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knowledge. They worked in darkness of course, with pencil flashlights, and,
when everything was ready, say around two in the morning, they would quietly
carry everything through the door into the carport and pile it into the
station wagon. The last job would be to roll up the carpets and use them, the
reverse side up, as tarpaulins to cover the contents of the station wagon.
Then change the plates and softly away with their new bedroom suite all ready
to lay out in their unfurnished flat many miles away in another state!
Two or three hauls like that would also look after the living room and spare
bedroom, and they would be set up for life. If they had a garden, or a front
porch, a few midnight forays around the rich out-of-town "swimming-pool"
residences would take care of the outdoor furniture, children's heavy
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playthings, perhaps even the lawnmower and sprinklers.
Mrs. Phancey said that motels had no defense against this sort of attack.
Everything was screwed down that could be screwed down, and marked with the
name of the motel. The only hope was to smell the marauders when they
registered and then either turn them away or sit up all night with a shotgun.
In cities, motels had other problems prostitutes who set up shop, murderers
who left corpses in the shower, and occasional holdups for the money in the
cash register. But I was not to worry. Just call for Jed if I smelled trouble.
He could act real tough and he had a gun. And, with this cold comfort, I was
left to ponder on the darker side of the motel industry.
Of course it all turned out perfectly all right and the job was no problem. In
fact there was so little to do that I did rather wonder why the Phanceys had
bothered to take me on. But they were lazy, and it wasn't their money they
were paying me, and I guessed that part of the reason was that Jed thought he
had found himself an easy lay. But that also was no problem. I just had to
dodge his hands and snub him icily on an average of once a day and hook a
chair under the door-handle when I went to bed to defeat the pass-key he tried
on my second night.
We had a few overnighters in the first week, and I found that I was expected
to lend a hand with the housekeeping, but that too was all right with me, and
anyway the customers slacked off, until, after October tenth there wasn't a
single one.
Apparently October fifteenth is a kind of magical date in this particular
holiday world. Everything closes down on that day, except along the major
highways. It is supposed to be the beginning of winter. There is the hunting
season coming up, but the rich hunters have their own hunting clubs and camps
in the mountains, and the poor ones take their cars to one or another of the
picnic areas and climb up into the forests before dawn to get their deer.
Anyway, around October fifteenth the tourists disappear from the scene and
there is no more easy money to be made in the Adirondacks.
As closing day came nearer, there was a good deal of talk on the telephone
between the Phanceys and Mr. Sanguinetti in Troy, and on the eleventh Mrs.
Phancey told me casually that she and Jed would be leaving for Troy on the
thirteenth and would I mind staying in charge that night and handing over the
keys to Mr. Sanguinetti, who would be coming up finally to close the place
around noon on the fourteenth?
It seemed a vague sort of arrangement to leave an unknown girl in charge of
such a valuable property, but it was explained that the
Phanceys would be taking the cash and the register and the stock of food and
drinks with them, and all I had to do was switch off the lights and lock up
before I went to bed. Mr. Sanguinetti would be coming up with trucks for the
rest of the movables the next morning. Then I could be on my way. So I said
yes, that would be all right, and Mrs. Phancey beamed and said I was a very
good girl, but when I asked if she would give me a reference, she got cagey
and said she would have to leave that to Mr. Sanguinetti, but she would make a
point of telling him how helpful I had been.
So the last day was spent packing things into their station wagon until the
stores and cafeteria were empty of everything except plenty of bacon and eggs
and coffee and bread for me and for the truckers to eat when they came up.
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