Solomon Terry, Actuary

     Insurance, more than most professions, has an incredible knack for attracting all types of morbidities and paranoias; these serve as the lifeblood of its workforce. Unfortunately, however, there is a particular sort of human vessel amongst the halls of the insurance office who, now and then, takes too large a draught of this corrupting mana and, like a raving heretic, becomes unable to live untainted by the bitter poison of their newfound religion. It is the actuary who most has this tendency. Consider the nature of our game; we dailywager the likelihood of your having a fatal automobile accident, the chances of a tornado ripping to shreds your family home or the odds that you contract some rare and unbeatable illness, and with these numbers in cold hand, we give you an estimation of the least amount we would pay should one of these terrible things fall upon you. We are, at best, a more removed lot than most, viewing life’s greatest tragedies in such a way that they lose all sense of the human condition about them, becoming nothing more than the numbers on a scratch-off ticket. It is this condition in which I find myself, although the tragedy of my own unfeeling is neither here nor there with regard to this story. At worst, we actuaries may become what I will now describe to you in the account of perhaps the most worried man I ever met.

     It is not only that chronic depersonalization may dull one’s sense of the magnitude of life. In some cases, something opposite occurs. Maybe it speaks to some pre-existing proclivity that, through perfect irony, occasionally finds itself in an environment all-too conducive to the manifestations of its worst symptoms. Such was the case of Solomon Terry. It might be said that Solomon was simply a latent case of agoraphobia or that some chemical imbalance in his psyche suddenly came to fruition. I think the numbers must have simply gotten to him. For, by all accounts, he was a perfectly average pencil pusher the majority of my short time knowing him. And though he sat across from me eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year, I’d not learned much more about him than one learns about anybody they glimpse on the street or amongst the supermarket aisles. He came to work every morning with his white shirt buttoned perfectly to the top, no tie, and chinos pressed and starched so that they might have stood even despite his absence from them. He didn’t drink coffee, didn’t go for smoking breaks, didn’t even seem to go to the bathroom, but instead plopped down to his work chair with the force of a magnet, pouring over the numbers for those thirty-thousand odd seconds, and then would promptly and swiftly disappear at the end of the day.  I can’t imagine it was to anywhere interesting that he would go, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he went straight home to tuck himself away in some drawer or cupboard until the day started again.

     Solomon’s life must have proceeded precisely in this manner for the two years he was at work, placed just opposite me, never talking, never looking, never doing anything but his task. And it came to pass that, one morning, upon returning from my smoke, I noticed that he still had not found his place across the way. He had never been late before and, in fact, often arrived early simply to stand outside the building until the appropriate time for entry (which I observed many times seated in my car). So, you will indeed feel my surprise at seeing his absence here. I worked the remainder of the day as usual, not particularly worried about his whereabouts but perhaps slightly intrigued by this break in the pattern. And, the following day, this absence was felt again. So it was for the entire week, with myself growing slightly more interested with every glance in whatever goings-on were going on here. To make things worse, I had to pick up the extra work, which only added to the bad vibrations shooting around in the workplace. We had recently received a rather large claim from a settlement involving a trucking company, so egregious an accident as to be settled out of court, which the superior staff members were incredibly displeased with. And so, after four weeks of Solomon’s absence, I was instructed by upper management to check in on my friend, even if I knew not enough to call him such. There is simply no other word I can find that would express my fondness for him, though I suppose it was a fondness of the kind that one feels for any fixture in one’s life, such as a favorite statue or some such trinket.

     Obtaining Solomon’s address from my superior, I made my way to the small one-bedroom he occupied outside the city. It was as to be expected: plain, neat, and clean. Curiously, or maybe not so curiously in hindsight, all the barred windows were drawn, and his car was also missing. Approaching closer, I noticed, too, that there were multiple freshinstalled locks and latches upon the front door, obviously not present at the time of the house's construction due to their age and design. I gave the place a once over, then decided I had better have a smoke and wait to see whether or not Solomon was to appear. After two or three smokes, there was still no apparent stirring within. As such, I lit a fourth and went to his doorstep, where I refrained for a moment. I noticed the doorknocker missing, evinced by a difference in the shades of the wood and a few tiny screwholes. I rapped on the door, then stepped back into view of the window, hoping he would peek out and recognize me. It took three of these knockings before I got as much as a peek through the closed blinds. I noticed his eye grow wide through the slit when he finally looked and saw me. I then heard a bit of frantic rummaging inside, manifesting itself at the door where I lingered to listen to his twelve-odd locks opening one by one.

     When he finally got the thing open, he was wearing a welding mask and holding a plastic cup of water, into which he promptly threw my cigarette after swiping it from my mouth. I was too surprised by this action for it to really upset me, and besides, the gesture must have taken a Hell of a lot of courage for him based on his prior behavior.

     “What are you doing smoking that out here? Don’t you know something might catch?” he muffeldly said. “One patch of grass, that’s all it takes. Burns the whole lot down. That’s all it takes.”

     “I’m sorry, I didn’t think it was a problem.” I said.

     “There any others?”

     “No, I’m alone.”

     “Butts, I mean. Are there any more?”

     “Two or three, I guess. In the driveway.” I gestured.

     “In the-” an incredulous look shot across his face. “Go and get them!” he said, thrusting his cup out. “I can’t go out. Quick!”

     I took his cup. He retreated from the doorway, cowering behind the door like a child behind his father, yet still leaving enough of a crack to make sure I really did as he asked. After looking about for my loose cigarette butts, some of which had blown into the grass, I returned to his doorstep.

     “In the grass!” he loudwhisperedly scoffed, “Are you sure that’s all?”

     “Yes.”

     “Do you have your phone on you?”

     “Yes, of course.”

     “Leave it out. Don’t want the waves brought in. Quick, quick!” He said, waving me inside once I had placed my cellphone on the steps outside.

     I entered the home and looked about while he fixed the locks behind me. Then, turning around, I discovered him to be wearing hockey pads. As for the room, there was not a piece of furniture save for a small mattress pushed into the corner. Aluminum foil constituted his wallpaper, turning the place into nothing less than a Turkish bathhouse.

     There were no lamps, no decorations, nor any lightbulbs in the ceiling. Moreover, both the bare sockets and the switches on the wall had been taped over, making their use impossible. The sinking sensation in my feet that I felt upon entry was due to the foampadding across the floor, which gave me the impression of walking on a layer of sponges. In short, he had made an open-concept padded cell of his house, with not the slightest possibility for scrapes, shocks, or accidental blunt force trauma.

     Once the door was taken care of, he turned back towards me.

     “Let me see that.” He took the cup from my hands and shuffled across the floor towards the bathroom, the door of which had been removed. I followed him, relaxed, to continue my surveyal of his environment. I peeked inside his restroom to find the toilet, like the floor, foam padded. So, too, was the bath. Respect for privacy and a fear of whatever newfound smells might be discovered emanating from that assuredly wet foam kept me at bay. I watched as he opened the toilet and dumped the ashy water into it. He closed the lid, stepped away from it, and, pulling a long string attached to the flusher, sent the cigarette brew on its way.

     “To keep away from the suction.” He yelled through his mask, insinuating the string. I never found out how he managed to navigate this nightmarish arrangement at night should he have to go in the dark.

     He left the bathroom and made his way into his kitchen, which had no appliances nor any drawers, shelves, or doors on the prefab cupboards. I watched as he rinsed the cup with a bottle of water from the stack of cases in the corner before placing it back on its shelf next to the remainder of his plasticware.

     “Hot in here.” I spoke.

     “What?” He pulled off his mask and set it on the floor. “Yeah, the waves. Gotta keep them out.” He threw his arms about his head to signify some invisible presence bouncing about.

     “You’ve been away from work a while.” I said, “Is everything all right?”

     He stepped closer to me.

     “Not at all,” he shook his head, “Not at all.”

     I knew this was true since I had not seen even a tenth of a percent of this energy in all the time I had sat across from his desk.

     “What’s the matter?” I asked.

      “A few weeks ago, I was on the way to work like usual. I left at the same time I always do. I took the same car I always do, the same route I always do,” he moved dramatically closer with each phrase, “I drove on the same lane on the interstate, took the same exits-“ He was within arm’s reach now.

     “A lumber truck pulls ahead of me, okay? I’m in the far-left lane like I always am. I think, ‘This truck’s hard to see around.’ And I get over to the right. I swear to you, not a second after I changed lanes-“ He clapped, “One of the logs comes loose and shoots through the windshield of the car behind the truck. The car swerves into the median instantly, causes a massive pileup. I’m watching all this in my rearview the entire time. Maybe six or eight cars, all smashed. Right where I just was.”

     He grew pale at that.

     “I knew the odds. I mean, you know, we know the numbers. We run them all the time. But you don’t think it actually happens.”

     “Why don’t you?”

     “They were just numbers before. Going like this-“ He fluttered his hands about. “Poof. One in a hundred. One in a thousand. Two out of seven. Doesn’t mean anything. Just numbers.”

     I paused at this a moment, knowing somewhat where he was coming from. But even in all my years in this work, the reality of it all didn’t cease to me. I accepted these things in a manner much more distant than might be considered kind, sure. But I tried not to dwell on things all the same and saw every such accident as nothing more than an incredibly odd happening.

     “Well, that is certainly shocking.” I said.

     “I pulled off the highway immediately and came straight back here. The back way, of course. Barely stepped out since, except to grab packages on the doorstep or put things out to the curb.”

     “So- you’re not coming back to work, then?” I asked, knowing the size of the backlogged tasks sitting before me in his absence.

     “How could I? Imagine what could happen!”

     “Well, what could happen?”

     “Why, anything!” he said, as though it were the most obvious conclusion in the world. And I suppose that it was, though I had never considered it before.

     “So, what’s all of this about, then?” I said, gesturing to the walls and the lack of furniture.

     “Accident prevention.”

     I told him I supposed that made sense, and he told me of all the various measures he had taken to ensure that absolutely nothing could happen to him again. He had thrown out all hard, sharp, or otherwise potentially harmful objects. The situation with the lights was arranged to prevent any accidental ignitions from the bursting of a lamp or shocks from a live socket. The padding on the floor, toilet, and shower went unmentioned, though I supposed those to follow an obvious conclusion. Naturally, there was no cutlery, no glass, and no potential fuel for a fire. He ate only soft foods from paper bags delivered to his porch. His electricity had been turned off, though he left the water on. This was because, he informed, that although the risks involved in domestic plumbing are significant, he would be taking a much greater risk by stepping outside to use the restroom should he need to go. A bedpan was out of the question due to the frequency at which he would have to come out to empty it. This was one of the few gambles he seemed to play here, for it appeared that any question of accident otherwise was totally answered.

     “And what about the foil?” I asked, having had all the other particulars explained.

     “I told you, it’s for the waves. They can’t get through, except through the window.” At that statement, he seemed to remember this specific concern and pulled me further into the room.

     “Don’t want to be too close to that.” He said rhetorically.

     Such was the condition I found Solomon Terry in. He had spent the last four weeks proofing his person and abode against all potential disasters, spending all his time making himself into a hypothetical Job upon whom utter ruin may strike at any moment.

     “You see?” He asked after an extended pause, which I took as a general request for my certifying the logic he had used in his course of action.

     “Oh, yes.” I spoke, realizing it seemed to have been a good while since I had done so.

     We stood before each other for a moment, with him seeming to wait for more of my asking and me wondering how I was to exit this conversation since it seemed to me that nothing was to be done for him. Not on my part, anyway.

     “Well, that’s certainly interesting,” I concluded, unsure if it really were so. Had I had all the figures before me, I would have liked to figure out the odds of such a person happening. But I then supposed that everyone was probably a bit like him, with a history of events too large even to begin breaking them down into probabilities. To do so for even one person, I decided, would be the work of five lifetimes. I came into Solomon’s story too late to have any hope of discerning which experiences amongst the uncountable mass most likely caused him to get here. The log truck accident indeed ranked high among these.

     Although, as stated, I found myself a peripheral part of this poor creature’s life entirely too late to take proper account of its course, I did not arrive too late to see the end of it. For, while I stood figuring about how many lifetimes I would have needed to make sense of him, his eyes grew increasingly wide. He then seemed to want to say something but could only make a kind of sputtering noise as he tried to force any discernable word out of his mouth. He shook a little, did a halfspin, then entirely collapsed to the floor, wiggling only slightly, as though he were a worm or slug. I watched this for a moment, realizing that one or other of the strange oddities I accounted for daily was likely happening here. I then decided to grab my phone to call an ambulance, but I soon realized that I couldn't get to it because of all the locks on the door. I took the ring of keys from his belt, but, having no clue which key fit into which lock, it took me a good halfhour before I could open the door. By the time I reached my phone, it was certainly too late, as I later discovered Solomon had suffered an almost unheard-of type of brain hiccup, which left little time for treatment. I regretted my final encounter with him being one that so totally upended the idea of him that I had had. He was entirely unimposing and, consequentially, rather agreeable to be around before his great shock. As it stood, I was the only witness to the tremendous last irony of his life. For, despite all his figuring and his planning, Solomon Terry died just the same.