Over the Edge

20

WHEN I got home, Robin was already in the kitchen, tossing a Caesar salad. She wiped her hands and gave me an anchovy-garlic kiss.

"Hi. Billy's manager called today and said Roland Oberheim can meet with you tomorrow at three. I left the address on your nightstand."

"Great," I said listlessly. "Thank him for me next time you see him."

She looked at me quizzically.

"Alex, it took some effort to set up. You could show a little enthusiasm."

"You're right. Sorry."

She returned to the salad.

"Rough day?"

"Just a joy ride through the urban swamp." And I gave her a capsulised version of the last ten hours.

She listened without comment, then said:

"Gary sounds really troubled."

"He's gone from one extreme to the other. Five years ago he was as straight and compliant as they come. High energy, a compulsive worker. Now that he's rebelled, all the energy's been focused into nihilism."

"From the way you described those sculptures it sounds like he's still got plenty of compulsiveness in him. That kind of work takes meticulous planning."

"I guess that's true. The scenes were designed for shock value, but they were orderly — almost ritualistic."

"That's so typically Japanese. Last year, when I was in Tokyo, I saw an exhibition of street dancing by these Japanese youth gangs that dress up like fifties greasers. They're called zoku — tribes. There are several rival groups, and each one stakes out its own turf in Yo-yogi Park on Sunday afternoon. They come on like hooks in black leather, sneering and posturing, set down ghetto blasters with cassette decks and dance to Buddy Holly tapes. It shocks the older generation, which, of course, is the whole idea. But if you look closely, you can see that there's nothing spontaneous about any of it. All the dances — every movement and gesture — are rigidly choreographed. Every gang's got its set routine. No deviation, not a trace of individuality. They've turned rebellion into a Shinto ritual."

I remembered Gary's parting soliloquy about Middleville. In retrospect it seemed chantlike.

She pulled a leaf of romaine out of the bowl and tasted it, then moved away to squeeze more lemon into the salad. I sat down at the kitchen table, rolled up my sleeves, and stared at the tabletop. She tinkered for a while. Reaching for a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, she asked:

"Is something else bothering you, Alex? You look burdened."

"I was just thinking how odd it is that two out of six kids on the project deteriorated so seriously."

She came around the counter and sat opposite me, resting her chin in her hands.

"Maybe Gary hasn't really deteriorated at all," she said. "Maybe he's just going through one of those teenage identity things, and the next time you see him he'll be enrolled at Cal Tech."

"I don't think so. There was a fatalism about him that was frightening — as if he really didn't care about living or dying. And a flatness of emotion that went beyond rebellion." I shook my head wearily. "Robin, we're talking about two boys with staggering intellects who've dropped out of life."

"Which supports the old genius-insanity myth."

"According to the textbooks, it's a myth. And anytime anyone's researched it, superior intelligence seems to be correlated with better, not worse, emotional adjustment. But the subjects in those studies were in the hundred and thirty to the hundred and forty-live IQ range — people sufficiently brilliant to excel but not so different that they can't blend in. The Project 160 kids are a different breed. A three-year-old who can translate Greek is an aberration. A six-month-old baby who talks fluent English, the way Jamey did, is downright scary. In the Middle Ages geniuses were thought to be possessed by demons. We pride ourselves on being enlightened, but exceptional brainpower still scares us. So we isolate geniuses, push them away. Which is exactly what happened to Jamey. His own father saw him as some kind of monster. He neglected and abandoned him. Nannies came and went. His uncle and aunt pay lip service to all they've done for him, but it was obvious mat they resent having been saddled with him."

She listened, dark eyes sad. I continued talking, thinking out loud.

"Someone once said that the history of civilisation is the history of genius: The gifted mind creates, and the rest of us imitate. And there are plenty of prodigies who develop into superb adults. But lots of others burn out young. The crucial factor seems to be what kind of support the child gets from his parents. It takes exceptional sensitivity to raise a prodigy. Some kids are lucky. Jamey just wasn't." My voice caught. "End of lecture."

She squeezed my hand.

"What's really the matter, sweetie?"

I said nothing for several long moments, then forced the words out.

"When he showed up at my door five years ago, it was because he was starving for a daddy. The time we spent together must have created the illusion that he'd finally found one. Somehow that got turned into romantic love, and when he expressed it, I rejected him. It was a pivotal moment. Handled right, it could have led to a happier ending."

"Alex, you were caught off guard. No one could have reacted differently."

"My training should have kept me on guard."

"You were a part-time consultant, not the director of the project. What about Sarita Flowers's responsibility? Two out of six of those kids freaked out — doesn't that say something about the quality of her leadership?"

"Sarita's more engineer than psychologist — she makes no pretence at supersensitivity. That's why she hired me to monitor their emotional adjustment. But I was too damned sanguine, running my little rap groups and deluding myself that the bases were covered."

"You're being too hard on yourself," she said as she let go of my hand, got up, and went back to the salad. After pulling two steaks out of the refrigerator, she engaged in a silent routine of pounding and marinating while I watched.

"Alex," she finally said, "Jamey was troubled long before the project started. A moment ago you gave some of the reasons for it. It's just not logical to think that one incident could have made that big a difference. You've immersed yourself in all the horror and lost your perspective. Souza did you a favour when he let you go. Take advantage of it."

I looked at her. She was solemn, eyes heavy with concern. What a fun guy I was.

"Maybe you're right," I said, more out of consideration for her feelings than inner conviction.

I spent a good part of the next morning phoning hospitals and nursing registries. Marthe Surtees was nowhere to be found, but Andrea Vann had signed up with the ninth registry I called. I talked to the receptionist, who handed me over to the director, a man named Tubbs with an elderly voice tinged by a faint Caribbean accent. When I asked him for her current address, all the lilt went out of his speech.

"Who did you say you were, sir?"

"Dr. Guy Mainwaring." Haughtily. "The medical director of Canyon Oaks Hospital in Agoura."

Meaningful pause.

"Oh, yes," he said, suddenly obsequious. No use alienating a potential client. "I'd love to help you, Doctor, but we do have to protect our registrees' privacy."

"I understand all that," I said impatiently, "but that's not the issue here. Mrs. Vann worked for us until recently — I assume she noted that on her application."

Not having the papers in front of him, he mumbled, "Yes, of course."

"Our personnel department has informed us that she is due additional pay for unused vacation time. We mailed the cheque to her home, but it came back, marked addressee unknown, no forwarding. My secretary called your agency about it last week, and someone promised to get back to her, but no one did."

"I'll have to check that—"

"In any event, I decided to phone myself — cut through the red tape."

"Of course. Do you need the phone number as well, Doctor?"

"That might be helpful."

He put me on hold and returned in a minute.

"Doctor, Mrs. Vann registered with us last week, and we found two float jobs for her. But she never responded to our calls, and we haven't heard from her since."

"Typical." I sighed. "A bright, capable woman, but she tends to wander off unpredictably."

"That's good to know."

"Absolutely. Now about that address." I rustled some papers. "Our records have her living on Colfax in North Hollywood."

"No, we have her listed in Panorama City." And he gave me the information I needed.

The phone number was disconnected.

It was a twenty-five minute freeway ride to the downscale part of the Valley. The address Tubbs had given me was on Cantaloupe Street, on a block of three-storey California-fifties apartment buildings — cheaply built rhomboids painted in unlikely colours. The building I was looking for was lemon yellow texture coat flecked with sparkles. A gateless entry in the middle of the building revealed a U-shaped courtyard built around a pool. Green Gothic letters spelled out CANTALOUPE ARMS, which evoked a series of images that made my head reel. In front was a miserly patch of succulents through which sprouted a lifeless plaster fountain. A cement pathway cut through the plants to the entrance.

There was no directory, but to the immediate right of the entrance was a panel of brass mailboxes. Most of the slots were labelled, none with the name Vann. The ones belonging to units seven and fifteen were empty. I walked into the courtyard and had a closer look.

Each apartment had a view of the pool — which was kidney-shaped and cloudy — and its own entrance. The doors were painted olive green, and flimsy-looking olive iron railings ran along both of the upper walkways. Unit seven was on the ground floor, midway down the north side of the U. I knocked on the door and received no answer. A peek through the curtains revealed a small, empty living room and, on the other side of a plywood partition, a windowless kitchenette. No signs of habitation. I took the stairs one flight up to fifteen.

This time my knock elicited a response. The door opened, and a short, pretty blonde woman of around twenty-five peered out sleepily and smiled. She had a pointed feline face and wore crotch-cutting jogging shorts and a terry-cloth tank top stretched by pendulous breasts. Her nipples were the size of cocktail onions. Through the open door came a breeze of strong perfume and coffee and the soft refrain of a Barry Manilow song. Over one white shoulder I saw a red velvet settee and wrought-iron occasional tables. On the wall were a framed zodiac chart and a cheap oil painting of a reclining nude who bore some general resemblance to the woman in the door.

"Hi," she said, huskily, "you must be Tom. You're a little early, but that's cool."

She moved closer, and one hand stroked my bicep.

"Don't be shy," she urged. "Come on in and let's party."

"Sorry," — I smiled — "wrong number."

The hand dropped, and her face hardened and aged ten years.

"I'm looking for Andrea Vann," I explained.

She stepped backward and reached for the door. I shot my foot forward and prevented it from closing.

"What the hell—" she said.

"Wait a second."

"Listen, Mister, I have a date." A car door slammed, and she jumped. "That could be him. Come on, get the hell out of here."

"Andrea Vann. A nurse. Dark, good-looking."

She bit her lip.

"Big tits and a little dark-haired kid?"

I remembered what Vann had told me about my lecture's helping her with her child's sleep problems.

"That's right," I said.

"Downstairs."

"Which unit?"

"I don't know, one of the ones on that side." She pointed north with a long-nailed finger. Footsteps echoed in the empty courtyard. The blonde panicked and leaned against the door. "Come on, that's him. Don't fuck up my day, mister."

I stepped back, and the door shut. As I headed toward the stairs, a man rose from them — young, weedy, bearded, wearing jeans and a blue workshirt with the label "Tom" over one breast pocket. He carried something in a paper bag, and when we passed, he avoided my eyes.

I went back to seven, stared at the empty living room again, and was wondering what to do when a shrill voice sounded behind me. "Can I help you?"

I turned and faced an old woman in a pink quilted housecoat and hairnet of matching hue. The hair under the net was a pewter cap that accentuated the grey in her complexion. She was short and skinny with a crooked mouth, rubbery cheeks, a strong cleft chin, and blue eyes that regarded me suspiciously.

"I'm looking for Mrs. Vann."

"You family?"

"Just a friend."

"A good enough friend to pay her debts?"

"How much does she owe you?"

"She hasn't paid rent for three months runnin'. Put me off with excuses about late child support and big doctor bills for the kid and all that sad music. I shoulda said never you mind, but instead, I gave her time. That's gratitude for ya."

"What does three months come out to?"

She adjusted the edge of the hairnet and winked.

"Well, to be honest, I got a last-month deposit and a damage deposit that shoulda been more than it is, but that still leaves a month and a half's worth — seven hundred and fifty. You of a mind to come up with a sum like that?"

"Gee," I said, "that puts us in the same boat. She borrowed quite a bit of money from me, and I came here to try and collect."

"Great." She snorted. "Lotta help you'll be." But camaraderie twinkled in her eyes.

"When did she leave?"

"Last week. Snuck out in the middle of the night like a thief. Only reason I saw it was that it was late and the horn was blarin', so I went on back to see what was goin' on. There she was, talking with some no-accounts, leaning on the horn like nothing mattered. She saw me, got all scared and guilty-lookin', and sped off. What really ate me was that the car was a new one. She'd got rid of her old heap and bought one a them flashy little Mustangs. She had money for that but none to pay me. How much she into you for?"

"Plenty." I groaned. "Any idea where she went?"

"Honey, if I knew that, would I be talkin' to you?"

I smiled.

"Any of the other tenants know her?"

"Nah. If you're her friend, you gotta be the only one. In the six months she was here I never did see her talk to no one or take visitors. Course, she worked nights and slept days, so that may have been part of it. Still, I always wondered if there was somethin' wrong with her. Good-lookin' girl like that never socialism'."

"Do you know where she was working at the time she left?"

"Nowhere. I noticed it because her usual routine was to take the kid to school, then come back and sleep the day away, bring the kid home, and head off to work. Latchkey situation, which is a hell of a way to raise kids if you ask me, but they're all doin' it nowadays. Coupla times she asked me to look in on the kid; once in a while I gave him a cookie. Coupla weeks ago all that changed. The kid started stayin' home, inside with her. She'd leave during the middle of the day and take him with her. First I thought he was sick, but he looked pretty good to me. They were just vacationin', I guess. With her outa work, I shoulda suspected I wasn't gonna get my money. But that's what you get for being too trustin', right?"

I nodded sympathetically.

"Hell of it is, I always liked the girl. Quiet but classy. Raisin' that kid all by herself. Even the money wouldn'ta made me lose sleep — the owner's a fat cat, he'll survive — but it's the lyin' I can't stand. The taking advantage."

"I know what you mean."

"Yeah," she continued, placing her hands on her hips. "It's that flashy little car that's still eatin' at me."

I drove back on the freeway, wondering about Andrea Vann's sudden departure. The fact that she'd registered with Tubbs's agency right after quitting indicated an intention to stay in town. But something had happened to make her pack her bags in the middle of the night. Whether or not it had to do with Jamey was unclear; there was no shortage of stresses that could drive a single mother out of town. The only way to be certain was to talk to the lady, and I had no idea how to find her.

I exited at Laurel Canyon and drove south into Hollywood. Roland Oberheim's place of business was on La Brea, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, a small two-storey office building sided with herringbone cedar. The first floor was occupied by a recording studio. A separate entrance housed the stairs to the second, which was taken up by three entertainment concerns: Joyful Noise Records ("a subsidiary of the Christian Musical Network"); The Druckman Group: Professional Management; and, at the end of the cork-panelled hall, Anavrin Productions, R. Oberheim, Pres.

The Anavrin suite was a waiting room and a back office. The former was silent and decorated with twenty-year-old psychedelic posters advertising Big Blue Nirvana in Concert at various halls around the country. The spaces in between were taken up by framed PR photos of sullen-faced bands I'd never heard of. The girl hunched behind the desk wore a hot pink vinyl jumpsuit. She had short, tortured hair and heavy jaws that worked rhythmically as she read Billboard to the accompaniment of moving lips. When I walked in, she looked up in amazement, as if I were the first person she'd seen all year.

"Dr. Alex Delaware here to see Mr. Oberheim."

"Oka-ay." She put down the magazine, dragged herself upright, and walked a few weary steps to the office. Opening the door without knocking, she shouted in:

"Roily, some guy named Alex to see you."

There was a mumbled reply, and she crooked her thumb toward the office and said, "G'wan."

The back room was small and dark and windowless, textured umber walls, an oak floor, the sole furniture half a dozen tie-dyed throw pillows. Oberheim squatted yoga-style on one of them, hands on his knees, smoking a conical clove cigarette. A single gold record hung on the wall over his head, creating a weird halo effect. The rest of the decor was more psychedelic posters, a goatskin rug, and a large hookah that filled one corner. Bracket shelves held stacks of LPs and a state-of-the-art stereo system. A scarred Fender bass lay flat on the rug.

"Mr. Oberheim, I'm Alex Delaware."

"Rolly O." He motioned toward the floor. "Rest."

I squatted down across from him.

"Smoke?"

"No, thanks."

He inhaled deeply on the cigarette and held the smoke in. What finally emerged was a thin, bitter stream that shimmered and made his face seem gelatinous before dissolving.

The face itself wasn't much to look at: coarse, jowly, and open-pored, with small, downturned eyes flanking a rosy bulb of a nose. His chin was mottled with scar tissue, the mouth above it concealed under a drooping brush of grey moustache. He was bald as an egg, except for a thin greying fringe that ran from temple to shouldertop. He wore a faded black Big Blue Nirvana T-shirt with a winged guitar logo and blue surgical scrub pants. The shirt was too tight and too small, exposing a hirsute tube of gut that ringed his waist. A small leather stash bag hung from the laces of the pants.

He looked me over, squinting through the smoke.

"Friend of Billy's huh?"

"More of an acquaintance. My fiancee builds his guitars."

"Oh, yeah," he rumbled, "spaceships, Popsicles, and six-string dildos, right?"

"I haven't seen any dildos yet." I grinned.

"You will, man. That's the way it's going. Away from substance, zoom into style. Strum a dildo, break platinum. Billy's a stone businessman, he knows where it's at."

He nodded his head in self-agreement.

"Fact is, even the style today has no style. Two chords on a synthesiser and a lot of filthy words. Not that I mind filth — I played my share of raunchy gigs — but to be meaningful, filth's got to go somewhere, you know? Carry the story. It ain't good enough to shock grandma."

He massaged his belly and took another hit of cloves.

"Anyway, no matter about all of that. Billy's all right; the boy can get down when he wants to." He coughed. "So your lady builds those toys, huh? Must be an interesting lady."

"She is."

"Maybe I should get me one of those things in a four-string model."

He pantomimed holding a bass and moved his fingers down an imaginary fretboard.

"Boom da boom, chukka boom, chukka boom. Big old furry dildo with a heavy bottom sound. What do you think?"

"It's got possibilities."

"Sure. Shoulda had one of those at the Cow Palace in 'sixty-eight'." He started humming in an incongruous falsetto. "Boom boom da boom. Here I am, mama, signed, sealed, delivered, and ha-ard. Can't you just see the little girl boppers squirm?"

He finished the cigarette and put it out in a ceramic ashtray.

"Shrink, huh?"

"That's right."

"Know Tim Leary?"

"I met him once at a convention. Years ago, when I was a student."

"Whaddya think?"

"Interesting fellow."

"Man's a genius. Fucking pioneer of the consciousness."

He looked to me for confirmation. I smiled noncommittally. He recrossed his legs and folded his arms across his chest.

"So, Alexander the Grateful, what is it you want to know?"

"Billy said you knew everyone on the Haight."

"An exaggeration" — he beamed — "but not a humungous one. It was a tight scene, one big family, fluid boundaries. Roily got tapped as one of the daddies."

"I'm trying to find out anything I can about two people who lived on the Haight back in 'sixty-six. Peter Cadmus and Margaret Norton. She also went by the name of Margo Sunshine."

I'd hoped the names would trigger a casual memory, but his smile died and his colour deepened.

"You're talking about dead people, man."

"You knew them personally?"

"What's the connection, man?"

I explained my involvement with Jamey, leaving out the fact that I'd been fired.

"Yeah. I should have known. Read about the kid in the papers. Very ugly shit. What do you want? To find out if his parents dropped acid, so you can blame it on twisted chromosomes, right? More witch hunts and reefer madness. Yo, Joe McCarthy."

"I'm not interested in that. All I want to find out is what they were like — as human beings — so I can understand him better."

"What they were like? They were beautiful. Part of a beautiful time."

He picked up a pack of clove cigarettes, stared at it, tossed it aside, and pulled a joint out of his stash bag. Lovingly and slowly he lit it, closed his eyes, sucked in a cloud of marijuana, and smiled.

"Dead people," he said after a while. "Hearing their name's pulling up heavy-duty associations. Beaming flashbacks on the old cerebrovideo." He shook his head. "Don't know if I want to get into that."

"Were you close to them?"

He looked at me as if I were retarded.

"There was no close and far. Everyone was everyone. One big collective consciousness. A la Jung. Peaceful. Beautiful. No one ripped anyone off because it woulda been like tearing off a hunk of your own skin."

During the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college I'd got a job in San Francisco, playing guitars in a dance band at the Mark Hopkins. Flower power had been in its heyday, and I'd paid several visits to the pharmacologic bazaar the hippies had carved out of the Haight-Ashbury ghetto. The streets of the Haight were a crazy quilt of social outcasts living on the edge: baby-faced bikers, whores, pimps, and other assorted jackals. A broth seasoned with unstable ingredients that boiled over frequently into violence, the talk of peace and love a dope-inspired illusion.

But I left Oberheim his memories unchallenged and asked him the name of the group Peter and Margo had lived with.

"They used to crash with a tribe called the Swine Club. Beautiful bunch of heads, lived in an old place right off Ashbury and ran free concerts in the park. They'd get veggies from dumpsters, cook up these big batches of rice, and give it away free, man. To anyone. Big parties. Be-ins. Nirvana gigged there all the time. So did Big Brother and Quicksilver and the Dead. Righteous all-day jams that made the place rock. The whole world was there. Even the Angels were cool. People would get up and rip off their clothes and dance. Little Margo was the wildest. She had a snake body, you know."

He inhaled, and a quarter of the joint glowed. When he finally exhaled, nothing came out but a paroxysm of dry coughing. After it stopped, he licked his moustache and smiled.

"What kind of guy was Peter?" I asked.

"Stone-beautiful. We used to call him Peter the Cad. 'Cause he was a righteous badass — an Errol Flynn, a fucking musketeer, you know? Dark and wild and beautifully dangerous. Ready for anything, man. Heavily into risk taking."

"What kinds of risks did he take?"

He waved his hand impatiently.

"Head games. Sticking one foot off the cliff and dangling, exploring the outer limits of the sensorium. A psychic pioneer. Like Dr. Tim."

He reflected on that and toked on the joint.

"Was Margo into games, too?"

He smiled blissfully.

"Margo was soft. Beautiful. Heavily into giving and sharing. She could boogie all night to just a drum and a tambura. Like a Gypsy lady, mystical and magical."

He went through two more king-sized joints before showing signs of intoxication, talking incessantly as he tooted. But it was dope talk, loosely associated and disjointed. About concerts that had taken place two decades ago, the scarcity of high-quality dope because the "mind police" had poisoned the fields with paraquat, a scheme to reassemble the original members of Big Blue Nirvana in order to plan a comback ("Except Dawg, man. He's a fucking lawyer with MGM. Stay away from that noise."). Cannabis dreams that told me nothing.

I sat patiently, trying to pry loose morsels of information about Peter and Margo, but he just repeated that they were beautiful, then veered off into more self-satisfying meanderings about the good old days, followed by indignant diatribes about the heartlessness of the contemporary music scene.

"A hundred fucking dollars to see Duran Duran in a society where heavy blues men with righteous chops eat out of garbage cans. Fucked up."

The third joint was out. He opened his mouth and swallowed the roach.

"Roily, do you remember anything about Peter's father visiting him?"

"Nope."

"How about Margo's pregnancy? Any memories of that?"

"Just that she was sick, man. She'd try to get up and dance, but after a couple of seconds she'd turn all greenish pale and start to heave. Bummer."

"How did she and Peter feel about the pregnancy?"

"Feel?" he was starting to mumble, and his head drooped drowsily.

"Emotionally. Were they happy about it?"

"Sure." His eyelids fluttered shut. "It was a happy time. Except for the war and the shit El BJ kept trying to pull, everything was a fucking giggle."

Suppressing a sigh, I played a long shot.

"You said the Angels hung around the concerts given by the Swine Club."

"Yeah. They were cool. This was before Jagger pulled that Altamont shit."

"Did Peter or Margo have any special relationship with the Angels or any other bikers?"

He yawned and shook his head. "No relationship was special. Everyone was loving. Equal."

"Did they hang out with bikers?"

"Unh-unh."

He was drifting off to sleep, and there was one question I had to ask. One that I'd been sitting on for the last hour.

"Roily, you've described Peter as someone with a real lust for life—"

"He lived to live, man."

"All right. But a few years later he ended up committing suicide. What could have led to that?"

That woke him up. He opened his eyes and glared at me angrily.

"Suicide is bullshit, man." His head bobbed like that of a toy dog on the rear deck of a low rider.

"What do you mean?"

"It doesn't happen," he said, whispering conspiratorially. "A fucking figment. The establishment uses it as a label to make rockers and head saints look like cop-outs. Janis, Jimi, Morrison, the Bear. Janis didn't off herself; she died from the pain of being. Jimi didn't off himself; the government shot him up with some kind of napalm because he knew too much truth and they wanted to shut his mouth. Morrison and the Bear aren't even dead. For all I know, Buddy Holly's with 'em. They're probably partying somewhere in the Greek isles. Suicide is bullshit, man. It doesn't happen."

"Peter—"

"Peter didn't off himself, man. He died in a head game. Like I told you."

"What kind of head game?"

"An ecstasy trip. Exploring the boundaries."

"Tell me more about it."

"Sure." He shrugged. "Why not? He used to play it all the time. Get naked, climb up on a chair, make this noose out of a silk rope, and put it around his neck. Bring his weight down on it so it was tight and stroke his cock till he came. He was something to see, moaning, like Jesus in ecstasy." He ran a stubby tongue over his lips and imitated a street-black patois: "He used to say the pressure heightened the pleasure."

He was mumbling, nearly incoherent, but I was listening acutely. He was describing a phenomenon known as eroticised hanging or autoerotic asphyxia, one of the more arcane sexual kinks, custom-designed for those who consider flirtation with death an enhancement to orgasm.

Eroticised hangers masturbate while a rope or other binding constricts their carotids, gradually increasing the pressure so that at the point of climax, the arteries are shut down completely. Some use complex systems of pulleys to hoist themselves to the noose. Others fold into bizarre contortions. Any way it's done, it's a quirky game and a dangerous one: If the masturbator loses consciousness before removing the rope or positions himself in such a way that liberation is prevented or unduly delayed, death by asphyxiation is inevitable.

"A game, you dig?" Oberheim smiled. "He liked to play games. And one day he lost. But that's cool."