Characters in Afterlife

Everybody appears to be having a whale of a good time. In one of the pictures he sees Richie Blankmore’s father handing Annmarie Winkler a toasted marshmallow. This is ridiculous, because Richie’s dad was a truck driver and never went to a company picnic in his life.

Annmarie was a girl he dated in college. In another photo he sees Bobby Tisdale, a college classmate back in the early seventies. Bobby, who referred to himself as Tiz the Whiz, died of a heart attack while still in his thirties.

In this picture the Whiz looks about twenty, which would have been his age when Bill knew him. In a third picture, Eddie Scarponi’s mom is baffing a volleyball.

Eddie was Bill’s best friend when the family moved from Nebraska to Paramus, New Jersey, and Gina Scarponi—once glimpsed sunning herself on the patio in filmy white panties and nothing else—was one of Bill’s favorite fantasies when he was still on his masturbation learner’s permit.

That leaves only Mr. Isaac Harris’s office. Bill walks down there, hesitates, and then knocks. “It’s open.” Bill walks in. Beside a cluttered desk stands a fellow in baggy, high-waisted suit pants held up by suspenders. His brown hair is plastered to his skull and parted in the middle.

… the steady stream of family and condolence visitors, Lynn Andrews calls her oldest friend, who still lives in Milwaukee. It was Sally Freeman who introduced her to Bill, and if anyone deserves to know about the last sixty seconds of her thirty-year marriage, it’s Sally. “He was out of it …

At the turn of the century, I and my partner, Max Blanck, owned a business called the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Profitable business, but the women who worked there were a large pain in the keister.

He’s incapable of speech and not sure he can trust his ears. It’s too good to be true. His mind first turns to his brother Mike, and the accident that happened when Mike was eight. Next, to the stupid shoplifting thing when Bill was seventeen.

“You have a healthy baby boy, Mrs. Andrews,” he says. “Looks to be about seven pounds. Congratulations.” Mrs. Andrews takes the baby. She kisses his damp cheeks and brow. They will name him William, after her paternal grandfather. When the twenty-first century comes, he’ll still be in his forties.

Everybody appears to be having a whale of a good time. In one of the pictures he sees Richie Blankmore’s father handing Annmarie Winkler a toasted marshmallow. This is ridiculous, because Richie’s dad was a truck driver and never went to a company picnic in his life.

It was Sally Freeman who introduced her to Bill, and if anyone deserves to know about the last sixty seconds of her thirty-year marriage, it’s Sally. “He was out of it for most of the last week—the drugs—but conscious at the end. His eyes were open, and he saw me.

… William Andrews, an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, dies on the afternoon of September 23, 2012. It is an expected death; his wife and adult children are at his bedside. That evening, when she finally allows herself some time alone, away from the steady stream of family and condolence visitors, …