Scurrying through a labyrinth of tailor-made suits and expensive pearl necklaces, I am a magnet, gathering disapproving glances with my black, worn-out shoes and dinner jacket that is one size too small. The seam running from shoulder to shoulder is partly busted, revealing an abrasion and pressure-damaged threads. Still, being sufficiently tanked on Montrachet and Château Margaux seems to weaken my ability to get embarrassed. I'm adopting the guests' idle lifestyle as my own, merging anonymously into the group.

At first glance, the whole thing looks like one of those "Save the Whales" banquets with a thousand-dollar price tag on the invitation card. On both sides of the tall oak doors leading to the dining room--which is actually the size of a small ballroom and therefore a suitable setting for such a remarkable display of grief and remembrance--are enormous, cigar-shaped glass vases filled with the whitest of Asiatic lilies ever grown in captivity. The sunlight appears as if preordered, flickering peacefully across the stained-glass windows painted with metallic chlorides. The background motifs are of a decorative English style, and the medallions boast pictures of knights, fair maidens, and roaring dragons.

En route to the set of steps descending to the ballroom, I use my elbow quite shamelessly, making my way through the tanned mass of people huddling in the foyer. At the halfway point, I trample on something that feels like a human foot, and a blond woman swings around, doing her best to twist her Botox-injected facial muscles into a resentful look. Despite her efforts to outdo the effects of the frown-line eliminator, the paralysis sticks, making the end result fall somewhere between a stone sculpture and a thirteenth-century Notre Dame gargoyle.

Once inside, I circle to the right, stopping at the buffet table near the service entrance to get a refill--my fifth. At the other end of the room, the widow is languishing on a buffalo-skin sofa positioned left of the inglenook. She's wearing a black Gucci dress, the classic cut leaving her pale neck naked and attainable. On a small coffee table in front of her, a half-eaten slice of Sacher cake balances on a Villeroy & Boch china plate.

(Sacher cake isn't actually a cake but a torte. A sixteen-year-old Austrian cook's apprentice, Franz Sacher, invented it for Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich in 1832. If the prince's head chef hadn't been sick that day, the cake probably would've never been invented. And because of his sweet tooth, Prince Klemens is remembered as the man who ate the world's first Sacher cake. For an ordinary Joe it might've been a great honor, but for a future head of state it must've been a little less gratifying.)

Above the massive fireplace dangles a collection of hand-painted portraits, seven altogether, with big noses and heavy eyebrows filling most of the canvases. The handmade golden frames are preserving the features of distinguished bankers, governors, and industrial tycoons of the Hawkins family. In the middle hangs the latest addition to the royal flush: his name is Leonard K. Hawkins III, and twenty years ago, he founded the nation's biggest advertising agency. In the portrait, he's sitting on the corner of a vintage desk made of Mexican pine, wearing a diamond-patterned cardigan, and looking semicasual, like a retired golf pro whose name is printed on men's sportswear. The shading of the painting is superb.

All in all, the painting is a coup de foudre, the climax of a bizarre pilgrimage, and the alcohol racing in my bloodstream summons emotions of both fulfillment and compassion. Seconds away from shedding tears of admiration, I excuse myself, escaping through an octagonal lounge where a white candle flickers on a cherry wood desk. To the left of it are an ebony penholder with a gold pen sticking out of it like God's finger in Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, and a black, spiral-bound guestbook reserved for last farewells--poems for the dead.

"May you roam in the Heavenly Gardens." Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt.

"Thin is the thread of life; too soon was it cut." Mr. Labes.

"Thanks for the free food and booze." Anonymous.

I find much-needed solitude in a small rumpus room, where, completely alone and surrounded by enormous wall-to-wall shelves packed with hundreds of rare first editions, I reach for my pocket and pull out a battered notebook and a short pencil. The notebook contains the given points of the twenty-five funerals I have crashed so far. After rating funeral number twenty-six--everything from the coffin to the headstone to the reception and catering--with staggering precision and care, I can tell a new record is within my reach.

In case you wonder, and you probably do, this weird hobby of mine started about twelve months ago. Back then I came across an editorial about a lonely old man who had died in his easy chair while watching The Late Show with David Letterman. Being single and not having too many living relatives coming around had left him sitting there, silently and obediently, with the air conditioning humming and the TV blasting on and on, until a janitor had finally discovered him while checking a weird noise in the plumbing system fourteen months later. Believe it or not, the janitor fixed the plumbing but failed to notify the police about the overly enthusiastic television viewer--it took him four more days to call the boys in blue. When they arrived and questioned him, he just said, "I was busy. I figured he wasn't going anywhere."

Without more ado, the corpse was bagged and wheeled to the county coroner's office, where it was established that the man had died of natural causes (the newspaper failed to mention what those were), and that his body had been partially mummified by the cranked-up air conditioning, which had generated a stable and reasonably dry atmosphere. Ironically, the apparatus in question was also accountable for the poor bastard lying there all that time without anybody taking notice of him. Nobody had found him because the smell of death couldn't penetrate the superinsulated, airtight walls and windows.

The story, and particularly the general lack of compassion it outlined, started an electrochemical reaction in my brain. Not getting appreciated in life was one thing--something I myself have grown accustomed to over the years--but not getting appreciated in death was far worse, as if to be human was to be a mere footnote in the biography of evolution. The lonely, old, and now also very dead man got his final blessing in a cheap little casket at seven fifteen on a rainy Tuesday morning, with two hangover pit fillers commemorating him with their presence. They lowered his earthly remains into a muddy hole in the ground, deep enough to reach the ninth circle of hell. What a terrible way to go, I remember thinking, meaning the funeral.

I hear a snivel and look up. The teary-eyed widow is standing in the brightly illuminated doorway, looking gracefully frail. My first thought is ambush. They've spotted me, the fake mourner, and are surrounding me like a group of moonshine-plastered hunters closing in on a red-painted moose. She enters the room, sliding motionlessly over with her slender fingers lingering on the door as long as they can. She sits next to me with a whisper-like plea: "May I? It's just so overwhelming in there that I had to get away for a moment."

"Certainly," I say, hiding the notebook inconspicuously in my pocket. Cold sweat trickles down my face, and I feel my heart thumping in my chest. Smelling the wine on my breath, I lean backward, trying to act natural. "Beautiful ceremony," I mumble. But there is no response, only a silent whine. Outside, a heavy band of clouds covers the sun, killing the magical glimmer of the stained windows. "My condolences. Your husband was a remarkable person," I continue.

Like being cut with a knife, the sniveling stops. She lifts her red and swollen eyes to me. "What do you mean?" her voice quivers.

I stumble over sentences that are filled with growing anxiety. "He was strong and determined in everything he did. He stood as an example for all of us."

"What do you mean by was?"

Be assured that I've seen some seriously grief-stricken widows before, the kind that claw the lid of the coffin and cry for twenty-four hours straight; but she seems to be further down the road of denial than any other I've ever come across. "I beg your pardon. Of course your husband is still with us, in spirit."

"In spirit?" she says. "I'm afraid that I don't have the slightest idea what you are talking about."

The words are heavy when I launch them into the cool air: "I am sorry about your husband's death."

Her eyes widen, and for a moment she just sits there, more scared than puzzled, staring at me with her tiny mouth gasping for air. She fills her lungs with a series of small breaths and screams, the piercing sound banishing the wine-induced stupor I've been lolling in. The shriek serves as a cue for a tall and muscular man who enters the room with a pair of piercing blue eyes scanning the area. The skull they belong to has an intimidating shape dating back to the very early Neanderthal period. This pre-human in a suit opens the two lower buttons of his jacket and leans on a Louis XIV bergère chair that, compared to him, looks like something stolen from the Sun King's dollhouse. The throbbing blood vessel dividing the giant's forehead into two distinct sections makes him look as sinister as a 135-pound Rottweiler whose lineage traces back to Roman attack dogs used in the Punic Wars.

"Oh, Charlie, this terrible man said you were dead!" she cries out, her lovely, pale neck red and swelling. I think it's an allergic reaction; either to the excessive chocolate on the Viennese bakery product, or to me.

"Did he?" his low voice thunders. He closes in on me with the psychotic demeanor of a Gestapo interrogator gleaming in his eyes. "Is that your idea of a joke? Can't you see how much my wife is suffering from the sudden loss of her only brother?"

Twenty seconds later, I'm running through the foyer, which is now less crowded, heading for the mansion's main exit. My face is aching like it's been hit with a shovel. Before I get to the front door, a sudden cough sends a loosened front tooth airborne. A dark red drop from my nose splashes to the white marble floor, leading the way for smaller drops that circle around the first one like petals. The color makes me wonder if I'm bleeding blood or Pinot Noir.

I quicken my step, zigzagging drunkenly out of the mansion and across the gravel courtyard, heading for the drive. The sun appears from behind the clouds again, blinding me, and a brisk wind fills my bones with a rapid chill. My ears are still ringing from the punch, and the breeze brings tears to my eyes, but I keep on running, scuttling past the well-manicured bushes, the yellowing trees, and the soaring double gates. "Go!" my neurons yell. "As fast as you can, you miserable little bastard."

I remember the notebook, the very root of my suffering. Concerned for its safety, my right hand dives into my pocket. Feeling the wrinkled pages, I grant myself a sigh of relief. That's when I feel a bump. Between the impact and my body touching the asphalt, I experience a moment of warp-speed weightlessness backed up by bursts of sensory overload drumming against the pain centers of my brain. A rapid release of endorphins--nature's own painkillers--follows, and everything mellows down. I find myself staring at the fluffy, white clouds as they sail across the blue sky, the distant shouts and blurry images merging into drippy numbness.

It's at moments such as these that your life flashes before your eyes. I see myself wandering the Elysian Fields, enjoying the permanent bliss and scent of pale asphodels. Mystified by my significantly slimmer and smarter looks, I hear the shutter of the disposable camera click for one last overexposed shot: Raymond Kessel, this is your life! In the distance, sirens wail. In the manner of a veiled response, I smile at the falling darkness.