"Oh, those," I simpered, "they're nothing. We just have them at three in the afternoon on alternate Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays."
"Three o'clock?" Roszika wailed, looking at her solid diamond wrist watch, "Mein Gott!"
"Oh, they're nothing to get excited about," I said blithely. "Sometimes the force kills a few of our horses and poisons the food, but otherwise . . ."
"Mein Gott!" the other woman screeched. "Putzi, come! Allons!"
"The bill?" I said, placing myself squarely in the doorway and bringing forth their bill with a flourish.
"Wait, liebchen, I write a check," Maxl said, reaching for his fountain pen.
"Oh, it's so small, sir," I said. "Only forty dollars. Why don't you just pay cash to save time. It's very nearly three o'clock, you know."
"Mein Gott, yes, Maxl!" Roszika said in a panic. "Come! We meet Costanza in Malhuevo. She make us a little loan. Pay and come!"
In less time than it takes to tell, they were gone forever. After I'd laughed until the tears flowed, I began wondering idly about this place of Connie's named Malhuevo. I thought I knew all the resorts in New Mexico, smart, gay, inexpensive, and otherwise. I even got out a map and combed the state for such a place. None existed. Then it occurred to me that it was pidgin Spanish for "rotten egg." Well, four of the rottenest were certainly headed there.
Connie returned, doubled with laughter, to report that from a warm, dry table at El Nido she had observed the four of them over the rim of her cocktail glass streaking along the rainy highway at a good seventy miles per hour with the state police hot on their tail.
Connie was such fun to have around that I wished she could have stayed forever, and Connie obviously wished she could, too. But she had been invited to spend a few weeks with some people in Colorado Springs and the end of June found us both up in her room sipping while Connie packed. That evening we had what Connie called Surprise Night. And lavish surprises 'they were, too. She had remembered everyone in the house—even the other guests—with lovely, useful, and thoughtful gifts. "Just so you won't forget me," she said casually—as though anyone ever could.
But the biggest surprise of all came the following morning as I was seeing her to her car.
"Connie," I said sincerely, "we're going to miss you terribly. Please come back."
"Don't worry," she said. "I'll be back and next time I'll stay longer—maybe forever."
"Forever?" I asked
"Maybe," she said. She got into the big car and almost disappeared from view, she was that tiny.
"Well, any time you want to do that, Connie," I said, "you'll certainly be welcome. We'll even reduce the rates for a lifetime subscription. I was so lonely and bored and depressed around here," I said, feeling good and sorry for myself, "and then you checked in and it was like having New York and London and Paris and Rome under the same roof with me . . ."
"And Athens?"
"Yes, Miss Greece, and Athens. Your being here has made me so happy and yet so sort of homesick that . . ."
"Listen, Barbara," Connie said, starting up her motor with an impressive roar, "—and I'm not kidding—if you and Bill ever feel like selling this place and moving back East, I'll take it over from you lock, stock, and barrel. You name it. I'll pay it."
"Connie!” I said, too stunned to say anything more.
"Don't decide now. Think it over and let me know. I'll be seeing you." With that, she was off.
17. The bidding begins
I was so stunned by Connie's offer to take Rancho del Monte off our hands—and at a price—that I couldn't believe it. Then I got into a series of those involved mental processes where you do believe and then you don't believe, and while your hearing tells you one thing your reason tells you another thing and then another thing and then still another thing.
I got so tangled up with my own thinking on the subject that I finally had to put it all down on paper in more, or less numerical order just to keep things straight in my mind. I've torn up the paper long since, but it went something like this:
1. Connie is a dear, good, sweet, generous girl.
2. Connie was just making an impetuous gesture when she offered to buy the ranch.
3. Connie never kids. She knows her own mind and speaks it
4. Connie is lonely. She wants a place to roost where she can have something to occupy her brains and her talents; where she can put down roots.
5. Connie can afford to buy the Taj Mahal to plant her roots.
6. If so, why would Connie want to buy a place like this?
7. Connie displayed real interest and talent when it came to running the ranch.
8. Connie is fond of Bill and me and this is just her tactful way of dispensing charity.
9. Connie knows that Bill and I don't need charity—yet.
10. Connie should be committed to an institution if she really wants to buy our lease.
11. I should be committed to a ditto if don't sell.
12. What of Bill? Is it fair to him?
13. What of Connie? Is it fair to her?
14. What of me?
15. What the hell!
The sheet of paper didn't make any more sense than my own thinking had, so I carefully hid it and kept my own counsel. I would just wait, I decided, until Connie made the next move, and then I'd see exactly how serious she had actually been. Quite honestly, I couldn't really believe any woman would want to tie herself to running a guest ranch, least of all a social butterfly like Connie.
Didn't I say—and ever so originally—that it never rained but what it poured?
A week after Connie's bombshell had fallen, another one landed in the same place.
An elderly and rather stately Packard arrived early one afternoon to disgorge an elderly and rather stately woman. Rancho del Monte had been recommended to her by some people who had stayed there the summer before. No, she wasn't interested in becoming a guest. Yes, she did want to look the place over.
I disliked her on sight. I daren't name her and I don't actually think I could remember all of her names in their proper sequence. Rather than having nice, straightforward names like Mrs. John James Jones, this woman had a handle that sounded like the stops on a crosstown bus, and I can't honestly remember whether she called herself Mrs. Madison Park Lexington, 3rd, or Mrs. Lexington Park Madison, 5th, but she was such a tiresome old harridan that I ended up by referring to her almost exclusively as The Dreadnought.
Anyhow, The Dreadnought swept down on me like a hawk on a chicken yard. She was very conscious of names and addresses and did quite a bit of probing to find out just who my parents were and where they lived. I felt that she was not wholly pleased by my reply and I couldn't have cared less; no more than I cared who she was or where she lived or who her ancestors were or where they lived—all specific information she supplied during the first five minutes of her rather forceful conversation.
The Dreadnought was, she told me in no uncertain terms, descended from the greatest bloodlines America has ever known—like a race horse, which she closely resembled. Name your favorite aristocrat, East, West, North, South, and she was kissin' kin. As a child debutante—and a beauty, you may be sure—she married a man who was far beneath her. (Well, naturally he was fair beneath her; what mere male could compete with The Dreadnought?) As luck—his luck—would have it, he deserted her and ever since then she'd made her own way in life.
The Dreadnought had become the little breadwinner, apparently, through a series of red-hot deals in real estate, such as buying up old New England farms cheap, remodeling them, and selling them to city slickers as expensive country seats.
She'd taken little flyers in Maine boardinghouses, turning them into "quaint country inns" and selling at a profit. And the trail of artsy-craftsy gift shops and tea rooms she'd left behind her—at a profit—was stunning indeed.
"Of course you know the Chambered Nautilus Gift Shop in Woonahaupahasset, Vermont?" The Dreadnought said.
Of course I didn't.
No message.
"Or the Abide-With-Me Caravanserie in West Seminolahaha, Massachusetts, or the Hound and Horn Hostelry in Crotchet, Connecticut, or the Godawful House in Diathermy, Delaware?"
She obviously considered me a hopeless barbarian when I professed ignorance of any of these thriving establishments, but she wasn't sufficiently miffed to get in her car and go.
"This place has such possibilities, my dear," she said, looking over the rooms once more.
If there is any statement geared to make another woman's hackles rise, it's that one. Still, I was too fascinated to kick her out. Half my fascination was in wondering what she had planned to rechristen poor old Rancho del Monte, which had done all right, in its casual way, during both the Huntinghouse and Hooton tenancies. Another quarter of my fascination lay in wondering how The Dreadnought would, look if only she'd take the trouble to shave every day. And the last vestige of fascination was that somebody whom I didn't like and who didn't like me was seriously trying to take over our ranch.
Odiously affected as she was, The Dreadnought was no fool. When it came to cold cash, she had everything at the tips of her white gloves. Staff, capacity, horses, cost of food (when I told her what we spent on feeding each guest each day she looked at me with a pitying grimace), extras—she knew her business, all right.
"You have children, my dear?" she said.
"Not as yet," I said, "but my husband and I . . ."
"I didn't mean that, my dear, I meant do you take children?"
If there's anything I loathe it's to have people call me "my dear" when I'm neither dear nor theirs. "Sure," I said. "All we can get."
"A mistake," she sighed, shaking her head dolefully. "We must chance that."
"We?" I was becoming what my mother used to call "needlessly unpleasant." And I was loving it. But still I was fascinated.
"And do you take Chinese?"
"Chinese?" I said, somewhat awed.
"Chinese," The Dreadnought said most definitely.
"Well," I stammered, "I've met Madame Wellington Koo, but she's never evinced any interest in visiting us. Still, if any Chinese did want to . . ."
"My dear," she sniggered. "I don't mean real Chinese. I mean the . . . er . . . chosen people."
"You mean Jews?" I said, thinking back to the crazed old fanatic who'd been thrown out of our house.
"Mmmmm-hmmmm," she nodded sagely.
"Why, of course we do. Right now we have . . ."
"A terrible mistake, my dear. But we can mend that, too. With a good deal of work on my part, we could get nice people in here." There was something hypnotic about the complete and utter repulsiveness of this woman.
"Listen," I said, "I haven't said that we want to sell Rancho del Monte. I . . ."
"My dear," she said, "my People tell me that you do."
That floored me. I felt that the Afterworld was against me.
"Now, don't say a word, my dear." She was safe there. I couldn't. "You'll have lots of time—oodles of time," she added kittenishly "to think this over. I'll just give you a ting-a-ling [that's Dreadnoughtese for telephone call] from time to time to see how you feel about it. But to buy out your lease and option—and your good will, such as it is," she said scornfully, "I'll give you . . ." Then she said no more. Instead she dug a rather soiled visiting card out of her purse, wrote a figure on it, and handed it to me. "The walls have ears," she said with a horrid smirk. "Ta-ta, my dear!"
Then she reverted to her old, triple-tiresome, aristocratic self and began reeling off a list of the supposedly impressive names of people with whom she was to have tea that afternoon. In that vein she picked herself varicosely across the flagstones and into her car.
Transfixed, I looked at her card. On it was penciled a figure—a good-sized figure; not big enough, but sufficient to pay off our bills and set us up back in New York. But when I looked around the empty lounge I suddenly hated the thought of having somebody like The Dreadnought taking over what had been our home and reshaping what had been our pleasant, casual, cozy policy into something that would suit people just like her. In my mind's eye I could visualize our ranch renamed something like The Lilac Hacienda—Restricted (we did have lovely lilacs} and filled with prickly old women who would talk about their ancestors and undertip a staff of tea-room waitresses dressed in lilac rayon. But as repugnant as I found The Dreadnought, I was still intrigued to know that Bill and I owned something—or might one day own something—that other people wanted.
"Who was that old biddy?" Bill asked, nodding toward The Dreadnought's taillights as he came in from the corral. "I hope she isn't planning to stay with us."
"No," I said, crumpling tier card in my hand, "not with us.”
Along about the middle of June, when guests began to arrive—we hoped—in droves, Bill and I traditionally, moved from our winter quarters to the summer palace: our bunkhouse. There we lived as dormitory roommates with the wrangler and his partner. The bunkhouse was partitioned into rooms, but it might as well not have been since the walls were so thin and so punctured as to afford F.M. reception of all snores, grunts, groans, and private conversations and scenic views of the other occupants' underwear, pajamas, limbs, and dentures. Still, giving up our own room and bath meant that we could accommodate two more guests and that there would be an extra twenty dollars in the till for every day we suffered. I could suffer a lot for twenty dollars a day.
If you like nature, you'd love the bunkhouse, for there nature held sway in all its unbridled fury. In fact, we got a double dose of nature in the bunkhouse. If it was 90° outside, it was 100° in the bunkhouse. In the winter, if it was zero outside it was 10° below in the bunkhouse. Picturesquely constructed of logs and Scotch tape, the bunkhouse had a roof, walls, a floor, electric lights, and nothing else. There was no plumbing whatever and the bunkies had to queue up at a bathroom off the kitchen reserved just for them. As well as being partitioned by Swiss cheese the rooms were small, and when I say small I mean that once you got a double bed and a dresser into one of them, it was impossible for two people to stand in the available floor space. Bill and I had to dress and undress in shifts—one getting onto the bed and waiting patiently for the other to finish.
Flora and fauna abounded. In fact, flora kept growing up through the plank flooring while fauna, in the shape of squirrels and chipmunks, scampered over the roof and peered through the window, and pack rats and field mice gamboled gaily under the floor. The wooden walls harbored lots of little insect friends. Around the doors and windows fluttered a great variety of our feathered friends—the earliest-rising and loudest-singing god-damned birds you ever heard! And the reptile world was well represented by street gangs of friendly lizard types, as well as a harmless but menacing bull snake or two. I got quite fond of the lizards, but the snakes—no matter how harmless—and the spiders did absolutely nothing for me.
To make the wonders of nature even more evident and abundant, Bill and the wranglers took to rising at dawn and dashing mother-naked to the pool for a manly plunge au naturelle, while I modestly covered my eyes with a sleep mask and blindly batted at flies. But if Bill and the wranglers thought they went unobserved in their early-morning nudity, they were to be sorely disillusioned—or at least I was. One of our bird-watching guests was an old maid in the real comic-strip sense of the word and a fairly dour party she was, too. She took to rising at dawn and sallying forth with her binoculars and bird log, but I'm afraid the specimens she logged between the hours of six and six-thirty every morning could only be described as the "hairy-chested barebottom."
At the end of her stay she marched indignantly into the office and told me she'd been watching them every morning for two weeks, that she'd never been so insulted in her life, and that it was a disgrace to virtuous womanhood.
Uh-huh!
Nature, as I say, is a wonderful thing and I simply love it—but in its place. And its
place is not between my sheets, under my bed, in my dresser drawers, or inside my pumps. The Girls, however, adored this period of our lives, and just to prove how much they loved us and what self-reliant little huntresses they were, they brought in almost daily offerings of mangled mice, freshly slain lizards, and once a not-quite-dead bull snake, and laid them tenderly onto my bed.
My birthday always came during this, our sylvan period, and I felt ten years older every time it did. One summer when Margo Marsh, the sculptress, was in residence, we even managed a fairly large champagne party spang in the middle of the bed. The Girls had made it a red-letter day by bagging a rabbit for me—also on the bed—and I must say that Margo took it all in her stride and never batted an eye while we clinked glasses and made elaborate toasts to me until the dinner bell sounded.
During our summer idyl in the bunkhouse either The Dreadnought or "my People" made almost daily telephone calls and even a few visits. "My People," I discovered, consisted of The Dreadnought's business staff. There was a dim, hag-ridden son; a browbeaten daughter-in-law and a kind of squelched female cousin—all apparently entangled in The Dreadnought's web. Being weak and easily bullied themselves, they underwent agonies of embarrassment every time they were badgered into driving but to case the joint. I was rather miffed at these forced entrances into our house, but my wrath must have been nothing to encounter as compared to The Dreadnoughts', so I began to accept as natural little sight-seeing parties made up of the Dreadnought's People. They tiptoed around in a body, jotting down notes and murmuring in voices usually reserved for vital conversation in church. "I think she'd want blue." "Don't you think that she'd want the sofa against that wall?" "She said twelve baths."
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