Guestward Ho! Read Free Page B

Bill," I said. "Oh, heh-heh, he's okay. You know—so-so."
    "Yeah, honey, I know. Prob'ly a salesman. You oughta see the John I drew—strickly from herring. Really Jo-Jo the Dogfaced Boy."
    "Well, give him my regards," I stammered and fled into the cold night.
    "But Bill," I kept saying as I gave my dusty hair the customary strokes with the brush, "this isn't just a motel, it's a real disorderly house."
    "Just your imagination," he said, opening the cat carriers and letting The Girls loose in our room. (And let me say that those cats were pretty shocked by the state of things, too.) "You've been reading too many lurid novels."
    "Don't talk to me about lurid novels," I said, wrapping my hairbrush in Kleenex before laying it down on the greasy, cigarette-scorched chest of drawers. "I've never read anything that's as lurid as this place."
    "Only because it hasn't been published yet," he said.
    "I may not know all about sin, but I do know all about other women and that wasn't Whistler's mother I saw in the shower room. She was the most obvious . . ."
    "Barbara," Bill said with that kindly superior male tone that simply makes my blood boil, "if I had your vivid imagination—your sense of the dramatic—I'd sit down and write a novel that would sell a million . . ."
    Bill’s literary career was interrupted by the crash of a bottle against the wall of the adjoining cubicle and the brassy voice of my recent acquaintance of the shower room shouting: "You lousy, good-for-nothing four-flusher! Bring a girl out here an' then welsh on . . ."
    Bill turned quite pale.
    "Shall I start writing the novel or will you?" I asked nastily. Then I got into bed and snapped off the light.
     
    What a night! The beds at Roach Haven may have been strong enough for two, but they were hardly wide enough for one. In addition to that, the mattress seemed to have been equipped with a ravine down the center so that Bill or I or both of us constantly rolled down into it. And in addition to all that, the nocturnal disturbances of Roach Haven were unbelievable. Cars kept streaming in at all hours. There was a steady roar of shrieks and shouts, soft moans and shrill giggles seeping through the cardboard walls. The conversations from the rooms on both the left and the right might have fascinated Kinsey or Krafft-Ebing, but they only kept me awake—and not because I wanted to eavesdrop.
    At just a little after three in the morning, when most of the occupants of Roach Haven had quieted down and I was just beginning to doze off, I felt a sudden weight on my stomach. "This is it," I said to myself. "We've been lured into this den of thieves and perverts to be done in. Whoever this is will rob Bill, rape me, and murder us both." I shut my eyes tight and tried to think of a short, all-inclusive prayer that would cover Bill, The Girls, and me and all of our past shortcomings, but before I could mumble a single word, I heard a soft little yowl. I opened my eyes and saw four glowing red eyes staring into mine. They belonged to The Girls.
    In my relief, I snapped on the light to embrace my darlings and just then I looked down on the stained cov erlet to discover that the two cats had deposited there a very large and very dead mouse.
    It is perhaps only fitting and proper for the mother of two young Siamese cats to make much over their first mouse. I wasn't able to make anything more than one blood-curdling shriek. Then I darted out of the bed, into my clothes, and out to the station wagon where I sat bolt upright, shuddering, for the rest of the night.
    Shortly after six o'clock, Bill and The Girls joined me. "Up early, aren't you?" Bill said, yawning.
    "With the birds!" I said with a big false smile.
    "Not a very good motel, was it?" he said, gingerly starting the car.
    "Not very," I said.
    The car coughed and sputtered, got its breath, and then lurched out of the cinders of Roach Haven.
     

3. Just the two of us
     
    We only began to cheer up when the station wagon