The New Yorker:

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is the third story in this summer’s online Flash Fiction series. Read the entire series, and our Flash Fiction from previous years, here. “Double Time for Pat Hobby” was filed in the Fitzgerald Papers at Princeton University for many decades, with no title. It was identified, by Anne Margaret Daniel, as a complete Pat Hobby story, written in the summer of 1940, and appears here for the first time. It is published with the authorization of the Trustees of the Estate of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

If Mr. DeTinc continued to collapse, everything would be all right. When he ordered the prop department to mount an anti-aircraft gun on his bungalow, it looked as though the time had come, but the matter was hushed up, and Mr. DeTinc struggled onward through the labyrinth of production.

Sometimes Pat Hobby dreamed of sneaking in, seizing the Benzedrine pills on Mr. DeTinc’s desk, and cramming them down his throat all at once. He visualized the producer stuffed with Benzedrine, racing madly around and around his office, producing and producing until he collapsed. Then a long rest for DeTinc—utter forgetfulness, a slow, step-by-step recovery with frequent daily relapses, slip-backs, convulsions and comas . . . and Pat still on the payroll of a picture that had been abandoned a month ago.

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