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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 237of the Sheridan movie theater. Sometimes I%u2019d call her, watch her look up, bored, as her phone rang, and, invisible, across the drifting distance of the frozen night, I%u2019d ask her what time the next feature began.The forbidden Cleopatra was playing out our back door, across the snowy street. Inside the huge movie palace, one ticket made winter into Egypt with Liz Taylor repeating, two showings a day, %u201cNow will I begin a dream of my own.%u201d Twice a day, Richard Burton%u2019s Antony announced, %u201cThe ultimate desertion. Me from myself.%u201d Signs and omens were everywhere.Loyola Campus lay frozen, covered with snow, on the icy banks of Lake Michigan. The muffled city shimmered in streetlight and moonlight and starlight.Who needed Egypt? %u201cA beer sounds right,%u201d Louisa said. %u201cStop calling that girl in the ticket booth. Her job is bad enough without you.%u201d Her housecoat opened as she pulled the metal can cold from the refrigerator, stabbed it with a green-handled opener. The beer bubbled up over the can. She threw the opener into the drawer, picked up the beer, and savoring her foamy fingers, bumped the drawer closed with her hip.%u201cWant one?%u201d she asked. She sidled over to the kitchen table. %u201cWhat you reading?%u201d%u201cBig test tomorrow. Chaucer.%u201d%u201cAw, you%u2019ll do good in it.%u201d She nudged my shoulder. %u201cMore%u2019s the pity.%u201d%u201cWhat?%u201d%u201cMore%u2019s the pity. All your brains and nothing to show for it. No money. No fun. No girls. All for a big fat report card.%u201d%u201cFor now.%u201d%u201cYou%u2019re not like my three boys.%u201dShe was a famous conversationalist in her family. Often I chose not to study in the attic so she could trap me in the kitchen where I listened to her, all the while moving my pencil across my yellow legal pads of notes. She always sat up, late and alone, the nights of that winter and spring. She wanted to talk. She was interested in the scar of vocation not yet closed on my skin. She wanted to rub her finger across it. She knew I was an open wound pretending I was a brave boy.Joe Bunchek peered into the kitchen. His bare feet padded across the scrubbed linoleum. Like a little boy himself he wore jersey pajamas, maroon, that in walking made prominent the loose sway of his equipment which was the constant center of Louisa%u2019s comedy patter.