Bulge I see Before Me
October 4
Dinner at the Boss’ with Leopold Stokowski as guest of honor.
Stokowski, all pink and white, can be the most charming man in the world if he puts his mind to it, and he sure put his mind to it tonight. I sat at his right at dinner and basked in his special smiles. Charm oozed out of him like toothpaste out of a tube. Instant and unfailing as a lighter of my cigarettes he even agreed with me on a minor musical matter. I had to fight an urge to interrupt with, “Look, buddy, I’m the gal you had kicked off a train. Remember?”
Back in my Hearst reporting days Stokowski had the Santa Fe Chief stopped at a whistle-station in Iowa just to have me forcibly ejected. I had boarded the train, per instructions, to try and get the harassed maestro to comment on his reported engagement to Garbo. I guess I was a bloody nuisance.
October J Exactly six months to go. I’m beginning to avoid full length mirrors.
Is it a bulge I see before me? Did this arrive overnight, or have I been letting the zipper of my slacks slip down a half inch or so a day? Now, at any rate, it’s two and a half inches from closing. This makes the trousers pull up in front, so that the legs are short and show my socks, hill-billy fashion. Guess I’d better buy some maternity clothes. Then I can continue to fool-only who is there left to fool? Only my family and I keep getting letters that say, “When are you coming home, snooks? Everyone has been calling, and I’ve told them we expect you any day ….