Richard Burgin - The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

“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.