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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 257I dropped the record already set on her phonograph, and turned up the low, surging Mikis Theodorakis%u2019 soundtrack to the movie, Phaedra,so popular at the Bryn Mawr theater, crashing violins, deliberate picking guitars, soothing, the huge crisp black-and-white faces of Melina Mercouri and Anthony Perkins and Raf Vallone playing Aristotle Onassis erasing the faces of Karg and Gunn and all the priests and all the sweet, sweet nuns.Melina Mercouri%u2019s deep voice, silken as cigarette smoke curling around grape leaves, saying over the music track to Tony Perkins, %u201cFalcon of the cold north. Eagle of solitude. I give you milk and honey. You give me poison.%u201d Oh, if the priestlings could see this occasion, this Jocelyn Jennings, this living occasion of sin, ah, not sin, they%u2019d scream perdition and mortal sin, yes, mortal, not venial, mortal sin, and ruin, lovely ruin. I stood ready, waiting my cue, waiting the director to call %u201caction,%u201d but there was no director, and no action, and I stood embarrassed by the phonograph, breathing with the recorded actors%u2019 voices speaking now and again over the music, watching Jocelyn Jennings watch me, silken cigarette smoke rising through her hair, listening to the music.%u201cLovely,%u201d she said, meaning the music, watching me. All the stuff of seduction surrounded us, but something was amiss. I smiled ha because we felt ha ha nothing for each other ha ha ha. I mean I. Not her. Who knew about her? What the virgin-slayer really felt? The whole charade made me suddenly sad. My spirits nose-dived. How could I make the first time, so long saved, be perfectly right? My breath came short. Get it over with. Maybe it didn%u2019t need to be right; maybe it only needed to happen: no plot, no props, one take.The room was hot, %u201ctoo hot for May, don%u2019t you think, maybe it%u2019s not the heat, but the humidity.%u201dSometimes people panic.Sometimes a glass or two of wine turns out to be cheap wine, sangria, even, in a jelly glass, with a record playing, scratched, even, and the apartment, a far cry from Misery%u2019s luxury, fifty bucks a month, and all the stuff, phoney stuff, a reproach, going down the old evolutionary ladder, and the record turning, the clock ticking, and actors saying lines, written lines, scripted lines, about wasted lives and time lost, and the other person keeps on being glamorous, not noticing that sex, lurid, bumping sex has reared up in the room, wrestled itself around, hardened itself, denying, desiring, delaying, coming undone, scared, spent, thankful, happy to get out alive.%u201cSo you liked Phaedra?%u201d she asked over her glass.%u201cYes.%u201d