The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

Richard Burgin The Identity Club

From TriQuarterly

Sometimes you meet someone who is actually achieving what you can only strive for. It’s not exactly like meeting your double, it’s more like seeing what you would be if you could realize your potential. Those were the feelings that Remy had about Eugene. In appearance they were similar, although Eugene was younger by a few years and taller by a few inches. But they each had fine dark hair, still untouched by any gray, and they each had refined facial features, especially their delicate noses. Eugene’s body, however, was significantly more muscular than Remy’s.

At the agency in New York where Remy had worked for three years writing ad copy, Eugene was making a rapid and much talked about ascent. A number of Remy’s other colleagues openly speculated that Eugene was advancing because he was a masterful office politician. But when Remy began working with him on an important new campaign for a client who manufactured toothpaste, he saw that wasn’t true at all. Eugene had a special kind of brilliance, not just for writing slogans or generating campaign ideas, but a deep insight into human motivations and behavior that he knew how to channel into making people buy products. Rather than being a master diplomat, Remy discovered that Eugene was aloof almost to the point of rudeness, never discussed his private life, and rarely showed any signs of a sense of humor. Yet Remy admired him enormously and wondered if Eugene, who Remy thought of as one of the wisest men he knew (certainly the wisest young man), might be a person he could confide in about the Identity Club and the important decision he had to make in the near future.

All of these thoughts were streaming through Remy’s mind after work one night in his apartment when the phone rang. It was Poe calling to remind him about the Identity Club meeting that night. Remy nearly gasped as he’d inexplicably lost track of time and now had only a half hour to meet Poe and take a cab with him to the meeting.

The club itself had to be, almost by definition, a secretive organization that placed a high value on its members’ trustworthiness, dependability, and punctuality. Its members assumed the identities — the appearance, activities, and personalities — (whenever they could) of various celebrated dead artists they deeply admired. At the monthly meetings, which Remy enjoyed immensely and thought of as parties, all members would be dressed in their adopted identities, drinking and eating and joking with each other. As soon as he stepped into a meeting he could feel himself transform, as if the colors of his life went from muted grays and browns to glowing reds and yellows and vibrant greens and blues. To be honest with himself, since moving to New York from New England three years ago, his life before the club had been embarrassingly devoid of both emotion and purpose. How lucky for him, he often thought, that he’d been befriended by Winston Reems — now known by club members as Salvador Dali — a junor executive at his agency who had slowly introduced him to the club.

This month’s meeting was at the new Bill Evans’s apartment (who had patterned himself after the famous jazz pianist) and since Remy enjoyed music he was particularly looking forward to it. He had also been told that Thomas Bernhard, named for the late, Austrian writer, would definitely be there as well. As Bernhard was renowned for being a kind of hermit it was always special when he did attend a meeting and it made sense that as a former professional musician he would go to this one.

Quickly Remy dried off from his shower and began putting on new clothes. He thought that tonight promised to be an especially interesting mix of people, which was one of the ostensible ideas of the organization, to have great artists from the different arts meet and mingle, as they never had in real life. The decision facing Remy, which he’d given a good deal of thought to without coming any closer to a conclusion, was who he was going to “become” himself. He was considered at present an “uncommitted member” and had been debating between Nathanael West and some other writers. Nabokov, whom he might have seriously considered, had already been taken. At least, since he still had a month before he had to commit, he didn’t have to dress in costume — though he rather looked forward to that. Remy had been a member for four months and it was now time for him to submit to a club interview to help him decide whose identity he was best suited for. Sometimes these interviews were conducted by the entire membership, which reminded Remy of a kind of intervention, other times by the host of that evening’s meeting or by some other well-established member. The new member was never informed in advance, as these “probings” were taken very seriously and the club wanted a spontaneous and true response.

One of the reasons Remy was having difficulty choosing an identity — and why he felt some anxiety about the whole process — was that he’d kept secret from the club his hidden contempt, or at least ambivalence, about the advertising business and his disappointment with the emptiness of his own life as well. No wonder he found refuge in art and in imagining the lives that famous artists led. He’d heard other members confess to those exact sentiments, but the public admission of these feelings would be difficult for Remy. He thought it was the inevitable price he had to pay to get his membership in the club, and along with his work and Eugene (whose importance to him Remy also kept secret) the club was his only interest in life, the only thing worth thinking about.

Poe was waiting for him in front of his brownstone, dressed, as Remy expected, in a black overcoat with his long recently dyed dark hair parted in the middle, the approximate match of his recently dyed mustache.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” Remy said.

Poe stared at him. “Something is preoccupying you,” he said.

“You’re right about that,” Remy said, thinking of Eugene and wishing he could somehow be at the party.

“Do you mind if we walk?” Poe said. “There’s something in the air tonight I crave, although I couldn’t say exactly what it is. Some dark bell-like sound, some secret perfumed scent coming from the night that draws me forward... besides,” he said, with a completely straight face, as he took a swallow of some kind of alcohol concealed in a brown paper bag, “it will be just as fast or just as slow as a taxi.”

“Fine,” Remy said; he felt he was hardly in a position to object. In the club Remy suspected that members assumed their identities with varying degrees of intensity. Clearly Poe was unusually committed to his to the point where he had renounced his former name, become a poet, short story writer, and alcoholic, and given up dating women his age. Because he worked mostly at home doing research on the Internet he was able to be in character pretty much around the clock.

“You need to focus on your choice,” Poe said. “You have an important decision facing you and not much time to make it.”

“I hope I’ll know during the probing,” Remy said. “I hope it will come to me then.”

“Listen to your heart, even if it makes too much noise,” Poe said, smiling ironically.

They walked in silence the rest of the way, Poe sometimes putting his hands to his ears as if Roderick Usher were reacting to too strident a sound. As they were approaching the steps to Evans’s walkup, from which they could already hear a few haunting chords on the piano, Poe turned to Remy and said, “Are you aware that we’re voting on the woman issue tonight?”

“Yes, I knew that.”

Poe was referring to the question of whether or not the Identity Club, which was currently a de facto men’s club, would begin to actively recruit women. Remy had sometimes thought of the club as practicing a form of directed reincarnation, but did that mean that in the next world the club didn’t want to deal with any women? “I’m going to vote that we should recruit them. How can we fully be who we’ve become without women? I need them for my poetry, and to love of course. I think the organization should try to increase our chances to meet them, not isolate us from them.”

“I completely agree with you,” Remy said.

They rang the bell and Dali opened the door, bowing grandly and pointing toward a dark, barely furnished, yet somehow chaotic apartment.

“It’s Bill Evans’s home. I knew it would be a mess,” Poe said quietly to Remy, drinking again from his brown paper bag.

Evans was bent over the piano, head characteristically suspended just above the keys, as he played the coda of his composition “Re: Person I Knew.” He also had long dark hair but was clean-shaven. From the small sofa — the only one in the room — Erik Satie shouted “Bravo! Encore!” Remy couldn’t remember seeing any photographs of the French composer but judged his French to be authentic. As a tribute to his admirer, Evans played a version of Satie’s most famous piano piece, “Gymnopedie,” which Remy recalled the former Evans had recorded on his album Nirvana. This was the first time Remy had heard the new Bill Evans play and while he was hardly an Evans scholar he thought it sounded quite convincing. The harmony, the soft touch and plaintive melodic lines were all there (no doubt learned from a book that had printed Evans’s solos and arrangements) though, of course, some mistakes were made and the new Evans’s touch wasn’t as elegant as the first one’s. Still, Remy could see that the new Evans’s immersion into his identity had been thorough. Remy had recently seen a video of the former Evans playing and could see that the new one had his body movements down pat. Could he, Remy, devote himself as thoroughly to the new identity he would soon be assuming?

“Encore, encore,” said Satie again and now also Cocteau, who had joined his old friend and collaborator on the sofa. Continuing his homage to his French admirers, Evans played “You Must Believe in Spring” by the French composer Michel Legrand. When it ended Remy found himself applauding vigorously as well and becoming even more curious about the former life of the new Evans. All he knew was that he’d once been a student at Juilliard and was involved now in selling computer parts. He wished he’d paid more attention when he talked with him five months ago at the meeting but now it was too late, as members were not allowed to discuss their former identities with each other once they’d committed to a new one.

After a brief rendition of “Five,” Evans took a break and Remy slowly sidled up to him, wishing again that Eugene were there. Though he was often aloof, when the situation required, Eugene always knew just what to say to people. What to say and not a word more, for Eugene had the gift of concision, just as Evans did on the piano.

“That was beautiful playing,” Remy finally said.

“Thanks, man,” Evans said, slowly raising his head and smiling at him. Like the first Bill Evans, his teeth weren’t very good and he wore glasses.

“I know how hard it is to keep that kind of time, and to swing like that without your trio.”

“I miss the guys but sometimes when I play alone I feel a oneness with the music that I just can’t get any other way.”

It occurred to Remy that Evans had had at least four different trios throughout his recording career and that he didn’t know which trio Evans was “missing” because he didn’t know what stage of Evans’s life the new one was now living. Perhaps sensing this, Evans said, “When Scotty died last year I didn’t even know if I could continue. I couldn’t bring myself to even look for a new bassist for a long time or to record either. And when I did finally go in the studio again a little while ago, it was a solo gig.”

Remy now knew that for Evans it was about 1962, since Scott LaFaro, his young former bassist, had died in a car accident in 1961.

“Do you play, man?” Evans asked.

“Just enough to tell how good you are,” Remy said.

“So there’s no chance you could become a musician?”

“No, no, I couldn’t do it.”

“I know this identity thing is difficult to handle at first.”

“It is for me. It really is,” Remy said, touched by the note of sympathy in Evans’s voice.

“Do you do any of the arts, man?”

“Not with anything like your level of skill or Dali’s or any of the other members, for that matter. I write a little at my job.. but you could hardly call it art. There’s a man, a rising star at my ad agency named Eugene who’s working on a campaign with me now who has the most original ideas and comes up with the most brilliant material who really is an artist. If he were here, instead of me, he could become George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde.”

“Have you spoken to him about the club?”

“No, no. I don’t really know him that well. I mean he barely knows I exist.”

“Anyway, I’ve been speaking to some of the other members and there’s definitely growing support to include men of letters in the club, you know, critics of a high level like Edmund Wilson or Marshall McLuhan.”

“Oh no, I don’t know anywhere near enough to be Edmund Wilson or McLuhan either. I figure if I become a member it will be as a novelist. I was thinking of Nathanael West, or maybe James Agee.”

“Either way you’d have to go young.”

Remy looked at Evans to be sure he was joking but saw that he looked quite serious. A chilling thought flitted through his mind. Did the committed members have a secret rule that they had to die at the same age their “adopted artists” did? And if so, was it merely a symbolic death of their identity or their actual physical death duplicated as closely as possible? Was the Identity Club, which he’d thought of as devoted to a form of reincarnation, then, actually devoted in the long run to a kind of delayed suicide? Of course this was probably a preposterous fantasy, still, he couldn’t completely dismiss it.

“But you’ll have to die young too then,” Remy said, remembering that Bill Evans had died at fifty-one. He said this with a half smile so it could seem he was joking. Evans looked around himself nervously before he answered.

“I find that Zen really helps me deal with the death thing.”

Remy took a step back and nodded silently. His head had begun to hurt and after he saw that Evans wanted to play again he excused himself to use the bathroom. Once there, however, he realized that he’d forgotten to bring his Tylenol. He opened the mirrored cabinet, was blinded by a variety of pharmaceuticals but found nothing he could take. He closed the cabinet and heard Evans playing the opening chorus of “Time Remembered,” one of his best compositions. The music was startlingly lovely but then partially drowned out by a loud coughing in the hallway. Remy turned and saw Thomas Bernhard, face temporarily buried in a handkerchief.

“Are you looking for something?” Bernhard said in a German accent.

“I have a headache.”

“How fragile we are, yet how determined. So you are looking for?...”

“Some Tylenol.”

“Ah! You have a headache and I have some Tylenol,” Bernhard said, withdrawing a small bottle from the cavernous pocket of his corduroy sports jacket.

“Since my illness I am nothing but pills, my kingdom for a pill. Here...” he said, handing Remy the bottle.

Remy took two and swallowed them.

“Thanks a lot,” he said. Bernhard nodded, and half bowed in a gently mocking way.

“So, have you decided to become Nathanael West or not?”

“I understand that I’d have to die quite young then and quite violently,” Remy said, laughing uncertainly.

Bernhard’s eyes had a heightened, almost shocked expression. Then he started coughing loudly and persistently again. Remy waited a half minute, finally saying, “Why don’t you drink some water?” He got out of the bathroom area, half directing Bernhard to the sink, and returned to the living room.

“Is he all right?” Poe said, meeting him in the hallway. He was drinking from a half-empty wine bottle.

“Yes, I think so,” Remy said. But I’m not, he said to himself. For the first time he felt profoundly uncomfortable at a club meeting. The pressure of having to make his identity decision was oppressive and worse still were the dark fears he now had about the club’s policies. The original conceit of the club had amused him in the titillating way he liked to be amused, but if he were right about his suspicions, then the club was far more literal about its directed reincarnation than he’d realized. If he were right about the death rule, to commit to an identity was to select all aspects of your fate including when you would die. And what if one changed one’s mind and didn’t want to cooperate after committing, what then?

The pain in Remy’s head was excruciating and at the first polite opportunity he excused himself, heaping more praise on Evans for the wonderful evening before he closed the door... and shuddered.

He decided not to return the phone calls he got from three club members over the next two days. To say anything while he was uncertain what to do about the Identity Club could be a mistake. On the one hand he’d been profoundly upset by what he thought he might have discovered about its policies, on the other hand the club was the nucleus of what social life he had and would be very difficult to give up. Besides his job, the Identity Club was his only consistent base of human contact.

Remy began to throw himself into the new campaign with more passion than he’d ever shown at the agency. Largely due to Eugene’s contributions, it was succeeding and, as expected, it was Eugene who benefited the most from it with the agency higher-ups. It was not that Eugene worked harder than Remy; it was simply that he could accomplish twice as much with less effort because he was so talented in the field. Still, Remy didn’t begrudge him his success. Instead his interest in Eugene grew even stronger as he continued to watch and study him. He felt if he could become Eugene’s friend and confide in him, than Eugene might know just what he should do about the Identity Club.

As Remy suspected, Eugene led a highly ritualized existence in the workplace. It wasn’t difficult to arrange a “chance meeting” at the elevator banks and to quickly ask him to have a drink in a way he couldn’t refuse. They went to a bar on Restaurant Row — Remy feeling happier than he had in days. But once outside the agency Eugene seemed tense and remote, and sitting across from him at the bar he avoided eye contact and spoke sparsely in a strangely clipped tone that forced Remy to become uncharacteristically aggressive.

“We’re all so grateful for the work you did on the campaign. It was just amazing,” Remy said. Eugene nodded and said a muted thank you. It was as if Remy had just said to him “nice shirt you’re wearing.”

“I’m really proud to have you as a colleague,” Remy added for good measure.

Again Eugene nodded, but this time said nothing and Remy began to feel defeated and strangely desperate. He waited until their eyes locked for a moment then said, “Do you know what the Identity Club is?” The immediate reddening of Eugene’s face told Remy that he did.

“What makes you think that I would know?”

“I know some of the key members in the club came from our agency.”

Eugene raised his eyebrows but still said nothing.

“In fact, I’m a member myself or a potential member.”

“Then what is it you think I would know about the club that you wouldn’t know already?”

“Fair enough,” Remy said, clearing his throat and finishing his beer.

“I’ll be a little more candid. I’m a member in that I’ve been attending the meetings but I’m not a completely committed member. I’ve been trying to decide whether to commit to the club completely and since I respect you and admire your judgment so much I thought I would ask you about it.”

“I tend to avoid organizations that have a strong ideology, especially ones that try to convert you to their worldview. I think they are unappetizing and often dangerous.”

“Why is it dangerous?” Remy asked.

“Any organization that asks you to alter your life, or to jeopardize it and in many cases to give it up is to be avoided like the plague. Is, in fact, the plague... I’m just making this as a general statement, OK? I’m not saying anything about your club specifically,” Eugene said hurriedly, looking away from Remy when he tried to make eye contact with him again.

“Thank you for your advice.”

“It wasn’t advice about anything specific. Remember that. It was just a general observation on the nature of organizations.”

“Thank you for your observations then. I appreciate it and will keep it completely confidential.”

Eugene seemed more relaxed then but five minutes later excused himself, saying he had to leave for another appointment. Remy could barely make himself stand when Eugene left, he felt so frozen with disappointment. When he did begin to move he felt strangely weightless, like a dizzy ghost passing down a dreamlike street. It was as if for the first time the universe had revealed its essential emptiness to him and he was completely baffled by it. In his life before New York there had always been some kind of support for him. First his parents, when he was a child, of course. Perhaps he left them too soon. Then his teachers when he went to school where he also met his friends who were now dispersed around the country as he was, though none of them had landed in New York. The Identity Club had filled that void, he supposed, although not completely or else Eugene wouldn’t have been so important to him. But now it was clear that Eugene wanted little to do with him and it was also becoming increasingly clear (from the meeting at Evans’s house to the dark advice of Eugene) that there were real problems, some of them perhaps dangerous, with the club. But how could he bear to leave it? The truth was he could hardly bring himself to focus on these problems, much less think them through in any systematic way. He could barely bring himself to get to work on time, dressed properly and able to smile, and could hardly remember that in the past he had always prided himself on being neat, on time, and amiable — the ultimate team player. After work, the next day, he went directly home as if there were some awful menace on the streets he had to flee.

In his apartment he found it difficult to sit still, and nearly impossible to sleep. He began pacing from wall to wall of his apartment, trying to move without any thought or even excess motion, like a fish in an aquarium, varying his passage as little as possible as he continued his routine.

Then, finally, a change. The phone rang in his aquarium, he picked it up for some reason, following some fish-like impulse, and heard the voice of Bill Evans saying, “I’ve got to talk to you, man.”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“Not on the phone. Are you free now?”

Remy thought of the dark streets and wasn’t sure how to answer.

“It’s important.”

“OK,” Remy said.

“You know Coliseum Books on Fifty-ninth Street?”

“Yes.”

“Meet me there in half an hour. I’ll be in the mystery section.”

Remy hung up and continued pacing rapidly for a minute, like a fish doing double time. Then he stopped and began wondering if he should call a cab or not — would it really be any safer? And as he thought, the water around him evaporated, as did his feeling of having gills and a fish persona. He was so happy about that he decided to run the twenty blocks to the bookstore, keeping his mind as thought-free as possible although he did feel a low but persistent level of anxiety the whole way.

As promised, Evans was in the mystery section in a long black overcoat looking at or pretending to look at a book by Poe with his black-rimmed glasses. Their eyes met quickly, Evans, looking around himself, half nodding, but waiting until Remy was next to him before he spoke in a low voice barely louder than a whisper.

“We can talk here, man.”

“What is it?” Remy said. He wanted to say more but couldn’t, as if all those silent hours away in the aquarium made him forget how to talk.

“There are some things I think you don’t know, that I want you to know.”

“What things?”

“About the club and its ideas. When I was talking to you at the last meeting you looked confused when I was referring to my trio, like you didn’t know how old I was.”

“But then I figured it out.”

“Yah, man, cause I talked about Scotty’s death and the record I made a year later. You figured it out ‘cause you know about my career. But let me lay it out to you in simple terms ‘cause you’re going to have to make an important commitment at the next meeting and when you make it it’s like a complete life commitment. When you take on a new identity there are a lot of rewards, but also a lot of demands. You have to do a tremendous amount of research too and you have to have a lot of strength to leave your old self completely behind. In that sense you have to kill your old self and its old life. The only thing you can keep is your job but you have to do your job the way Nathanael West would, if you go ahead and decide to become him. That’s why it takes so much courage and faith as well as work — time spent in a library, or whatever, doing as much research on him as you can. And finally, well let me ask you how old you are?”

“Twenty-nine,” Remy said in a voice now barely above a whisper.

“OK, man. You’ll live the life West did at twenty-nine, you’ll take on his life in chronological order from twenty-nine on, so when you turn thirty West will turn thirty until...”

“Until when?”

“Until he dies, man. I wanted you to understand that. That’s where the courage and faith part come in.”

“But he died so young.”

“Like I said, I’m gonna pass pretty soon too, but I’m also going to play jazz piano more beautifully than anyone’s ever played it — that’s the reward part — and besides, as long as the club exists I’ll be reincarnated again somewhere down the line.”

“But you‘ll be dead.”

“No man, I’ll be Bill Evans reincarnated. I might have to wait a number of years but like my song says, ‘We Will Meet Again,’” Evans said with an ironic smile.

Remy looked down at the floor to get his bearings.

“Do all the members understand this when they make their commitment?”

“Don’t worry about the other members. Just focus on yourself.”

“But what if I lack the courage and vision to do this, to...”

“Have you been studying the club literature, especially the parts about reincarnation?”

“Not as much as I should have. Look, Bill, what if I decide I can’t go through with this and just want to withdraw my membership?”

“I wouldn’t advise that, man,” Evans said with unexpected sternness. “I really think it’s too late for that in your case.”

Instinctively Remy took a step back — his face turning a shade of white that, in turn, made Evans’s eyes grow larger and more intense.

“Do you realize the invaluable work we’re doing?”

“Yes, no,” Remy said.

“We’re saving the most important members of the human race — allowing their beauty to continue to touch humanity.”

“But you’re killing them again. Why not give the, give yourself, for example, a chance to live longer to see what you could do with more time?”

Evans shook his head from side to side like a pendulum.

“You can’t go against karma, man. We have to accept our limits.” Remy took another step back and Evans extended his arm and let his hand rest on his shoulder.

“This world is as beautiful as it can get. You have to accept it. You know, like the poet said, ‘death is the mother of beauty.’”

“It sounds more like a suicide club than an identity club,” Remy blurted.

“Sometimes when something is really important or beautiful you have to die for it, like freedom. Isn’t that why all the wars are fought?”

“But most wars are stupid and preventable.”

“Death isn’t preventable, man. We know this. Every bar of every tune I play knows this. It’s like we accept this unstated contract with the world when we’re born that we understand we’ll have to die but we’ll live out our destiny anyway.”

“But all of science and medicine is trying to extend life, to defeat death.”

“They’ll never succeed, man. We know that, that’s why we’re a club of artists. Death and reincarnation is stronger than freedom. You have to give your life to forces that are bigger than you. Isn’t that the unstated contract we all understand once we realize what death is? Isn’t that humility the biggest part about what being a man is, man?”

Remy bowed his head, surprised that Evans was such a forceful speaker, and spoke with such complete conviction to the point where he had almost moved himself to tears. But all Remy felt was a desire to flee, to hide under his blanket and have the Identity Club, the agency, and New York itself all turn out to be a hideous dream.

“As a matter of fact I took a risk seeing you like this and laying it all out for you.”

“I appreciate that and I’ll never tell anyone what we spoke about. I won’t mention it to anyone at the agency, I promise. The agency is really a key player in all of this, isn’t it?”

“I can’t get into that, man.”

Remy nodded and felt a chill spread over him.

“Again, thank you for meeting me and for everything you told me, which, of course, I’ll keep completely confidential,” Remy said. He thought he should shake hands with Evans then, but couldn’t bring himself to do it, instead found himself backing away from him.

“Remember how important beauty is and courage,” Evans said, looking him straight in the eye.

“I’ll remember everything you told me.”

“See you at the next meeting then.”

“Yes,” Remy said, “I’ll see you then.”

He walked out of the store dreading the streets, feeling someone from the club might be following him. It was entirely possible that Evans might have tipped off somebody and had them tail him or perhaps had already informed someone at the agency. Had he made Evans feel he would cooperate and go forward with his membership? He could only hope so.

It was cold, even for New York in December. The wind was unusually strong and seemed to blow through him as if he were hollow. It was odd how people often said that because New York had so many people you often felt anonymous or alone but to Remy that night, the abundance of people simply increased the odds that one of them was following him. And if he thought about it he could always feel that someone was, simply because it was numerically impossible to keep track of everyone walking near him.

In his apartment again, Remy went back to the aquarium and to his fish-like movements through it. He hated the aquarium, especially since he felt so feverish, but it kept him from thinking, which would be still worse. He must have stayed in it pacing for hours, sleeping only for an hour or two on his sofa in the early morning. Fortunately he had saved up all his sick days and could now call the secretary at the agency and tell her, quite honestly, that he was too ill to come in.

After making the call, Remy went to his room and lay down, too dizzy to keep moving around. But as soon as his head hit the pillow he was assailed by a steady procession of thoughts, images, and snatches of dialogue about the club. He saw the hard look in Evans’s eyes as he said, “I really think it’s too late for that.” The worried look (the first time he’d ever seen that expression on Eugene’s face) as he said, “I’m just making this as a general statement, OK? I’m not saying anything about your club specifically.” He saw the horrified expression in Bernhard’s eyes in the hallway and heard his coughing fit again. He should have waited till the fit ended, he thought, and gotten some kind of definitive answer from him. Then he saw an image of Poe’s face as he stood in front of his apartment the night of Evans’s party, heard him say again “something is preoccupying you.” Was Poe in on it too? Should he try to inform him? It seemed some members knew more than others. Perhaps there really was a secret membership within the membership that had the real knowledge of what the Identity Club truly believed and what it was prepared to do to enforce its beliefs.

Remy stayed in his apartment the entire day, eating Lean Cuisines and canned soup. Intermittently he tried watching TV or listening to the radio but everything reminded him of the club, as if all the voices he heard on TV and the radio were really members of the club. He no longer was as frightened of the streets the next morning since nothing had proved to be more torturous than the last sleepless hours in his apartment. Instead he was almost happy to return to the agency and certainly eager to immerse himself in work. Somewhat to his surprise he found himself whistling a bouncy jingle in the elevator, which, in fact, was the theme song for the new toothpaste campaign he’d worked on with Eugene.

The mood in the office was decidedly different, however. The receptionist barely acknowledged him, and when he looked at her more closely, appeared to be wiping tears from her eyes. Little groups of silent, stone-like figures were whispering in the hallway as if they were in a morgue. Remy took a few steps forward toward his office, hesitated, then walked back to the receptionist’s desk and stared at her until she finally looked at him.

“What happened?” Remy said.

“It’s Eugene,” she said tearfully. “He died last night. Here, it’s in the paper,” she said, handing him a Daily News.

“Oh my God,” Remy said, immediately tucking the newspaper inside his briefcase and walking soldier straight down the rest of the hall until he reached his office, where he could close his door and lock it. On page seven he found out everything he needed to know. Eugene had fallen to his death from the balcony of his midtown Manhattan apartment. At this point, the article said, “it was yet to be determined if foul play was involved.”

Remy let the paper drop on his desk, looked out his window at the maze of buildings and streets below, and shivered. Everything was suddenly starting to fall into place like the pieces of a monstrous puzzle. That so many people in the club came from the agency, that Eugene was so obviously nervous when he obliquely spoke against it, that Evans said he was “taking a risk” talking to him two days ago at Coliseum Books. Obviously, Eugene’s death was no accident. He’d been punished for trying to dissuade potential members from joining, either for the warnings he gave him, Remy, or perhaps for other warnings to other people in the agency Remy didn’t know about.

He nearly staggered then from the pain of losing Eugene, who’d meant so much to him and could have meant so much more not only to him but also to the world, but when he looked out the window his mood turned to terror so complete it virtually consumed his pain.

What had he done? He’d locked himself in a virtual prison near a window on the twenty-ninth floor — but surely the higher-ups in the agency had master keys that could open it and ways to open the window and arrange his fall or some other form of execution.

There was no time to do anything but leave the building, no time even to go home, for his apartment would be the most dangerous place of all, and so no time to pack anything either. The world had suddenly shrunk to the cash in his pockets, the credit card in his wallet, and the clothes on his back. His goal now was simply to get a taxi to the airport and then as far away from New York as he could. He picked up his briefcase and overcoat, then stopped just short of the door and put them down on the floor. To leave his office with briefcase in hand, much less wearing his overcoat, might well look suspicious. He had to appear as if he were merely getting a drink of water or else going to the bathroom, then take ten extra steps and reach the elevator.

He counted to seven, his lucky number, and then opened his door thinking that he could probably buy a coat in the airport. The huddle of stone-like figures was gone. He walked directly toward the elevators, eyes focused straight ahead to reduce the chance of having to talk to someone. Then he saw an elevator open and his boss, Mr. Weir, about to get out. Before their eyes could meet, Remy turned left, opened a door, and ran down a flight of stairs, then down two more flights. He thought briefly of running all the way down to the street, but if someone spotted him he’d be too easy a target. Besides, he was quite sure no one from the agency worked on the twenty-fourth floor. He stopped running, opened the new stairway door, and forced himself not to walk too fast toward the elevators. Once there he pressed the button and counted to seven again, after which an empty elevator (an almost unheard-of event) suddenly appeared.

On the ride down he thought of different cities — Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. — where he had relatives. But would it be a good idea to contact any of them? He had the feeling that the agency not only knew where his parents and other relatives lived, but who his friends were and where they lived too. It would be better to make a clean break from his past and reinvent himself — assume a new identity, as it were, and go with that for a while.

Outside the wind had picked up and it was beginning to snow slightly. Fortunately a cab came right away.

“To LaGuardia,” he said to the driver, who was rough-shaven and seemed unusually old for the job. Seeing the older man, Remy thought, the old are just the reincarnation of the young. In fact, strictly speaking, each moment of time you reincarnated yourself, since you always had to attain a balance between your core, unchanging self and your constantly changing one. But when he tried to think of this further, his head started to hurt. Looking out the window to distract himself he noticed a black line of birds in the sky and thought of Eugene’s falling and then thought he might cry. A man was a kind of reincarnation of a bird, a bird of a dinosaur, and so on. But it really was too difficult to think about, just as infinity itself was. That was why people wanted to shape things for themselves; it was much too difficult otherwise. And, that’s why the club members wanted to act like God, because it was much too difficult to understand the real God.

Remy’s eyes suddenly met the driver’s and a fear went through him. He thought the driver looked like someone from the agency so as soon as the taxi slowed down at the airport, Remy handed him much more money than he needed to and left the cab without waiting for his change. Then he ran into the labyrinth of the airport trying to find a plane as fast as he could and, like those birds he’d just seen in the sky, fly away into another life.