“Listen, feller,” called the boy on the stage. “We’re going to have a jam session.”
“Can’t,” said Joe. They’d had a good time last June, ad-libbing and turning what had been a good show the night before into a travesty. But last year he hadn’t been thinking of radio. He pushed open the auditorium door and went through the darkened corridor.
The boy on the stage snapped his fingers. “Mr. Joe Carlin,” he announced, “has gone upstage”—which was a way of saying that Joe Carlin’s head was starting to swell.
Joe caught a bus at the corner. Downtown, the streets, laid out before the coming of the automobile, were entirely too narrow for modern traffic. The bus, in spurts of progress, triumphed over one tight, snarled intersection after another. Stores, stores, stores went past—a parade of stores. The parade varied. Hotels with potted palms and canopies, office buildings, Munson’s eight-story department store, the banks. They crept past a store with a long black and gold sign above the door and windows: LAW BLANKS—STATIONERY—BOOKS—OFFICE SUPPLIES. A gold-lettered name on the window read: THOMAS CARLIN.
Joe dropped off at a stagnated corner and walked up Royal Street. The luncheon-hour crowds jostled him, threw him out of step, got in his way. His fascinated eyes never left a red neon sign running down the face of a stone building:
F
K
I
P
The building’s entrance was narrow. A loudspeaker in the hall rasped out the station’s program of the moment. An elevator disgorged a group of noisy musicians; a fat man with a cello had trouble worming his way out through the door. The elevator shot upward, while its own speaker continued the program.