Dead Guy: Part 1

Once or twice a year I might encounter them, my fellow graduates from Chicago GSB, and each time round it's much the same charade. I'm in the business lounge working on a presentation when a face across the aisle suddenly clarifies and shakes itself into focus. "Hey Ronnie," I might say, or "Hey Donny," as the case may be, or possibly "Hey Milt".
"Harry- it is Harry?" they will say. "But I heard there was an accident. I heard you were dead."
"You know something?" I lean towards them with a confidential air. "Officially, I am."
And as soon as they make the decision to beat it, pushing that warm mid-western smile forward and withdrawing everything else from behind it, I know it's time for some showbiz. I reach into my travel wallet and pull out a copy of the death certificate, countersigned by the doctor and the city coroner, which I have had laminated for my speaking tours. (The original remains the property of Lawless and Gombrich- you will find it hanging framed beside the David Hockney portrait of Julian Gombrich in the No.2 Boardroom.)
"Wait a minute," Don or Ron or Milt will say. "It's not… you're not… I mean you? Henry Neville? You're not the Henry Neville? The Dead Guy?"
And it turns out they have actually read my memoir, or listened to the best-selling audiobook read by Judd Nelson, or at least caught one of my guest appearances on the Duke Montana Show, but they never had the slightest idea that this was their Henry Neville, little Harry Neville from Salmon, Idaho, who drank milk straight from the carton and stole his roommate's mail. And though these are people who would not have approached me twenty years ago, something about my appearance today clearly touches them. It can be a little embarrassing sometimes. They relay candid stories of their burgeoning sexual crises. They drop their hands into their laps and wonder if they really are cut out for sales. They talk urgently and in a low voice of how they find themselves in their mid-forties standing in line for the airport metal detectors, worrying not only about x-rays from the detector, but also about coach-travel syndrome and UV exposure in high-altitude aircraft and dehydration and alimony payments and the IRS, yet still having the presence of mind to smile at the female security guard, as they hand her first their titanium samples cases filled with aftershave or feminine hygiene products or footwear, then their crumpled canvas overnight bags, then their mobiles, then (when the alarm first sounds) their coats, then (at the second, tetchier call-back) their keys and their loose change, and finally (when the guard, eyes hooded, takes them to one side and runs the scanner the length of their body) their mock-leather wallets, containing unclaimable receipts and unredeemed electronic keycards and crayon drawings of World-War II dogfights executed in an uncertain, childish hand.
"You're past all this, Harry," they say repeatedly, touching the tip of my sleeve. "You've made it. You're in the clear."
Before I leave, they ask me, with tears of what I presume is gratitude, to sign their courtesy newspaper or boarding card, a request I always go along with, sometimes even dotting the "i" in Neville with a miniature skull and crossbones. And if I have a speaking engagement coming up, I might slip them some complementary fliers for distribution in their place of work. You never know- this deadbeat could be the contact point that nets you your next contract, your next seminar. Not that I need to hustle for work anymore. On the contrary, my diary is fuller now than ever before. I can't deny- death has been good to me.
to be continued