JOI's microwave suicide and Avril: the detox errand, the turkey-bottle, "Death incarnate," the tears that never came

pivotal · 1 April YTSDB (2004)

• When: 1 April YTSDB (2004) per the archive's dating ruling
• What: In JOI's final month Avril "herself emerged and risked exterior transit" to drive him to a McLean's detox — "so I gather it was urgent" (Hal, scene 064). JOI then killed himself in the microwave. Per Notkin (scene 159), the special turkey-shaped Wild Turkey gift bottle by the oven "had been placed there by the spouse's widow-to-be," plausibly enraged that JOI had quit spirits "for" Madame Psychosis and never "for her"; and Joelle thought the widow "very possibly Death incarnate — her constant smile the rictal smile of some kind of thanatoptic figure," and found it bizarre JOI kept casting Joelle as Death "when he had the real thing right under his nose." Mario notes Avril, alone in the family, "never cried when Himself passed away" and afterward "got happier," "even taller."