A Long Line of Dead Men

"But I'm running off at the mouth. Four sentences, really, is all that's required, name, age, fact, and feeling. We'll start at this table, I think, with you, Ken, and we'll just go around…"

"I'm Kendall McGarry, I'm twenty-four, and the most interesting fact about me is that an ancestor of mine signed the Declaration of Independence. I don't know how I feel about joining the club. Excited, I guess, and also that it's a big step, although I don't know why it should be. I mean, it's just one night a year…"

"John Youngdahl, twenty-seven. The most interesting…well, just about the only fact about me I can think of these days is I'm getting married a week from Sunday. That's got my head so scrambled I can't tell you how I feel about anything, but I have to say I'm glad to be here, and to be a part of all this…"

"I'm Bob Berk. That's B-e-r-k, not B-u-r-k-e, so I'm Jewish, not Irish, and I don't know why I seem to feel compelled to mention that. Maybe that's the most interesting thing about me. Not that I'm Jewish, but that it's the first thing out of my mouth. Oh, I'm twenty-five, and how do I feel? Like you all belong here and I don't, but that's how I always feel, and I'm probably not the only person here who feels that way, right? Or maybe I am, I don't know…"

"Brian O'Hara, and that's with an apostrophe and a capital H, so I'm Irish, not Japanese…"

* * *

"I'm Lewis Hildebrand. I'm twenty-five. I don't know if its interesting, but I'm one-eighth Cherokee. As for how I feel, I can hardly say how I feel. I have the sense of being a part of something much larger than myself, something that started before me and will extend beyond my lifetime…"

"I'm Gordon Walser, age thirty. I'm an account executive at Stilwell Reade and Young, but if that's the most interesting thing about me I'm in troubleWell, here's something hardly anybody knows about me. I was born with a sixth finger on each hand. I had surgery when I was six months old. You can see the scar on the left hand but not on the right…"

"I'm James Severance… I don't know what's interesting about me. Maybe the most interesting thing is that I'm here with all of you right now. I don't know what I'm doing here, but it sort of feels like a turning point…"

"My name's Bob Ripley, and I've heard all the Believe It or Not jokes…One thought I had before I got here tonight is that it's morbid to have a club of people who are just waiting to die. But that's not how it feels at all. I agree with Lew, I have the sense that I've become a part of something important…"

"… know it's superstitious, but the thought keeps coming to me that forcing ourselves to be aware of the inevitability of death will just make it come along sooner…"

"… a car accident the night of high school graduation. There were six of us in my best friend's Chevy Impala and everybody else was killed. I got a broken collarbone and a couple of superficial cuts. That's the most interesting thing about me, and it's also how I feel about tonight. See, that was eight years ago, and I've had death on my mind ever since…"

"… I think the only way to describe how I feel is to say that the only other time I felt anything like this was the night my baby daughter was born…"

* * *

Thirty men, ranging in age from twenty-two to thirty-two. All of them white, all of them living in or aroundNew York City. They'd all had some college, and most had graduated. More than half were married. More than a third had children. One or two were divorced.

Now, thirty-two years later, more than half of them were dead.

2

By the time I met Lewis Hildebrand, thirty-two years and six weeks after he became a member of the club of thirty-one, he had lost a lot of hair in front and thickened considerably through the middle. His blond hair, parted on the side and slicked back, was silver at the temples. He had a broad, intelligent face, large hands, a firm but unaggressive grip. His suit, blue with a chalk stripe, must have cost a thousand dollars. His wristwatch was a twenty-dollar Timex.

He had called me late the previous afternoon at my hotel room. I still had the room, although for a little over a year I'd been living with Elaine in an apartment directly across the street. The hotel room was supposed to be my office, although it was by no means a convenient place to meet clients. But I'd lived alone in it for a good many years. I seemed to be reluctant to let go of it.

He told me his name and said he'd got mine from Irwin Meisner. "I'd like to talk to you," he said. "Do you suppose we could meet for lunch? And is tomorrow too soon?"

"Tomorrow's fine," I said, "but if it's something extremely urgent I could make time this evening."

"It's not that urgent. I'm not sure it's urgent at all. But it's very much on my mind, and I don't want to put it off." He might have been talking about his annual physical, or an appointment with his dentist. "Do you know the Addison Club? On East Sixty-seventh? And shall we say twelve-thirty?"

* * *