She shook her head. “No. I dealt directly with his brother, but they
look alike. Quontas is a little older, and fatter, and with a skinnier
face. You’ll see him soon.”
“...and so,” Meldon was saying, “acting is pretty much like any other
job, and jobs are hard to come upon. If there were too many shoemakers
in this town, and if you were a shoemaker, you’d go someplace else.
That’s the general idea....”
This guy Meldon seemed amiable enough, but he could have gone on all
day, and I was glad when his brother came out. Like Vera said, he was
shorter and fatter and he had a face even more elongated, like a big
yam.
He was preceded by a secretary. She must have been a secretary or she
wouldn’t have been in front of him with a pad and pencil in her hand,
but she would have made the girls at the old Minsky’s turn green with
envy. Vera looked her up and down and then sniffed.
“Cheap-looking hussy,” she observed.
Preoccupied, I said yeah. But I’ve been around, and this dame had it.
The girl’s voice could have got her a job in the top Broadway musical,
and even when she spoke it sounded like singing. “Mr. Quoron,” she
said, “is ready to see you. One at a time.”
Quontas Quoron bowed, and then he stepped back into his office, and the
secretary said:
“Who’s first?”
A little guy in one of the seats near the door got up, and a seal,
oinking like he had just seen a bathtub full of fish, followed him into
Quoron’s private office.
In less than a minute, the guy and the seal came out. Meldon was still
talking, droning on about how hard it was to get jobs, but no one was
listening. This time I didn’t even hear the seal oinking, because the
little guy said, “I got the job! I got the job!”
He must have been out of work even longer than me.
* * * * *
That went on for twenty minutes. Someone went inside, and a moment
later, he came out, smiling and nodding his head. No one was turned
down; everyone got a job.
Meldon was still talking when I walked past the secretary into his
brother’s office. Quontas Quoron sat at a big desk with a bottle of
liquor in front of him.
“Drink?” he said.
I nodded and he poured me a stiff one. I downed it fast and a hot dog
doesn’t exactly fill your stomach, so the liquor went to my head pretty
quick. And the odd part of it was that I had had a lot of drinks in
my day, but I couldn’t place this one. It wasn’t bourbon, but it was
more like bourbon than either Scotch or rye, and I shrugged. I wasn’t
going to be impolite, and maybe Quoron made home brew. I wouldn’t be
surprised at anything.
“What do you do?” he said.
“I sing. If you want. I can show you clippings from _Variations_. I’ve
been around, Mr. Quoron, and most of the reviews are good. If you want
I should sing now....”
I began to tune up my voice, but Quoron only looked irritated. “No,” he
said. “Please. It won’t be necessary.”
I shrugged. If he wanted to put me on without an audition, I wasn’t
going to argue.
Now he smiled, and his elongated head nodded up and down. “I’m sure
you’ll do,” he told me. “There’s no need for an--audition. There’s only
one thing....”
I frowned. There had to be a catch in all this. A guy just doesn’t
go around hiring everyone who comes looking for a job, placing them
without an audition. Not in these hard times.