen hundred to over two thousand, depending on the season. Wonderful climate, here in the San Gorgonio Pass, even if it is a little windy sometimes. It's a new motel, six months old; all the furniture is maple, everything brand new. Sixty-seven thousand." I gulped. "And--how much down?" I asked timidly. "Thirty thousand." It was my turn to wipe away perspiration.