Auditioning as the Dead

Atlas Hale, principal of Hale Capital, the Hale heir, hasn't been photographed with a woman in three years. Endows a memorial chapel on East 74th. Sits the 7am pew alone. Spent a year at Eihei-ji at twenty-two and came home with his late mother's jade rosary on his left wrist.

Now he's running an audition. One million dollars, the listing says, for a personal assistant. The only requirement: she has to look like the late Mrs. Hale.

Within thirty-six hours, every eligible woman from the Beresford to Locust Valley has filed an application.

What no one knows is that the wife he memorializes — the one whose Frick catalogue still lies open on his nightstand — is the wife whose ventilator line he closed himself.

What no one knows, either, is that she didn't die.