Over the Edge Read Online Free PDF Page A

I'm going now. Be back around seven. How about dinner out?' 'Sure.'
    'I have a craving for Indian. Does varnish go with tandoori chicken?'
    'It does if you've got the right wine.' She laughed, fluffed her hair, came over, and kissed my forehead. 'Catch you later, sweetie.'
    After she left, I slept for a couple of hours. I awoke feeling fuzzy, but a shower and a glass of orange juice made me feel semi-human.
    Dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, I went into the library to work. My desk was stacked with papers. It had never been like me to procrastinate, but I was still unaccustomed to being busy.
    Three years earlier, at thirty-three, I'd fled burnout by retiring prematurely from the practice of psychology. My plan had been to loaf and live off investments indefinitely, but the leisurely life ended up being far more exciting - and bloody - than I could have known. One year and a reconstructed jaw later, I crawled out of my cave and began working part-time - accepting a few court-ordered custody evaluations and short-term consultations. Now, though still not ready for the commitment of long-term therapy cases, I'd increased my consult load to where I felt like a working-man again.
    I stayed at the desk until one, finishing two reports to judges, then drove into Brentwood to have them typed, photocopied, and mailed. I stopped at a place on San Vicente for a sandwich and a beer and, while waiting for the food to arrive, used a pay phone to call Canyon Oaks. I asked the operator if Jamey Cadmus had been found yet, and she referred me to the day shift supervisor, who referred me to Mainwaring. His secretary told me he was in conference and wouldn't be available until late afternoon. I left my service number and asked him to return the call.
    My table was near the window. I watched joggers in peacock-hued sweat suits huff along the grassy median and picked at my lunch. Leaving most of it on the plate, I paid the bill and drove back home.
    Returning to the library, I unlocked one of the cabinets under the bookshelves. Inside were several cardboard cartons packed with the files of former patients. It took a while to find Jamey's - I'd vacated my office with haste, and the alphabetisation was haphazard - but soon I had it in my hands.
    Sinking down in the old leather sofa, I began to read. As I turned the pages, the past materialised through the haze of data. Soon vague recollections began to take on shape and form; they rushed in noisily, like poltergeists, evoking a clamour of memories.
    I'd met Jamey while consulting on a research study of highly gifted children conducted at UCLA. The woman who ran the grant had a thing about the genius-insanity stereotype: She was out to disprove it. The project emphasised intensive academic stimulation of its young subjects -college-level work for ten-year-olds, teenagers earning doctorates - and though critics charged that such super-acceleration was too stressful for tender minds, Sarita Flowers believed just the opposite: Boredom and mediocrity were the real threats to the kids' well-being. ('Feed the brain to keep it sane, Alex.') Certain that the data would support her hypothesis, she asked me to monitor the mental health of the whiz kids. For the most part, that meant casual rap groups and a counselling session now and then.
    With Jamey it had evolved into something more.
    I reviewed my notes from our first session and recalled how surprised I'd been when he showed up at my door wanting to talk. Of all the kids in the project, he'd seemed the least open, enduring group discussions with a distant look on his pale, round face, never volunteering information, responding to questions with shrugs and noncommittal grunts. Sometimes his detachment stretched to retreating between the pages of a volume of poetry while the others chattered precociously. I wondered, now, if those asocial tendencies had been a warning sign of things to come.
    It had been a Friday - the day I spent on campus. I'd been