The Complete Pat Hobby Stories

Author:F. Scott Fitzgerald [Fitzgerald, F. Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-06-09T23:11:06+00:00

PAT HOBBY DOES HIS BIT

Esquire (September 1940)

I

In order to borrow money gracefully one must choose the time and place. It is a difficult business, for example, when the borrower is cockeyed, or has measles, or a conspicuous 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 sordidly 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 dolorous and precarious 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 nervously toward the group by the camera--then he played his trump 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.'

'Well I paid for it,' said Pat. 'Two hundred smackers.'

'That's nothing to what it cost me. Would I be stunting at my age if I had dough to lend? Would I be working at all?'

From somewhere in the darkness an assistant director issued an order:

'Ready to go!'

Pat spoke quickly.

'All right,' he said. 'Five bucks.'

'No.'

'All right then,' Pat's red-rimmed eyes tightened. 'I'm going to stand over there and put the hex on you while you say your line.'

'Oh, for God's sake!' said Gyp uneasily. 'Listen, I'll give you five. It's in my coat over there. Here, I'll get it.'

He dashed from the set and Pat heaved a sigh of relief. Maybe Louie, the studio bookie, would let him have ten more.

Again the assistant director's voice:

'Quiet! ... We'll take it now! ... Lights!'

The glare stabbed into Pat's eyes, blinding him. He took a step the wrong way--then back. Six other people were in the take--a gangster's hide-out--and it seemed that each was in his way.

'All right ... Roll 'em ... We're turning!'

In his panic Pat had stepped behind a flat which would effectually conceal him. While the actors played their scene he stood there trembling a little, his back hunched--quite unaware that it was a 'trolley shot', that the camera, moving forward on its track, was almost upon him.

'You by the window--hey you, Gyp! hands up.

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