“That’s right; that’s right. I remember now.” But the director’s vagueness made it plain he didn’t remember at all. “Have a pleasant summer?”
Joe made his exit. Stella Joyce was coming through the hall.
“Any calls, Joe?”
“Nothing,” he said wryly, and nodded back toward the office. “They didn’t remember me.” That wouldn’t last. “Did you hear the talk that FKIP had sold the I Want Work show?”
“They have sold it.”
Joe went numb. He said slowly: “Dennis didn’t call me.”
“I saw the script, Joe; the part’s out.” Stella’s bird-like voice fluttered. “Weren’t you the boy who was pleading for a job for his father? The father’s working.”
Joe drew a breath and the shock passed. He might have guessed it was something like that. When you were good enough for Wylie, you were good enough for any of them.
Still hot with anticipation and expectation he came down to Royal Street. Where now? Tony Vaux? He’d already auditioned the Larry Logan part in the show the Everts-Hall Agency was trying to build for the He people; when Tony wanted more, he’d call. Vic Wylie? Vic, producing an early afternoon show over FFOM and a later show over FKIP, would be at one of the stations in an agony of rehearsal. And yet it was to Wylie’s office that the boy found himself irresistibly drawn.
Miss Robb typed in a deserted room. Somebody coughed in the inner room and Joe looked in the door. Archie Munn sat at a portable typewriter surrounded by newspapers.