But the main point is, Berry-berry is in his room, in this house, at this exact second. Is putting on his PJ’s. Is going to go to sleep there in his bed. Berry-berry Williams is here in this house, is the point.

Not that he’ll stay or anything.

And my other main point is, Echo O’Brien is in the guest room, also about to go to sleep. Ralph and Annabel and Berry-berry and Echo O’Brien and me, Clinton Williams I. The place is loaded. We couldn’t sleep another person here tonight if we had to, unless we made beds on the floor or doubled up somehow. Ralph is peeing in the downstairs bathroom. Annabel’s in the upstairs one giving herself a cold-cream job. The rest of us are in our PJ’s. I may go around visiting various rooms before anybody turns out their lights. Christ, you’d think this was some kind of a regular goddam hotel. We’re jammed to the gills. Ralph flushed the toilet just now, and Annabel flew through the hall, so nobody’d get a squint at her without the paint. Which I don’t blame her. Because it helps. The point is, there is way too much going on around here for anybody to get it all down in a notebook or anything.

How it all happened was this, Berry-berry just plain followed me the hell in here this morning and— (What I should be doing right this minute is write down every word we talked about last night, because it could easily just slip away and I’d be caught short, not able to remember it later. Well, I’ll just have to trust my memory to get it all down. For what? I still don’t know for what. But I’ve got to.) —Anyway, he just plain walked in with me. Said he’d give me a hand with the apples. So I just said, Okay, if you want to. As if I didn’t give a fiddler’s fee one way or the other. So we put them in the kitchen, on the floor. And then Berry-berry went to the sink and started filling up the steam kettle.

I heard Ralph and Annabel moving around upstairs so I just glided up the stairs about a hundred miles an hour and told them for Christ sake to just come on down and have some coffee with us, but not make some big-ass fuss over Berry-berry, because everybody would only get nervous and pretty soon . . .

Clint, stop. Slow down for Christ sake. You want this to be a notebook full of crap? Okay, that’s better. Discipline, goddamit.