Stephanie dipped her head back into the water until she felt the porcelain enamel of the bath. Her eyes were closed, her lungs losing air and her mouth wide open screaming the frustration and the anger away. It had become her post-interview routine and she didn't like it. She was drowning and instead of a lifesaver she was getting more water. She came out of the water gasping for air. Her deep breaths echoed in the neat room, the shadows of the candles dancing on the walls. It had been her second interview this month. The sixth since she had handed in her resignation. She had made the mistake of postponing the search for a new job until after she would no longer be under contract with her father. Loyalty, she had thought then; foolish move fitted better as the caption now.

She reached for the book resting on the counter and set herself back in the bath. 'The Last Resort' read the title, a desperate woman had ended up in the office of a rough private detective. Stephanie loved the noir aura, the quick dialogue and the hundred different ways the protagonist could describe a pair of legs. 'The fine space between her legs was a highway to sin'. If anyone said something like that to her she would leave her hand print on their face, unless it came from Dick Hammer, she would probably challenge him asking if his car was powerful enough to drive on it. Her guilty pleasure, pulp and crime novels were far from literature but gave her exactly what she was looking for. She needed to stay away from anything that made her question her choices in life because now there was no possibility for retractions. Everything had been said and done between her father and her, she still loved him, but she couldn't go back defeated.

He had questioned her capacity to make it out of the family business, giving her the courage to stand for herself and walk away, proving him wrong on the way. Of course, she had never considered that he could be right. The path she had encountered had been filled with cracks and traps. Every interview had followed the same pattern, more interested in knowing what had happened with her father than in her resume. After the first two interviews she had waited with expectation for their phone calls, but soon she had learnt to identify the signs. They had never been interested in employing her, they just wanted first-hand gossip. They were like a child poking a wounded animal. Probably thinking she was going to bash on her father and give them some magic formula to take him down. It was nonsense, only death could beat her father and even from the afterlife he would have found a way to control the company and make it successful.

Her eyes reached the end of the page and it was then that she realised she hadn't been paying attention, apparently today not even Dick could make her forget the reasons why her life was crumbling. The sound of the phone startled her, she reached for it praying it wasn't her mom. She couldn't take another I-told-you-so, not today. A sense of relief washed over her when she saw the name across the screen.

"How was it?" Alice asked anxious. Their phone conversation after an interview had become the only moment Stephanie would re-live them.

"How do you think?" Stephanie folded the corner of the page she had been on and put the book aside. The water was getting cold, the warm embrace her body had felt before had suddenly left her. She stood up and wrapped a towel around her body, her feet leaving damp impressions on the travertine.

"Hmmm, you did better than you thought and they offered you the job on the spot" Alice rolled her eyes at the snort she heard from the other end of the line.

"They failed to mention the part where I got the job, but I'm sure they meant to."

"When is the next one?" Positive thoughts, that's was Alice's motto. The only reason to look back into the past is to learn from your mistakes and Stephanie wasn't making mistakes in those interviews, Alice knew that much. She was overqualified for most of the positions and probably underestimating herself. But that was probably the consequence of being Vince McMahon's daughter.

"I'm not sure."

"What do you mean you are not sure? You don't have any more arranged?"

"No, yes. I do. It's just." Stephanie let out a deep sigh. She sat down in front of the mirror and started brushing her hair. Tiny drops rolling down her body to die at the towel darkening the pale blue material. " I don't know."

"Steph, you are not making any sense."

"I know, I'm sorry. I guess I'm just tired."

Silence travelled through the signal. Alice decided to change the subject. She had plenty of anecdotes and gossip she had been collecting in the last couple of weeks, she had even make a list. She liked making lists. Stephanie listened absently to the supermarket adventures that Alice was describing, her hand lying close to where the hairbrush rested on the dressing table. Her eyes fixated on her reflection on the mirror, but she didn't recognise herself. Empty, void, like one of those passport pictures taken in a photo booth at a train station, perfect in the form but without soul. And she didn't like the image.

"I want to try something different."

"What?" Alice suspected this had nothing to do with the checkout boy asking to see her ID when she was buying a bottle of olive oil, or even his absurdly stern face as he pointed to the little sign saying 'Alcohol? If you're lucky enough to look under 25 we need to check!'.

"That's why I don't know when my next interview is, because I don't want another one. I want to do something new" Stephanie rose to her feet and slipped her silk dressing gown on. Her smile spread across her face at Alice's words.

"New? Like what?"

"I love dogs, what about dog's hairdresser?"

Alice repeated the job title slowly, hoping Stephanie would realise how stupid it sounded.

"Or maybe something related with dancing, I've always wanted to be a dancer."

Alice was lost for words as she kept listening to more and more ideas, safari photographer was probably her favourite one, considering that time she jumped behind a sofa because a cat hissed at her.

"I don't know what, but I know I have to take a break from the business, I love it and I'll go back to it, but I can't put myself through another humiliating interview." The sound of the curtain rings clacking as she discovered the city view from her living room interrupted her speech for a moment and give her time to order her ideas. "I want something new, an adventure, a challenge, something that gets me excited when I wake up and doesn't make me feel disappointed at the end of the day. Something intriguing"

Alice looked over to her husband, Stephanie's words remanding her of a short conversation they had sometime last week. If he would have suggested it then her answer would have been a resounding laugh, but now the idea seemed more viable than joining Cirque du Soleil. She didn't know Paul properly but he needed help at the office and Stephanie needed a change, working for a private detective could give her all those things she was looking for.