A feast of friends

The life and death of fabulous Igor Conrad is told in complex flashbacks by his only friend, Jack Hobbs, after Igor's death in a plane crash.

Jack remembers his early admiration of Igor, when they were delivery boys in the garment district, and Jack brought Igor home to meat his parents who accepted Igor as a second son. Igor also usurps another part of Jack's life, his love for wealthy Caroline Addison, and Jack hears - but disbelieves - the rumor that Caroline was pregnant.

Igor, meanwhile, makes a name for himself among Jack's hard-drinking friends, goes into various businesses, and learns to fly. Terrified of heights, Igor cracks up.

Caroline meets him in the hospital and falls in love with him, but Igor, always ambitious, has an affair with Caroline's rich and beautiful mother. It was after a weekend with her, at a remote lodge, that Igor was killed, and at the close of his life, Jack learns - in a dreary funeral parlor in the Bronx- the true facts of the dazzling Igor's earliest years.