They all went with him. In the restaurant he took a script from the brief-case and pored over it. “Ah!” He was on fire as though this were the beginning of the day. “Suppose we play it this way?” He read a scene, interpreting all the characters and etching the lines with a changed sense of value. But, brain-fagged, they could only goggle at him. “Don’t ask us to go back,” Bert Farr pleaded. “We’ve been going for almost twelve hours.” Wylie, smoldering, stuffed the script back into the case. “Nine to-morrow morning.” “Vic!” Stella protested. Wylie glared at her. Stella’s laugh was resigned. “All right, Vic; nine to-morrow.” Waiting with Joe for a bus she said: “This period’s the hardest. After the show’s on a week or two it shakes down and the cast falls into a rhythm.” Rehearsals became a nightmare. Joe got so he dreamed rehearsals. Rehearsals in the morning until Wylie had to rush off for the first of his two shows; rehearsals after the second show until, sometime in the night, weariness halted them. Tuesday Curt Lake, the script writer, brought in more script. “How is it going, Vic?” The producer held his head. “It reeks. I’m afraid to open the windows for fear the city’ll back in a garbage truck.” Then, on Saturday, Vic Wylie ceased to be a fiend. The rehearsal shifted to Studio B at FKIP, and a sound engineer joined the cast to give the show its sound effects. The producer knew he had molded them as far as they could be molded. What he had now was what he would get Monday. Monday he wanted them easy and relaxed. And so, as they read the opening script three times, he was mild, almost gentle. On Sunday they ran through the script only once. Joe Carlin no longer stalked the broadcasting stations for a part. The early days of a Wylie show left you time only for Wylie. The need to hunt bread and butter at FKIP was past. He was on an FKIP commercial; he had the station’s attention. Later, he’d call in once a week at FFOM and FWWO. Munson might drop the show after thirteen weeks, and it was wise to make the rounds and keep in touch. Monday the walls of the Carlin house pressed in upon him and suffocated him. He watched the clock, he kept roaming upstairs and down, he turned the radio on and off. Vic’s two o’clock show was on at FFOM, his four o’clock at FKIP. _Sue Davis_ went on the air at four-thirty. But Wylie would have to walk only from one FKIP studio to another. How would it go? The house became unbearable. He called: “You won’t forget to listen, Mother?” and was gone. Afterward he was never able to remember whether the day had been clear or drab. Stella Joyce was in Wylie’s inner office reading script. “Here’s yours, Joe. Vic’s incoherent. He timed the show for a minute opening announcement, but the agency changed to a two-minute Munson plug. Curt Lake had to rewrite script.” Joe was scared. If Vic tried to jam them through a last minute rehearsal just before they went on....