Joe said, honest and humble: “I was scared stiff.”
He was no longer scared, and the knife was gone. Archie, Miss Robb told him in the outer office, had left. He called the house.
“It’s all right, Mother,” he said out of an overflowing heart. “Everything’s all right.”
Standing at the window, brushing his hat with his sleeve, he looked down again at the street. There they were—ants. Everlastingly sweating and toiling through the same crowded runways, doing the same dull tasks to-day, to-morrow, next month, and next year. No two of his days would ever be alike; no day would ever be dull. He’d go on the air; his voice would go out to unseen thousands; he’d make them laugh and he’d make them cry. He’d know knives again; it was show business. But for every knife there’d be a supreme moment of glory like this.
He pitied ants.
CHAPTER 7
Labor Day saw the end of radio’s coma. Overnight Stations FKIP, FFOM, and FWWO stirred with new life; overnight the unofficial players’ club that had lounged away the summer in Vic Wylie’s outer office disbanded. Where there had been a great deal of brightness and gaiety, there was now only the strictly business-like ring of the telephone and the steady clatter of Miss Robb’s typewriter.
And so Joe Carlin started on the rounds at last. There was an unaccustomed buoyancy to his stride, a lilting sway to his shoulders. Amby Carver had unconsciously given him that. If Vic would kill a Wylie Productions show rather than release him as a co-lead, he must be good. Very good. Better than he had thought. Better than Wylie had ever admitted.
Hot with anticipation and expectation, he swung into the tide of show people making the rounds. Flowing from studio to studio through the crowds of Royal Street, the tide was somehow brightly set apart. It eddied into the broadcasting company buildings vivid with a color all its own; talkative and animated, it swirled up in the elevators. Talk was all around Joe, endless and continuous—the feverish talk of show business. FWWO was auditioning for a commentator to do a night broadcast of local news. FFOM wasn’t due to think about casting until to-morrow. One of the night clubs was canvassing the talent bureaus of the radio stations for a blues singer. A girl announced breathlessly that she had worked up a show for the little tots—FFOM wanted to hear it. A man said: “A good kid show keeps you in the chips. Uncle Don’s been running a long time on WOR.” A tide of show business patter carried Joe to the office of John Dennis, FKIP’s casting director.
Dennis’ small office, crowded, sounded like a happy-go-lucky, madcap picnic. Joe, stranded in the hall’s overflow, was much wiser than he had been last June. This was the bread-and-butter hunt, restlessly anxious beneath the brightly vivacious surface of the tide. What did you do when you got in to Dennis, ask point-blank if he had a part for you? He should have asked Archie Munn. He hadn’t seen Stella or Lucille. Apparently when show business hunted radio’s bread and butter, it hunted alone.