Replay

1.
May 2011

Andrew Stilman had started out as a freelancer at twenty-three and made his way up the ladder one rung at a time, becoming a staff writer by thirty. Since he was a kid, he’d dreamed of carrying a press pass from one of the world’s best-known papers, and every morning, upon entering the double doors of 620 Eighth Avenue, he glanced at the newspaper’s name on the façade: The New York Times. It never failed to give him a thrill. Thousands of hacks would give their right arm just to visit.
Andrew had spent four years working in the research department before taking over as Deputy Obituaries Editor. The previous editor had been run over by a bus as she was leaving work one day and ended up featured in the very section she used to write for. She’d been rushing home so as not to miss the delivery of some sexy underwear she’d ordered online. Life really does hang by a thread sometimes.
Andrew spent another five years toiling away anonymously. Obituaries don’t carry their author’s name—the deceased get all the credit. Five years writing about men and women who were now only memories, whether good or bad. One thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days, and nearly six thousand dry martinis consumed every evening after work between 7:30 P.M. and 8:15 P.M. at the bar of the Marriott Hotel on 40th Street.
Every glass came garnished with three olives. With each pit he spat into an overflowing ashtray, Andrew would chase away the memory of yet another extinguished life he’d summed up that day. Living in the company of the dead was driving him to the bottle. By Andrew’s fourth year on obits, the barman at the Marriott was refilling his glass six times a night. He’d often show up at the office ashen-faced and sleepy-eyed, his shirt collar askew and his jacket crumpled. Luckily a suit and tie weren’t de rigueur in the newspaper’s open-plan offices, least of all in the department where he worked.
Either because of his elegant, precise prose, or because of the devastating effects of a particularly hot summer, the column he was in charge of had expanded to two full pages. When the quarterly results were being prepared, a statistics-mad analyst in the financial

“How happy one would be if one could
throw off one’s self as one throws off others.”
—MADAME DU DEFFAND