Miss Robb came back and the door closed. Archie looked at Stella, shrugged, took off his hat, and placed it back on the rack. Joe made a point of carefully, deliberately pouring more coffee. The Dick Davis part in the Munson show! His part. “Who’s reading, Arch? Sonny Baker?” “Mrs. Munson’s nephew.” They had tried to save him the agony of waiting for the audition to end. He thought of Vic Wylie. Wylie, hiding behind a closed door all morning and keeping him locked out. Wylie, calling somebody in for an audition and telling him nothing. Wylie, whom he had believed in, worshiped.... He dumped what was left of the coffee into the cooler drain. Archie Munn’s voice was deep in the silence. “Mrs. Munson says her nephew’s made for the part. She’s repeating Amby, of course. What can Vic say? That he isn’t? Vic’s never heard him.” Joe was cold. “I thought Mr. Wylie was insisting on his original cast.” “He’d still have to call the nephew in. Amby’s recommendation doesn’t mean a thing, but.... Suppose the nephew _is_ made for the part?” Words ran through Joe’s mind in numb reiteration. “That’s what puts the knife into you.” Lucille, Stella, and Arch were all seasoned performers, and yet, at this moment, were any of them better off than he? Didn’t they all know the feeling of the knife? Hadn’t Arch said so? Ten years from now he might still be doing what Lucille, Stella, and Arch were now doing—waiting, hoping for a part. Years made no difference—look at Pop Bartell. Show business was show business. Show business put the knife into you, again and again. There were no sudden, muffled Wylie outbursts from behind the closed door. Was Mrs. Munson’s nephew so good that an emotional, hair-trigger producer could close his eyes, relax, and listen to a perfect reading? Unable longer to sit still and keep a death-watch on a closed door, he sprang to his feet, walked to a window, and stood there looking down at the crowds flowing through the street nine stories below. The street seemed full of ants. Puny, scurrying, human ants bustling in a ceaseless tide. Ants who didn’t suffer through Vic Wylie rehearsals, who didn’t know the strain of a sponsor audition, who didn’t see themselves dropped after they’d slaved to help sell the show. Stella and Lucille went out; he did not hear them go. Archie Munn stood beside him. “I was offered a job yesterday,” the actor said abruptly. “Salary and commission. I used to be a salesman.” “Any money in it?” Joe still stared down at the street. “About sixty dollars a week. I turned it down.” Joe’s eyes held bitter wisdom. When it got into you, when you ached to make people laugh and make them cry, nothing else mattered. But ants would be satisfied with sixty dollars. Ants would never know the feeling of a knife as they waited in a producer’s ante-room. He envied ants. The rattle of a knob, voices, swung him around from the window. The inner office door was open.