The red head did seem quite flushed, so I think I had been cleaning her up after my explosion, but I don’t know that for sure. They all surrounded m... and pushed and prodded me towards another door. One of them opened it and we all went through. I found myself in a small auditorium complete with a stage. On the stage was a solid, heavy device about six feet tall standing upright in the shape of an X. I could see Velcro cuffs attached to each of the “legs” of this device and guessed what it was. She seemed to be harder to work with and she insisted on rehearsing enmass. Everyone complied but the other actors notably her leading man resented it. He wanted them to rehearse together without the others before they acted as a group. This was the rumor that raised his hope. He had seen his picture and had a thick dossier on Mr. Peter Hertz. He had been mentioned as the main reason for nine marriages breaking up. All of them had caused major distress to the families involved. Nine pregnant. "That remark caused everyone in the room to exchange uneasy glances and roll their eyes. All, that is, except for Evie, who fired off her most devastating salvo yet."You should probably keep on taking that pill. Don't stop, even when you're married." When I heard that one, it was all I could do to keep from peeing in my pants.And it had an effect on Heather. All of a sudden, she seemed to have lost a bit of her edge; she grew quiet and pensive. The rest of us got to talking about other things.. Instead of diving right back into the overcrowded pool of job hunters, I decided to take it easy for a while. I deserved it, I’d barely taken a day off for the last eight years, so I was going to take that package and use it to fund a long, lazy summer vacation to make up for all the spring breaks I never got and all the summers I’d worked through while growing up in Ithaca, New York. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Ithaca. I was born there, it was beautiful, and I didn’t think I could leave.