Woodard was sweating copiously before Nodus turned it off. He looked envyingly at the girl. Not enjoying the most effective acoustic location, she had sat through the outrage in a state of catatonic beatitude. "Incredible!" he gasped, coughing again. * * * * * And now, in the last lap of the preliminaries, effects came thick and fast. Woodard's sensibilities were still jangled from a rattling, polysyllabic belch (panicking the girl, but unjustifiable otherwise as either art or science) when a powerful soprano, tweetered until it could cut steel, emitted a blood-curdling "Good-_bye_ fo-re-ver!" Tosti rendered by Medea; and as Woodard tried to formulate some idea about unseemliness, he was shaken to his bowels by the agonized shriek of a subway rounding a curve. Next, "Tires Screeching on Hot Asphalt"--not a surrealist poem, and anyway Woodard's critical faculties were pretty well blasted. Then a dentist's drill. Woodard struggled to make sense of Nodus' remarks about a gum cavity and a midget microphone. Finally, perhaps most devastating of all because it suggested evil in bright sunlight, the tender brooded over by the sinister--the excited yelps of girls at play; the bouncing of a ball and the rush of feet across a wood floor; a shrill, drawn-out whistle and the voice of a gym instructress screaming "That's enough, girls!" (The Pepsi-Cola Ladies' Basketball Team: eleven and one-half seconds.) Woodard peered uncertainly from trauma to learn that the concert proper was at hand. "I run through a few things, parts of things, interesting sections," Nodus lectured, playing idly with his glasses. "A little program most people seem to like...." Time was, Woodard would have snapped "I happen not to be most people." But his pulse was pounding, his eyes watering. Racked with coughing, trembling with post-sonic shakes, he could scarcely be called himself. So he tried to nod appreciatively. If he could identify more, really participate--then he might overcome the sensation of being one with three against him. And his sinus might stop dripping. "The violin," Nodus announced, for the first time placing a record cover on the "NOW PLAYING" rack. "Some unaccompanied Bach partitas." Woodard laughed hoarsely. "It's been my theory...." He coughed. "Yes." Nodus held the player arm poised. "Now we'll have nineteen...." Woodard struggled for recovery. "It's been my theory," he croaked, "that Yehudi makes them up as he goes along." Russ stared for a moment, then went on writing. "Do I understand," Nodus asked with cold hatred, "that you refuse to listen to a few unaccompanied Bach partitas?" Woodard grovelled. The privilege of hearing partitas on this superlative equipment? Refuse? Oh most certainly not--He collapsed in a fit of coughing.