Clinton continued with his job at Frankie’s Two-Minute Auto Wash. All in all, he was having a good summer, but his problems were these: how to persevere in his resolution to keep away from his notebook; and how to refrain from insinuating himself into the love affair between Berry-berry and Echo. He found that he was not actually jealous of Berry-berry, but of the secrets the two of them shared. He was forever creeping about the house, barefooted, spying on them and listening to their private conversations. If they were on the front porch, Clinton was at the side of the house, sitting in the bushes. If they were in the basement, he was crouching in the driveway outside the window, or sitting on the edge of the bathtub with his head inside the laundry chute. When he got hold of something worth listening to, he then had to summon all the powers of his will to restrain himself from writing it down. Often, when the lovers planned to drive off somewhere to be alone for an evening, they would find Clinton hanging about the car; and without ever asking to be included in the outing, he sometimes presented to them a demeanor so forlorn that Echo and Berry-berry, after a brief and whispered exchange among themselves, would insist that he come along. These occasions were usually painful from beginning to end; he knew they wanted to be alone, just the two of them, but he seldom found the strength to refuse.

In this way, Clinton’s problems fed one another and grew larger and larger until, at last, it occurred to him that if he returned to his notebook he might have greater success in keeping out of the way of the lovers.

[Clinton’s Notebook]

I hereby choose, of my own free will, to write things down again, whenever I goddam well feel like it. Why shouldn’t I? I went practically the whole entire summer without it, which proves I’m not some kind of a madman on the subject. Also, I certainly don’t want to turn out to be the kind of a person that makes a resolution, and then he’d rather kill himself than break it, which would be really nutty. Then it would be like the resolution was some terrible kind of a habit that you couldn’t get away from. In fact, the way I see it, resolutions can be very harmful to a person.