In order to borrow money gracefully¹ one must choose the time and place. It is a difficult business, for example, when the borrower is cockeyed, or has measles², or a conspicuous³ shiner. One could continue indefinitely but the inauspicious occasions can be catalogued as one — it is exceedingly difficult to borrow money when one needs it.

Pat Hobby found it difficult in the case of an actor on a set during the shooting of a moving picture. It was about the stiffest chore he had ever undertaken but he was doing it to save his car. To a sordidly⁴ commercial glance the jalopy would not have seemed worth saving but, because of Hollywood’s great distances, it was an indispensable tool of the writer’s trade.

‘The finance company —’ explained Pat, but Gyp McCarthy interrupted.

‘I got some business in this next take. You want me to blow up on it?’

‘I only need twenty,’ persisted Pat. ‘I can’t get jobs if I have to hang around my bedroom.’

‘You’d save money that way — you don’t get jobs anymore.’

This was cruelly correct. But working or not Pat liked to pass his days in or near a studio. He had reached a dolorous⁵ and precarious⁶ forty-nine with nothing else to do.

‘I got a rewrite job promised for next week,’ he lied.

‘Oh, nuts to you,’ said Gyp. ‘You better get off the set before Hilliard sees you.’

Pat glanced nervously⁷ toward the group by the camera — then he played his trump⁸ card.

‘Once —’ he said,’— once I paid for you to have a baby.’

‘Sure you did!’ said Gyp wrathfully. ‘That was sixteen years ago. And where is it now — it’s in jail for running over an old lady without a licence.’

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