Also Annabel is getting plenty fed up with me being sick and is trying to starve me out of here. Maybe if I sweat it out long enough, she’ll be so fed up with me my suicide will be kind of a relief. I think it has already reached such a pass, but a few more weeks will only improve the situation.

Another thing is this, suicide is naturally quite a step to take and I may as well be good and damn sure of myself, even though there is little doubt that fate is ordaining the thing. Of course if I end up in some lousy place like Hell, for instance, it would be a miserable mistake.

The thing I am gambling on is that after death people become automatically ghosts, and possess thereby complete freedom of movement and are invisible. ADVANTAGES: I could follow Berry-berry around from place to place, invisible from cops, modern pirates, and jujitsu experts that throw people out of night clubs. The whole idea has a thousand other advantages too numerous to list as well. But a few of the most colossal are as follows: no need to work at White Tower to save money for bus fare. If I want to ride a bus, okay. When not in the mood to eat, okay. I can then hear any conversation I want to without recourse to laundry chutes, holding a glass to the wall, or taking all kinds of risks of getting caught. Minor advantages include sitting in the Aloha Sweet Shop without being expected to pour Coca-Cola down my gullet by the quart. The only major snag I have not yet worked out is, can a ghost keep a notebook????

( Go easy on the question marks.)

Annabel came up for my tray about ten o’clock tonight. She lets them sit there for two or three hours to punish me for not getting out of bed. If things get much worse around here, I may revise the suicide plan and the leave the bathroom door stark wide open.

Naturally she doesn’t ever sit down and visit, not as a rule, except to drop these very subtle hints about what the Army does with goldbrickers, and how miserable it is to get bedsores.

Anyway, tonight we did have a regular conversation, which really threw her for a loop even though she tried to hide it. She had my tray in her hands and was opening the door with her toe when I said the following:

“Annabel, has any of our family ever been psychic?”

“Why of course,” she said. “For generations! Why?”

“Oh. Well that explains it.”

“What?”

“Why it is I’m in contact with Mrs. O’Brien, that’s all.”

“What do you mean, in contact?” she said. I knew I had her. She almost dropped the tray.

“Oh, it’s nothing important. I mean if it runs in the family, there’s nothing unusual about it.”

“Nonsense. I insist you tell me what you’re talking about.”