CHERYL LIVES!(The Talk of the Town)(Manhattan copywriter Cheryl Horsfall holds own wake after being mistakenly declared dead)

Cheryl Horsfall is a freelance copywriter in Manhattan. She is partial to ideas of the afterlife. A few years ago, she wrote a screenplay called "Parlor Tricks," about a young woman who moves into an apartment above a funeral home. The woman becomes involved with the restless and misanthropic shade of a young man who inhabits the place. She helps him settle difficulties having to do with his leaving the world, and he helps her with difficulties in her life.

Horsfall is thirty-seven. She grew up mostly in Texas, and she has lived in New York for fourteen years. She is slim and has a narrow face, sharp features, brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles. Occasionally, when she is thinking, her eyes close and her eyelids flutter. In October of 2005, she received a letter from a New York State agency informing her that she was deceased. The letter did not say how she had died or when. About a year earlier, she had been let go from a big advertising firm as part of what she calls a general bloodletting. While she was at the unemployment office, listening to a woman read instructions to a room of applicants, a man appeared and announced that he was offering free health insurance, provided by the state. Horsfall applied and was accepted. After a year, she applied to have the insurance renewed. Her coverage was denied, because "our records indicate that this person is deceased," the letter said. If she disagreed, she could request a hearing. The number to schedule a hearing was connected to an answering machine. Horsfall left many messages, but no one called her back.

Meanwhile, Horsfall held a wake, in her apartment. She scheduled it for November 1st, the Day of the Dead. She built a shrine, with flowers arranged by a floral designer she knew, and candles and photographs. She served funeral food--casseroles and coconut cake. "I thought I'd dress well," she says, "so I put on a corset top and a ball-gown skirt, which I used to wear to Viennese Waltzes ...