Tonight I got a sniff of some real trouble ahead. Oh, I’ll get through it. Ye gods, what am I? And I’m not going to go racing into the bathtub with any goddam razor blades either. Nor am I sore at anybody. Because nothing even happened. But I’ve definitely got grounds for being depressed. Berry-berry and Echo are driving each other crazy. They’re in love.

Of course he hardly ever looks at her. And vice versa. They don’t even talk much, except in cases of politeness, like lighting cigarettes for her, etc.

I wouldn’t even have noticed that all this was going on between them—if it hadn’t been for what did not take place at the drive-in movie tonight, which as far as I’m concerned, completely puts the frosting on my little cake. The whole thing is tragic. I hope the full realization of it never really hits me. Thank God I’ve got a sense of humor.

But at the time, which lasted about three years (they make these endless movies nowadays), I was praying science would come up with some new shriveling-up powder that would make a person about the size of a snail. Because personally, my presence was about as useless as a brass monkey’s—well, I’ll be damned if I’m going to be shoved into that kind of cheap metaphor just because for the mere reason that it’s appropriate. However, tut-tut, there I was, sitting square in the middle, with Berry-berry on one side and Echo in the driver’s seat, and Vera Ralston and George Brent and Constance Bennett running in and out of jungles and hotel lobbies, like a bunch of neurotics, right in the middle of the Amazon.

Meanwhile there’s this big loud nothing going on back and forth between Berry-berry and Echo. Not a word. It was like a fuse burning and we all three sat there pretending we’d never even heard of dynamite, and stared at the screen. In the first place, the picture was about as entertaining as having a boil in your armpit. Because I, for one, have never heard about them having all these big flashy hotels in the middle of the Amazon before, and I get fed up with movies where people like Vera Ralston are always getting the short end of the stick. Which I think she got, but I’m not sure. And now I must admit they did have an airplane trip somewhere in the middle of this picture, so it’s just possible the goddam hotel was supposed to be in Paris or Baghdad or some other lousy place. Besides, I wasn’t paying any attention to the damn picture. How could I with Berry-berry’s arm in front of my face, reaching over to light about three cartons of cigarettes for Echo, who has never struck me as the helpless type, with her pocketbook full of wrenches. And you could hardly class Berry-berry as a real out-and-out cigarette-lighting type either. As a matter of fact, I get the impression that hordes of women have burnt their little pinkies lighting his for him. Well, to hell with it. I’m not sore about all this. I just don’t happen to get a thrill out of sitting there right under my very own nose being a fifth wheel, that’s all.