On his drive down to New York City for Linc’s funeral, Sabbath considers death by suicide and tells his mother’s ghost about Nikki.

Nikki won a full scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts as a young woman. She and her mother moved to London and stayed above a hat store while she completed her studies. After graduating, Nikki returned to New York, only going back to London when her mother was dying. She died while Nikki was in the bathroom, and Nikki refused to leave her or let anyone take her body for days. Sabbath arrived and admonished Nikki for her behavior.

He finally forced Nikki to let her mother go, and a man from a funeral parlor came to prepare the body before cremation. Sabbath had to pull her away from the funeral parlor. She admitted that she’d received pills from the doctor who declared her mother dead to help her process her grief, and once she stopped taking them, she returned to normal.

In 1953, Sabbath was a finger-puppet performer on the streets of New York who performed sexually suggestive shows, even occasionally unbuttoning and caressing girls. This eventually led to an arrest and obscenity charges. It was through these performances that he met Nikki, and soon they were a theatrical team with an established theater.