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.”