Grant told me later that he entered the cabin, set down his cleaning
equipment, and went toward the bathroom to get the dirty towels. Just
as he reached there a woman backed out toward him, saying,
"Here, honey, fasten my brassiere, will you? Goodness, you made a
flying trip. I didn't expect you back so soon." Paralyzed, not knowing
what else to do, Grant numbly fastened the hooks of her brassiere. Then
he turned and bounded out of the place, gathering up his cleaning
equipment as he fled.
Occasionally, too, through some mixup it happens that we try to rent
the same cabin to two different groups of people. If several cars drive
in at once, whichever of us is taking care of them might, in the
confusion, forget to write down on the daily list that a certain cabin
is rented to a certain party. Then, later, finding the space still
blank after the cabin number on the list, one of us is apt to try to
give that cabin to someone else. What usually stops the error before it
has gone too far is the fact that the key for that cabin has, of
course, been given to the first customer, and its absence makes us
remember the unrecorded transaction. Sometimes, though, in such a case,
we pick up a master key, and take the prospective customer to look at a
cabin without noticing that the key to that cabin has been given out.
This results in a lot of confusion, needless to say, and to break
ourselves of the carelessness which brings it about, Grant and I have
worked out a system of penalizing each other for making the error of
trying to rent a cabin twice, or for laying the groundwork for the
other to make the error. If he is the guilty one, he has to wash the
dishes for one day; if I'm at fault, I have to mow the lawn the next
time it needs mowing.
One night after renting a cabin, Grant came out of the office and said,
"There's a couple that won't stay long, I'll bet a horned toad. We'll
be able to rent their cabin again in a couple of hours."
Sure enough, an hour later we saw their car, a cream-colored coupe,
grinding along the gravel and swinging into the line of cars on the
highway.
"I'm getting so I can spot a short stop pretty well," Grant bragged.
"Guess I'll go get the cabin cleaned up once so we can rent it again."
Five minutes later he came back, his skin flushed and his blue eyes
sheepish.
"The girl was still there," he said. "She was in bed. I guess the
fellow--maybe it's her husband after all--just went out to get a paper
or something. They seem to be planning on staying all night. She let
out a scream when she saw me, and I had a lot of explaining to do. I
had to pretend I got their cabin mixed up with another one. She would
have been insulted if I told her the real reason why I was there."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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