Ambrose Carver, freshly shaved and barbered, sat in the Carlin
living-room and talked about Ambrose Carver. Tom Carlin held a cold pipe
between his teeth; Kate Carlin was quiet, non-committal. Joe thought in
dismay: “Dad won’t sign.”
“Fifty per cent of all Joe earns until he’s twenty-one,” Tom Carlin said
bluntly, “seems like a lot of money.”
“Mr. Carlin,” Amby said earnestly, “you’re looking at this from the
wrong angle. I don’t mean I get Joe four stars overnight. I’m good; I
admit it. But I’m not that good. It takes time. Until I get Joe some
contracts, I make nothing. Does anybody work for you for nothing?”
“Hardly.”
“In show business the answer is ‘Yes.’ Show business is different. It
pays off different. You see, Mrs. Carlin?”
Kate Carlin drawled: “Are you worth fifty per cent?”
“Ah!” said Amby briskly. “Now we are getting places. Without an agent
what happens to Joe? Who knows him? Is there any producer or casting
director who says: ‘Carlin was good in so-and-so; call him in’? No,
because Joe has never had a part. So he has to make the rounds of the
stations, day after day, round and round. He is not a radio actor; he is
a race-horse. But when I am his agent, I do the round and round. I keep
the directors remembering there is a Joe Carlin.”
Joe counted seconds of silence.
“You may have something there,” Kate Carlin admitted.
“Ambrose Carver always has something there. Take another angle. Without
an agent Joe tries to sell himself where there is no market. One station
is foreign language; another has mostly spot commercials and recordings.
There’s nothing for Joe at these stations, but he doesn’t know it. He
finds it out in time. I save him all that time. For fifty per cent he
buys everything it has taken me years to learn. I save him from
mistakes.”
The silence lingered.
Amby asked shrewdly: “Would it be worth money to be saved from mistakes
in your business, Mr. Carlin?”
Tom Carlin cleared his throat. Joe waited anxiously. Nothing was said.
“Another mistake,” Amby went on, “is to think because Joe has a good
audition he’s a radio actor. He has to learn. Will a station teach him?
No. Not after he’s sixteen; they say eighteen is too late. They haven’t
time. So who rehearses him? I do. I worry for him, and think for him,
and plan for him. You know what radio stars get? You know what is paid
for the Eddie Cantor show?”
“Don’t give Joe those ideas,” Mrs. Carlin said sharply.
“Mustn’t he have a beginning?” Amby asked. He walked to the table and
laid a fountain pen beside the contracts.
Tom Carlin glanced at his wife. Whatever he saw there sent his glance to
his son’s face. Slowly, after a moment, he picked up the pen.
“Here,” said Amby expansively, “is where we start to go.” He folded one
copy of the contract. Joe went with him to the porch.
Tom Carlin spoke in an undertone. “Why did you want me to sign?”
“You saw Joe’s face?” Kate Carlin was quiet. “He won’t wake up to-morrow
thinking we hanged him.”
“A successful agent couldn’t waste time with buses. He’d have a car.”
“Carver hasn’t fooled me, even though he’s dazzled Joe.”
“But if he’s a bag of wind—”
“It’s a short contract. When it terminates, Joe will still be Joe. Is
anything more important than that?”
Flushed and jubilant, Joe returned from the porch. “Thank you, Dad.”
Half-way up the stairs he paused. “Amby wants me to report at his office
at ten to-morrow for a rehearsal.”
“Where is his office?” Mr. Carlin asked.
“McCoy Building.” Upstairs a door closed.
“One of the old, run-down rat-trap buildings,” the man said slowly.
But to Joe Carlin there was nothing dismaying about the McCoy Building.
The elevator creaked and groaned and finally reached the sixth floor.
Down at the end of a drab hall pale sunlight came in through a smudged
window, and motes of dust danced in the pallid shaft of light. To Joe,
the dust was a thrilling reminder of the dusty wings, and the dusty
drops and props of the stage of Northend High. Even the mustiness of the
hall brought memories of the damp brick wall at the rear of the high
school stage. Joe thought in fascination: “It smells the way an agent’s
building ought to smell—a stagey, theater smell.”
He tried the door of 615. The door was locked. He banged on the panels.
An elevator boy in shirt sleeves left his car and came to the bend in
the hall. “You looking for Carver? He telephoned downstairs to wait.”
Joe waited. The wait dragged. He paced the dusty hall, forgot himself
and leaned against the dusty wall, tried to see out through the dusty
window. At noon the elevator door complained harshly and Amby Carver
arrived.
“Sorry, Joe. Got tied up. Waiting long?”
“Two hours.”
“Took me more than an hour to get John Royal long distance. You
know—Royal, N.B.C., New York. National Broadcasting. Great friend of
mine. Interested in one of my singers.” A key turned in the lock of 615.
“What singer?” Joe asked eagerly.
Amby shook his head. “No can do, Joe. My pet superstition. Had a
baritone last year; thought I had him in the bag for five hundred
dollars a week; talked about it. Contract fell right out of the bag.
Don’t mention names anymore until a contract’s signed.”
The office was furnished with the bare essentials—desk, typewriter,
chairs, and a filing cabinet that looked second-hand. But what caught
and held Joe’s attention raptly was a microphone in a corner, probably
discarded by some studio.
“Bring it out,” said Amby. “I keep it around to get young talent
acclimated. Let them be around a mike long enough, even a dead mike, and
they’ll never get mike fright. Just one of my little tricks.” There had
been several letters pushed under the office door. The agent opened them
and became absorbed.
Joe lifted the microphone to the center of the floor. The instrument was
unwired, unconnected, dead; and yet the feel of it, the look of it, sent
electric currents through his nerves. He lost himself completely in its
magic spell, and Amby’s shabby office faded and was gone. He began to
whisper bits from _The Prince Laughs Last_, feeling the part again as he
had felt it on the stage of Northend High. A door slammed somewhere on
the floor and Joe came back to the McCoy Building with a start. Amby,
delicately fingering the suspicion of a black mustache, was staring at
him.
“I’m coming in a door,” Amby said without preamble. “You greet me as
though you’re overjoyed to see me. All right; let me hear you. Remember,
you’re overjoyed.”
Joe tried to call up a mental picture of the scene. He cried with
ringing gaiety: “Amby! If I’m not glad—”
“No, no,” said Amby. “Just ‘Hello.’ And into the mike. You got to talk,
talk into the mike so that it becomes instinct.”
Joe tried again.
Amby’s finger tapped his upper lip. “Not quite overjoyed—just glad. You
do not like me when I come in. Give me a hate ‘Hello.’”
Joe spoke a thin, cold: “Hello.”
“Better. If you speak ten words and two are sour, you still have eight
words to put you over. But with only one word, it must be everything on
that one word. When you can do it with one word, you are acting. Hate,
scorn, love, doubt, fear: you do it all with one word. ‘Hello.’ You get
me, Joe?”
This, Joe thought, was real coaching, coaching that went tirelessly into
minute details, the professional stuff. He said: “I get it.”
“Good.” Amby rubbed his hands together briskly. “You stand right there
at the mike and practise. Hello, hello, hello. All kinds of
hellos—pride, joy, dismay, surprise. Emotion all wrapped up in one word,
Joe. I’ll be back.”
Joe talked into a dead mike in an empty room. By and by it grew on him
that his stomach was empty. But if he left, the door would close on a
snap latch. Suppose he couldn’t get back? He tried for a greeting of
gaiety, the light touch. “Hello?” The steady echo of his voice in the
strange, empty room became appalling. Hunger and thirst finally drove
him out. He picked up a sandwich and a cup of coffee at the soda
fountain on the first floor of Munson’s department store.
Amby telephoned the Carlin home at six o’clock. “What time did you
leave?”
Joe’s answer was short. “Quarter of four.”
“Sore, Joe? Listen. Don’t get touchy on what you don’t understand.
Staying all alone at a mike is discipline. Mental discipline. Discipline
and concentration. I’ve been working for you. Got you an audition date.”
Joe’s soreness was gone. “Where?”
“FFOM. You audition Friday afternoon. Two o’clock. See you to-morrow.”
“What time, Amby?”
Amby was silent a moment. “Better make it noon.”
Joe had to wait only ten minutes next day in the dusty hall of the sixth
floor. Amby was, as usual, a cyclone of brisk energy.
“Rushed to death, Joe. Got to arrange an audition for you at FWWO. We
won’t bother with the other two stations. Quick now on a pick-up from
yesterday. I come in a door. You’re a little surprised, a little amused
to see me. Give.”
Joe caught a chuckling, good-natured, rising inflection. “Hel—lo.”
“Nice,” said Amby. “You’re learning.” He rummaged in a drawer of the
desk and brought out a script. “_City Boy_. You take Al Treacy, Joe.
That was Sonny Baker’s part. Always in front of the mike; don’t forget.
I’m due at FWWO.”
How, Joe asked an empty office, could an agent coach you if he was never
around when you rehearsed? The question bothered him. Of course, Amby
knew what he was doing, but.... The “but” gave him his first uneasiness.
He had never before seen a production script. Fascinated, he began to
read. Why, it had everything—dialogue, directions, sound. As he read
memory stirred and came alive. He’d heard this show. It must have been
two or three months ago. He turned back to the first page and there was
the date of production. March 18th. Of course!
To-day he became lost again in glamour. He spoke lines as he remembered
Sonny Baker, the Al Treacy of the show, to have spoken them. There was
one scene toward the end.... He searched the script and found what he
wanted:
Sound—Closing of door.
Al: (Earnestly) Listen, Mister. I like you—
Joe began to read the scene to a dead microphone:
Al: Listen, Mister. I like you. I think you’re all right. But
this neighborhood can’t make you out. It’s a friendly
neighborhood; there’s a lot of music, and singing, and loud
talking and visiting back and forth. You don’t talk much,
Mister. You don’t make friends. The neighborhood’s beginning to
whisper about you. They say you’re not their kind. They say
you’re queer. Don’t you see? You got to snap out of it....
A clear, cool voice said: “Any idea when Amby’ll be back?”
Joe spun around. The door was open, and a slim, dark-haired girl stood
on threshold. He said: “Perhaps in the next five minutes; perhaps not
for hours.”
“An exact statement of an Amby schedule! I didn’t know he was spreading
out with an office boy.”
Joe said stiffly: “I happen to be an actor.”
“Poisoned catfish! Another one?” The girl stepped inside the office.
“Where do they all come from? What have you been on?”
“Nothing yet.”
“What have you done?”
“High-school shows.”
“And Carver picked you up? Next he’ll be lifting them out of the cradle.
A nice boy, Amby, if you like them that way. Well, a part’s a part no
matter where it comes from. Tell him to list me in his file. The name’s
Lucille Borden.”
Joe stared, stupefied. “Lucille Borden? You don’t mean the Lucille
Borden of _Years of Danger_. You don’t sound—”
“I’m fed up, done, finished.” The girl’s voice was hard and clipped,
tough. She laughed. “Satisfied now? What’s your name—or are you old
enough to have a name?”
“Joe Carlin.”
“You’re nice, youngster. An unspoiled kid. That’s a _City Boy_ script
you’re reading. I was in that show. I was shot. I’m always getting shot,
or stabbed, or smashed up by automobiles. I end up every show on a
stretcher. Sometimes I think the script writers are trying to kill me
off. You were trying to read the part the way Sonny Baker read it.”
Joe was flattered. “Was I that good?”
“You were laying an egg. A pretty bad egg. Never imitate anybody. Be
yourself. Give the part Joe Carlin. Well, don’t forget to tell Carver.
The tramp may find me a part.”
She was gone, and Joe continued to stare at the door through which she
had passed. A real actress, the first one he’d met face to face. Lucille
Borden. Why, she wasn’t tough and hard at all. Were all actors and
actresses so quick and generous with help and advice? A glow, a pride
that he was an actor, too, ran through him. He turned to the mike and
read again. He tried to give the part Joe Carlin, but all the days he
had listened to Sonny Baker got in the way.
“Lucille Borden was here,” he told Amby when the agent finally returned.
Amby tried to hide his surprise. “Lucille? See how they’re starting to
run to me, Joe? What did she want?”
“A part if one turns up.”
Ambrose Carver rubbed his hands briskly. “A great girl, Lucille. One of
my best friends. She thinks I’m aces.”
Impressions were beginning to register on Joe. Everybody was one of
Amby’s best friends. He said: “How about that FFOM audition to-morrow?
Are you coaching me before I go to the studio?”
Amby, in his desk chair, stretched out languidly. “Give them what you
gave FKIP. It was good enough there.”
On the way home Joe tried to understand what was becoming a muddle.
Didn’t your agent want to see you get better and better? Why had Lucille
said: “A nice boy, Amby, if you like them that way.” And there was
another sentence she had used: “The tramp may find me a part.” Why had
she been so caustic, so critical of Amby?
Amby went with him to FFOM and sat in the control-room. Station FFOM
wasn’t quite in the same class with Station FKIP. It was in a smaller,
less ostentatious building; there was no glittering reception-room with
leather chairs, there was no expensive glass gallery. Joe went into a
plain, small, matter-of-fact studio and began to read. This time he
carried two plays to the mike so that, when he finished the first, the
control-room would not ask him if he had anything else. He told himself:
“They won’t know I’m so green; they’ll think I’ve been around.” Finally
he gave them the juvenile bit.
“Thank you, Mr. Carlin,” the control-room said. That’s what he’d
expected, that, and no more. He was learning. Soon nobody’d have to tell
him: “That’s show business.”
Amby joined him. “Joe, you were terrific; better than FKIP. You’re a
knockout. Now you’re on file at two stations. Don’t forget you audition
at FWWO Monday.”
“What about to-morrow?” To-morrow was Saturday.
Amby’s hand caressed the thread of black mustache. “A short day, Joe.
Not worth your while coming down.”
Joe would have been glad to come down, if only for a ten-minute
rehearsal. Saturday, discontented and restless, he lazed in his room and
kept turning the dial of his radio. Downstairs, the telephone rang. He
leaned over the banisters hoping that this was for him and that Amby had
changed his mind. But the call was from his father.
Kate Carlin brought a bulky envelop out into the hall. “Dad brought
these papers home last night and forgot them this morning. Do you mind
taking them down?”
It was the boy’s first visit to the store since the day he had told his
father he wanted to be an actor. There was the same air of unhurried
alertness, the same quiet atmosphere of sureness and efficiency. The
typewriters had been moved back; the first of the gleaming center-floor
cases held a display of cameras and snapshot enlargements. Every
enlargement showed a mountain, lake, or seashore scene. With the
vacation season almost at hand, trust to his father, he thought, to know
how to enhance the appeal of a camera. And old pride, warm and swelling,
stirred in him; he had never been in another store quite like this one.
Tom Carlin said: “You made good time. Stick around and I’ll take you to
lunch.”
Joe wandered into the book department. And suddenly a thought, forgotten
since his last visit, was back. A magic land of books that people had
forgotten! Why couldn’t their interest be aroused, awakened, and
quickened? Why couldn’t they be told in such a way that they’d be eager
to listen? Thomas Carlin Presents To-day’s Book.... How? Anything that
went on the air had to be planned shrewdly and knowingly. How and what?
An undecided boy was in the book department, and Mr. Fairchild was
showing this small customer the same deference he would have shown a
collector placing a large order. Pride stirred in Joe again—Thomas
Carlin service. The boy went out at last with the tale he had selected.
Joe’s mind still groped. Thomas Carlin Presents.... How could it be
done? That it could be done he had no doubt. Thomas Carlin Presents....
His father had said: “One Carlin in radio is enough,” but that day his
father had been upset. Perhaps, since then....
“Mr. Fairchild, did Dad ever say anything to you about pepping up the
book department?”
“Something about radio, Joe? We talked it over. Your suggestion, wasn’t
it? Your father thought the cost would be prohibitive. We’d have to sell
six hundred more books a week to get our money back. That’s a lot of
extra books.”
It was. And yet, if radio could sell clothing for Munson.... “Perhaps,
if I bring it up again—”
“Don’t press your radio luck too far, Joe.” Mr. Fairchild’s smile was
shrewd.
Joe thought: “He knows I’m not in radio with Dad’s blessing.” But his
father had at least considered the idea. He might have known that would
happen. He felt better. But he wasn’t, he thought stubbornly, through
with the idea.
Monday afternoon he auditioned at FWWO. The station was smaller than
FFOM and loosely run; the audition was called for two o’clock, but it
was three o’clock before he was brought into a studio. Chairs and music
stands had to be pushed away from the mike. An impatient voice from the
control-room said: “Keep it within ten minutes, Mr. Carlin.” Amby was
not present.
Joe knew he gave a poor reading. Out in the street he debated about
going to the McCoy Building. What was the use? Amby’s door would be
locked. He started for the bus stop at the corner, depressed. FWWO had
got on his nerves. The reading had been worse than bad.
“Joe! Joe Carlin!” Amby, elbowing and jostling, came hurrying through
the crowds of Royal Street.
Joe said: “I muffed it.”
“FWWO? Forget it. Does Ambrose Carver put over his talent? Get an earful
of this. FKIP’s cutting a platter. You’re in.”
The flags outside the hotels along Royal Street became gay, royal
banners. The weight that had come down on Joe’s heart at FWWO was gone.
“A good part, Amby?”
“A bit. It’s a bit show. _I Want Work!_ FKIP hopes to sell it to some
sponsor as a good-will buy. People out of work tell their stories.
People who can give them jobs write in or telephone. You’re a kid whose
father’s home with a busted leg. The furniture’s due to be heaved into
the street.”
Joe was puzzled. “I thought people in need of work told their stories.”
“Don’t you get it? FKIP gets in touch with churches and welfare
organizations. Men and women come in; script writers take their
hard-luck stories and put in the zing. A professional cast puts on the
show.”
“But people think they’re listening to—”
“The actual men and women who need the jobs? Sure. That’s radio. Radio
runs on a clock; a fifteen-minute show is a fifteen-minute show. _We
Want Work_ must be drama. How you getting drama out of anybody you
happen to bring in? How you going to hold them down to fifteen minutes?
Some will want to talk all night; some will get mike fright and won’t
give. A professional cast has to fake it. A real kid came in with the
story you’ll read.”
So that, Joe thought, was how it was done. Something else he’d learned
about radio. “What time do they want me?”
“Two o’clock Wednesday. John Dennis’ office. That’s the little fat man
who auditioned you.”
Riding out to Northend Joe saw what Amby had meant by “bit show.”
Everybody in the cast would have a short, terse part to read. He’d get
on only when some boy had a plea to make. Perhaps he wouldn’t get on
more than once or twice a month. But rehearsals were six dollars an
hour, or part of an hour, and every show would be fifteen dollars. Not
bad. The bus dropped him off and he walked rapidly toward home.
“Mother!” He was going to be calm about this. “I have my first part. I’m
in my first show.” Calmness exploded. “Boy, do I feel grand.”
“Joe!” The warmth of his mother’s understanding made him feel even
better. “How nice.” She led him out to the breakfast nook to pie and a
glass of milk. While he ate he told her of how radio put on its personal
experience programs like _I Want Work_, and about Lucille Borden, and
about money. Six dollars for rehearsals and fifteen dollars for the
show.
“The day you go on the air,” Kate Carlin said whimsically, “there’ll be
no dinner prepared. I’ll be too excited. Your father’ll probably have to
come home and cook himself an egg.”
They laughed together. Joe thought, as he had thought many times before,
how easy it was to laugh with his mother.
John Dennis’ office was on the third floor of the FKIP building, a small
out-of-the-way sort of room at the building’s rear. This third floor
might have been the fifth floor where Joe had auditioned in Studio K.
Given over to the pick-and-shovel work of radio, the third floor spent
no money for glitter and blue leather. Four people, all talking at once,
were crowded into the office with Dennis; three others, in the hall,
walked about, bumped into each other, and read script aloud.
“Carlin.” Dennis tossed a script. “You’re Young Mr. X.”
Lucille Borden said: “Hello, youngster. You know these people?” She
introduced him around. He shook hands with Archie Munn, a tall, very
straight and very thin man with an amazingly deep voice, and bowed to
Stella Joyce, a small, bird-like woman with a bird-like, fluttering way
of talking. The others of the cast of _I Want Work_ were shadows. He got
away, out to the hall, and found his part:
Announcer: And now we’ll hear from you, Mr. X—or should I say
Young Mr. X? How old are you?
X: I’m fifteen.
Announcer: And you’re looking for work?
X: Not for myself—for my father. He’s a tool-maker. Last winter
he fell on the ice and smashed up his leg. He hasn’t worked
since. It costs money to be sick and his money’s gone. The
doctor says he can go back to work next week, but he has no
work. And now my mother’s sick—
John Dennis and the all-talking-together cast went past him. He closed
the script.
The parade ended on another part of the third floor in a long, narrow
room next to the press-radio bureau. Somebody closed the door and the
clatter of the machines, bringing in news from all parts of the world,
was still. Dennis walked past a dead rehearsal microphone and sat at a
table. There was a telephone on the table.
“Twice around the mike,” said Dennis, “coming in on the live end and
passing out on the dead end. Let’s go.”
It had all been written into the beginning of the script. The cast came
down upon the mike. Voices implored:
“Give me work! I must have something to do. I want a job! My father
needs work badly....”
The second lap was completed. The announcer swung in with his
introduction. The show was on.
It was, to Joe, an amazing rehearsal. Actors walked to the mike as their
bits came up, walked away as they finished. Nobody, apparently, paid any
attention; nobody listened. When the telephone rang and Dennis answered,
the reading of parts went right on. Those not at the mike conversed in
undertones. It was all haphazard, without order, a sort of chaos.
“We’ll run through it again,” said Dennis. “Carlin, not so fluent.
You’re supposed to be a fifteen-year-old kid. You’ve been brought into a
studio to plead for your father; you’re nervous. Stumble a bit.” Before
the cast could start another circle of the mike the telephone rang.
“Yes,” said Dennis. “I’ll be right back.” He stood up. “Ten to-morrow
morning,” he said abruptly and hurried from the room.
Lucille shrugged. “Well, that’s radio. We may have to come back half a
dozen times.”
Why grumble, Joe reflected, if you earned six dollars for each
rehearsal? A new wonder grew on him. In all the madcap confusion and
lackadaisical inattention of the rehearsal, John Dennis had heard him
read his part. Later, in the McCoy building, he spoke of this to Amby.
“That’s radio,” said the agent. “It’s like no other business in the
world.”
Next morning, in the same room, the cast went back to rehearsal. Dennis
began to stop the reading of lines, to coach for a different
interpretation. But the telephone still kept ringing; there was still,
apparently, a careless happy-go-lucky confusion. At noon the director of
programs called a halt.
“Four o’clock,” he said.
Joe had a sandwich with Amby at Munson’s soda counter.
“Eat here always when you’re downtown,” Amby told him. “I hear Munson’s
going in for a five-a-week in the fall. He walks around the store a lot
watching business. Let him see us here. It doesn’t do us any harm.”
It seemed to the boy a queer angle from which to sell a radio show. But
then, everything about radio was a law unto itself.
At four o’clock he was back at rehearsal. And now, suddenly, all the
light-hearted chaos was gone. Dennis ran them through the show against
the watch. A minute and a half too long. Lines were cut from the script,
lines and more lines. This was the never-ending, nerve-racking struggle
of radio to compress shows into time limits. Strain crept into the room;
Joe felt tension drag at his own body. Another rehearsal, and they were
forty seconds over. More lines came out. They rehearsed a third time.
The eyes of John Dennis were glued to a watch; a pencil hovered over the
script, noting minutes and seconds.
“Bingo!” he cried. “Fourteen minutes, leaving a fat minute for the
commercial plugs. Ten to-morrow. A dress, and then we cut.”
“Dress,” Joe knew, meant a dress rehearsal. The dial in the tower of
Munson’s department store said seven o’clock. He clung to a strap in a
crowded Northend bus and felt drained. He was late for dinner.
“Tired?” his mother asked.
“Dead,” he said. “It takes it out of you. We finish to-morrow. With
rehearsals and the cutting I ought to get about fifty dollars.”
“For about eight hours of actual work,” his father commented.
Food had revived Joe. The thought of fifty dollars didn’t make him feel
any worse. He grinned. “That’s radio, Dad.”
In the morning the cast was through with the narrow room off the
press-radio bureau. Dennis led them to Studio K. The dress was smooth.
Just before Joe stepped to the mike, Vic Wylie came into the studio. His
reddish hair was in disorder; his eyes had their perpetual look of a man
hard pressed for time. He whispered to Dennis as Joe began to read; he
looked at Joe once, finished what he had to say to Dennis, moved toward
the door, and stopped. Joe finished reading and left the mike.
Vic Wylie said: “When you find time, kid, drop in at my office.
Something may turn up.”
All Joe could think of was what Amby had said: “The best producer in the
city.”
“On the nose,” John Dennis cried. “Right to the second.” The cast went
to the mike, one by one, and spoke a few words. A voice came back: “Too
close.” Joe looked at Archie Munn.
“The engineer,” Archie said. “Leveling sound for the platter.”
Then they were ready. The cast lined up for its circle of the mike.
Dennis had his eyes on a watch; one hand was raised. The hand fell.
Nobody talked or whispered now. This was the real thing. Joe’s part came
up; he read from his script and stepped away. The best producer in the
city! The best producer wanted to talk to him. Abruptly there was
silence. The show was made.
“Come along and hear it,” said Lucille Borden.
Joe followed the cast along a corridor to an engineer’s room gleaming
with bakelite—transformers, switches, dials, knobs. Amby was there.
“I picked it up here, Joe,” the agent said gleefully. “You came in
swell. You’re colossal.”
Joe grasped Amby’s arm. “Wylie wants to see me.”
Amby blinked. “Vic? Vic Wylie.” It dawned on him; he recovered and
beamed. “Great guy, Vic; one of my best pals. I’ve been talking to him
about you. Didn’t I tell you the sky was the limit?”
The engineer picked up the platter that had just been cut. “You ought to
sell this show,” he said to John Dennis and set the platter on a
turn-table. A needle came down upon it gently. Words, uncanny words,
pleading and imploring, filled the room:
“Give me work! I must have something to do. I want a job! My father
needs work badly....”
Joe was stone, carved and motionless. It was coming to his part. The
announcer said: “And now we’ll hear from you, Mr. X....” His own voice
was in his ears.
He shook, and went hot and cold, and hot and cold again. He saw Lucille
watching him and tried to stop shaking.
“We’ve all had the thrill,” Lucille whispered, “of listening to our
first platter.”
It was over. His voice still rang in his ears. If he could only go off
some place, and sit down, and rest! Radio certainly took it out of you;
you earned what you got. The cast was drifting around, breaking up. He
went out with Amby. He could still hear his voice. After all, what
difference did weariness make? It passed away. And Vic Wylie wanted to
talk to him, and FKIP owed him about fifty dollars. The fifty dollars
was more than money. It was a symbol, a promise for all the future. It
meant that a radio station thought he was a good enough actor to pay
money to.
“Amby,” he said, “when do we get paid?”
“For what?” Amby was startled.
“The show.”
“This _I Want Work_ show?”
“What other show did I work?”
“You mean money? You expect to get paid some money?” Amby’s voice
thinned to a squeak. “Where do you think you are, New York?”
Joe thought: “And I boasted to Dad....” Something was wrong. He saw his
agent staring at him, gaping at him, and his heart drained. He was cold
again, and this wasn’t the kind of strange chill that brought a thrill
in its wake.
“Listen, Amby.” Could this be the same voice that had come off a
platter? “I worked three days on that show. Yesterday I started at ten
and got through at seven last night. Three hours yesterday afternoon in
one stretch. For what?”
“If you mean money—”
“Don’t I get anything?”
“Sure, sure. Give me a chance to tell you. You, Lucille, Archie—you all
get something.”
“What?”
Ambrose Carver said: “You get experience.”