ransvestia

"Those investments will pay off in the end," he barked. "I can't help it if the Market keeps on going down, I'm just strapped for cash like everybody else."

Her voice was very calm. "If you do this part for Arnold, he's promised to use you again on both 'Homicide' and also in a couple of slots on the half-hour comedy he writes for." She paused. “He said he'd need a western-type actor for a new dramatic series he's been asked to co-produce next year. Victor Berin's already inked it in. It could be just the thing for you, a break in the typecasting you got yourself into..."

"But it's this part..." he began.

'I doubt very much if Arnold would consider you for anything else if you crossed him on this one." Her voice had become very clipped. "He wants to do that script, but he has to make sure he uses someone like you for the part, or Berin won't approve it." She sighed, "well, do you want it or don't you?"

Curtis Fennell hesitated. Joy Layne walked out from the house in her String, causing him to catch his breath. "I-I don't know," he said.

There was silence on the other end of the phone. "Why don't you fly up, then?" she said. "I'll talk to Jack Arnold again. Maybe he won't want to do it after all." He was agreeable to that, almost thankful that such a decision was put off. But, in fact, even as she hung up, Pamela Wood was absolutely sure that Jack Arnold would not want to give up on the script, and, though Fennell didn't know it, he was Arnold's last chance.

Fennell's financial plight was even more precarious than he had thought. With some fore sight, he had visited with Louis Repp before checking in with Pamela Wood. If Repp foreclosed on him now, Fennell would end up over a hundred grand in the hole. He left Repp with a gnawing in the pit of his stomach. A dying man grasps at straws, he thought, and my whole life is slipping down the drain.

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