In the car, and all the way back home, she kept saying, “Clinton, what impressed me was the being up there.” When we got back to the house, she stopped me on the front steps and said, “Clint, just for your information, that’s the best time I ever had in my life.” At lunch, she told Ralph and Annabel all about it, too.

Then all four of us went down to the basement because it’s cooler there in the afternoon. Besides, it’s the only place in the house that’s not fixed up all phony, which also helps. We started playing four-handed rummy with deuces wild, the only card game I can stand because when you lose you still get a big score. But all of a sudden I got this very strong urge to do something and get it over with. So I excused myself and came up here for a while and thought it over. I decided finally that whether or not it was a good idea was a small point. So I wrote this note to Echo, very simple, no signature, and put it on the front seat of her car. She’ll know who it’s from. Nothing but five words with a ball-point pen and no date even.

DEAR ECHO,

I love you.

Now she’s on her way back to Toledo. She’s probably read it already. Maybe not though. Maybe she won’t see it till tomorrow morning on the way to work. I wonder if it was a stupid thing to do?

Annabel and Ralph asked her to come back next weekend. Echo said she’d love to, but didn’t want to “wear out her welcome mat.” Then Ralph and Annabel laid on a lot of palaver and she said next weekend for certain.

But maybe I’ve thrown in the monkey wrench with that note. Maybe she’ll never come back because of me being only sixteen and her being thirty-one, etc., which slays me because what’s that got to do with it anyway?

Tomorrow I’m going to get a job, maybe at a car-wash place. Otherwise I may go crazy. Besides, what have I got to lose? I was going to kill myself anyway, so from now on it’s all gravy.

I wonder why I didn’t sign the goddam thing? I wish somebody’d kick my ass for me.

The next morning, carrying out his plan, Clinton made the rounds of several big downtown car-washing establishments. He offered a smiling and cheerful countenance to the managers of these places, and before noon one of them had put him to work. The place, called Frankie’s Two-Minute Auto Wash, ran a car through its garage on a conveyer belt, where it was worked on simultaneously by a crew of six men. Clinton’s job was to jump into a car and wash the insides of its windows while the other men scrubbed its exterior. It was hard work and he liked it.