Game

of the sofa as the siren-wail of his despondency grew louder, filling the room with the sound of a grown male who has lost every characteristic that separates man from infant from animal.
He wore a gold silk robe that was several sizes too small, exposing his scabbed knees. The ends of the sash just barely met to form a knot and the curtains of the robe hung half a foot apart, revealing a pale, hairless chest and, below it, saggy gray Calvin Klein boxer shorts. The only other item of clothing on his trembling body was a winter cap pulled tight over his skull.
It was June in Los Angeles.
"This living thing." He was speaking again. "It's so pointless."
He turned and looked at me through wet, red eyes. "It's Tic Tac Toe.
There's no way you can win. So the best thing to do is not to play it." There was no one else in the house. I would have to deal with this. He needed to be sedated before he snapped out of tears and back into anger. Each cycle of emotions grew worse, and this time I was afraid he'd do some¬
thing that couldn't be undone.
I couldn't let Mystery die on my watch. He was more than just a friend;
he was a mentor. He'd changed my life, as he had the lives of thousands of others just like me. I needed to get him Valium, Xanax, Vicodin, anything. I grabbed my phone book and scanned the pages for people most likely to have pills—people like guys in rock bands, women who'd just had plastic surgery, former child actors. But everyone I called wasn't home, didn't have any drugs, or claimed not to have any drugs because they didn't want to share.
There was only one person left to call: the woman who had triggered Mystery's downward spiral. She was a party girl; she must have something.
Katya, a petite Russian blonde with a Smurfette voice and the energy of a Pomeranian puppy, was at the front door in ten minutes with a Xanax and a worried look on her face.
"Do not come in," I warned her. "He'll probably kill you." Not that she didn't entirely deserve it,...