1: The Club

It is the Thursday night before Christmas, and the narrator, David Adley, is getting into a taxi on his way to his club. That is what its members call it; it has no other name. David is 73 and has been coming to the brownstone at 249 East 35th Street for 10 years. He is met at the door by Stevens, the apparently ageless factotum of the building. The interior is paneled in mahogany with oak parquet floors. A huge fireplace in the library/reading room/bar contains a fire of birch logs. David thinks of it as a “gentlemen’s club,” but he’s not sure that that is exactly what it is. Tonight, David feels a sense of more than usual excitement because this is Emlyn McCarron’s night to tell “the tale.”

David jumps back in time 10 years to tell how he first came to be invited to the club. He doesn’t know how old the club might be. He supposes that Stevens might know, but Stevens will never tell. David is convinced that Stevens has been around from the first, but David has no idea how long that might have been. He is sure that Stevens is much, much older than he looks.