You can say that again [antikvár]

For the past week, I had been sitting, alone, in my walk-up apartment, staring into space and waiting. I had run out of cash, and even worse, out of credit. My life-line, right at this moment, was the telephone. When the bell rang — the first time in seven, gruesome days—I nearly broke a leg getting to the receiver. 'This is Lu Prentz's secretary.' 'Hi, Liz!' I wasn't a bit-psirt actor for nothing. I instilled into my voice sincere pleasure: not a desperate screech for help, but smooth, no panic, completely at ease. 'You just caught me. I was on my way out.' I knew this crummy dialogue wouldn't jell with Liz Martin, but I knew she would go along with it. She had had enough experience, working with Lu Prentz, to know all his clients were desperate for work. 'Mr. Prentz wants to see you urgently, Mr. Stevens,' she told me. 'May he expect you?' 'What does that mean — urgently?' 'After lunch. Three o'clock?' There was a time when Lu Prentz talked business with me over a lush-plush lunch, but that was in the dim past. The only time he wanted to see me now was to remind me I owed him five hundred and three dollars. 'Is he worrying about what I owe him, Liz?' I asked in my bored voice. 'Is that what he wants to see me about?'