Notkin's party; Joelle's overdose (pp. 231–232)

The suicide is named as an entertainment, and the name is the theme's darkest pun. Joelle's plan to freebase herself to death is rendered as "fifteen more minutes of Too Much Fun" — the killing dose spoken of the way you'd speak of a last indulgence, pleasure and self-erasure fused into one phrase. And the god she invokes is "the blind god of all doorless cages," which is the Entertainment's own deity: a pleasure that neither sees you nor offers any exit, only more of itself. Before the book has told us Joelle is the face inside the lethal cartridge, she is already living its logic to the letter — pursuing fun past the point where fun means anything, into the too-much that is indistinguishable from death, inside a cage whose door is painted on.