Joe was lulled, but after that the shadow of uncertainty was never very far away. A milk company signed one of the six shows, and the inner office knew the fever of refining one production. Joe fretted idly in the outer room, went out to the thirty-five-cent restaurant with Arch, Lucille, and Stella, and fretted away the hours of the afternoon. Wylie now had time for only the one signed show.
Stella Joyce’s fingers, lately, always had to be nervously busy with something. “I thought Tony said he had Munson about ready for a Sue Davis audition.”
Joe caught the thin thread of strain in her voice.
Lucille Borden stood up suddenly. “You had a ten-trip ticket to New York, Archie. Any of it left?”
“Three rides.”
“I had a letter this morning. N.B.C. wants me in for an audition to-morrow.”
Archie Munn took the ticket from his pocket. “Lucky gal,” he said.
Lucille said: “Perhaps.” Joe weighed a tone, an almost imperceptible breathlessness.
Next day Lucille Borden was gone. Why, Joe asked himself, three rides left on a ticket? Why a ten-trip ticket? Had Archie Munn tried to crash the big time in New York and flopped? The same crowd, the same merry voices filled the outer office; the same veiled, hungry eyes watched Vic Wylie’s door. Noon came, and then one o’clock. And then it was 1:15.
“Aren’t we eating to-day?” Joe asked.