Monotony.
Beige and bland.
Grab the keys, knife, and lighter – each goes in its predestined pocket.
Back out the driveway. Two stop signs, turn right. Cross the greenway. Pass three streets on the left. Round a bend. Another light, red, always red. My grandson’s school is to the right. Watch for kids. Green arrow. Turn left. Through the next light. Turn right. Park at the pharmacy.
Two miles.
I could go to the drive-thru but it’s a hassle. I go inside. Statistically I’ll be served faster.
Pick up my wife’s life extending medicine. The insurance pays.
Reverse course.
Pull in the driveway. Go inside the house.
Monotony.
Beige and bland.
Week after week, month after month, this life extending journey. Then one day.
There must be a faster, less stressful route.
Grab the keys, knife, and lighter – each goes in its predestined pocket.
Back out the driveway. Two stop signs, turn right. Cross the greenway. Turn left on Robinhood – the third street just before the bend. Watch for kids; this is residential. Turn right at the stop sign. The main thoroughfare is at the top of the hill. Green arrow, turn left. Down to the next light. Turn right. Park at the pharmacy.
One point eight miles and two stop lights less.
I could go to the drive-thru but it’s a hassle. I go inside. Statistically I’ll be served faster.
Pick up my wife’s life extending medicine. The insurance pays.
Reverse course.
Pull in the driveway. Go inside the house.
Monotony.
Beige and bland.
Monotony.
The new route becomes the old route, the routine. Nothing changes. No interruption of insurance.
The lights in the pharmacy wink out. Through the open drive-thru window the sound of a diesel engine growls low, airbrakes squall, metal grates and twists against other, lesser metal.
Eternal seconds pass. I stare at the middle-aged pharmacist across the darkened counter, covid plexiglass separates us. She stares back, wordlessly. Confidence fills her eyes. I’ve known her to be practical, steady, and kind.
I clutch my wife’s life extending medicine.
The building shakes. Various items clatter from the shelves onto the floor.
Ka-whoomph. The building’s walls fail to muffle a deafening roar.
The pharmacist looks out the drive-thru window. “I can’t see anything, but it looks like the power is out across the way too.”
Through the opening I hear cars smashing into other cars and people arguing.
The pharmacist comes out from behind the counter. “Let’s go out front and see what’s going on.”
She was probably trying to reduce the corporation’s liability and inventory loss by clearing the store.
We pick our way through dark aisles avoiding fallen consumer items now littering the floor. As we emerge from aisle three, we see flames and chaos on the street beyond the automatic doors.
Together, the pharmacist and I pry open the doors. Heat, smoke, and burnt fuel assault our senses. The power is out everywhere. A gasoline tanker truck burns in an intersection. The remnants of a pickup truck lay under its mid-section, pushed down and melting into a burning crater in the road.
Silence. No machinery. No electric buzz. I look at my phone. It is off. I press the power button. The phone will not come on. My key fob will not unlock my car. I free the mechanical key from the fob. The car won’t start. I exit the vehicle still clutching my wife’s life extending medicine.
Thankfully it is daylight. Already we hear arguments and screams, windows smashing, gunshots coming from the liquor store across the way. I hold up the medicine, “Can I get extra of this … before it’s too late?” I did that weird thing Harrison Ford does when he tries to express emotion, one side of my mouth went up in a half smile. “I’m worried insurance won’t cover these anymore.” I may as well have scuffed the pavement and said aw shucks.
“I don’t think insurance exists anymore.”
Looking into her eyes I see something that sets my teeth on edge, every hair comes to attention in its follicle – steely terror.
“Besides, I’m not going back in there. There’s nothing in there worth dying for.”
“Do you live far?” I asked.
“The other side of town.”
We exchange a look of hopelessness, recognizing that the social structures that kept us safe were disintegrating. We no longer have insurance.
“You’re welcome to come to our place. It’s only a couple of miles from here.”
“I better get back to my own wife.” She touches my shoulder. “What your wife needs will be in there for a while. No one wants to steal that.”
“Thanks. I’d offer to take you, but I need to check on her, to get her this life extending medicine.”
She nods and disappears around the building.
My mind craves a new monotony. There is none.
Abandoning my car, I force myself to move toward the now defunct traffic signal marking the intersection by which I had arrived – home – someone who needs me – someone I love. That intersection feels less chaotic, only a few cars facing one another in a glut of stalled traffic, people screaming at each other, no fire, no death, yet.
My first decision. This is why I love monotony. It is insurance against decision-making. I touch the knife through my back pocket – insurance.
Stay away from people? Stay near people? What reduces the risk – provides the most protection?
People represent risk. Avoid risk.
I move between cars. Skirting the intersection, I start up the hill, up the road – the grocery store on my left and the home improvement store on my right. This isn’t so hard.
I’ve never gone this way. It’s residential, away from the stores and the looters. I don’t know these neighborhoods … what kind of people live here.
I hear them before I see them, marauding youth armed with bats and brazenness. I hide in a hedge. They pass by laughing and talking of girls and video games. I shift to see them better. The paper bag containing the life extending medicine crumples loudly. The gang stops and looks.
“You okay mister? Do you need help?”
They have no bats.
I look up sheepishly, struggling to stand due to knee replacements, the things that insurance had paid to replace. One kid offers his hand to help me up. I take it. “I’m okay. I dropped my wife’s medicine.” One side of my mouth rises in that half smile as I wave the crinkling paper bag. “Thanks.”
“Careful out here mister.”
They move on.
I move on. Get a grip you idiot.
I tear the paper bag and shove the amber bottle with the life extending medicine into my pocket. The sun appears lower. I’ve barely covered two hundred yards.
I trudge onward, knees hurting with every step.
Robin Hood – the routine route would dictate I go that way. Should I take it or push deeper into this unknown residential area? I decide to press on toward the greenway, less people, less risk.
My knees hurt. I miss my car.
Cars have become insurance – safety nets, protecting us, insulating us from the risk … of interaction – intimate, face to face interaction.
Everything, even the simplest things become a risk when the safety net goes away. The world becomes a predatory place when you have no protection from risk. You are vulnerable and can lose everything in one event.
I miss my car, my protective shell – my insurance.
The sun sets as I approach the place where the road dead ends in a T. The greenway is straight ahead. Maybe a mile home now.
Shall I enter the greenway here or continue along the street? A large culvert passes under the boulevard just beyond my house. I turn left, stay on the street.
It is now pitch black. I cannot see. Dare I use the lighter, expose myself? I slow down and use the lighter – insurance.
I walk faster hoping the street is well maintained.
Crickets chirp. In the distance I hear laughter and then shouting. Far to the north I hear firecrackers … no gunfire. I pass the main road that I always take to the pharmacy. I approach my grandson’s school. People are there. I avoid them. Risk.
A gentle slope.
I strike the lighter. It looks easy enough.
I slip on the slick ground cover, tumble down. A branch rips my shirt, contusing my ribs but not tearing skin or breaking bone. I claw through dirt and vines searching for the lighter. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. … Yes! Plastic! Igniting the flame once more I see that I have stopped just shy of a pointy stick that might have impaled me. I lay there analyzing the risk involved in such an injury without insurance.
Then I hear it – rustling in the underbrush. I extinguish the flame and lay quiet not wanting to draw attention. Who Cooks for You? The low guttural hoot of a barred owl. Relief.
I struggle to stand.
The sky blues ever so slightly. Pinkness tries its luck in the east. I pass through the culvert and emerge from the greenway onto my street.
Bruised and battered I limp up my driveway. The house is dark but seems undisturbed.
Dirty and bruised, my hand trembles as I reach for the knob on my back door. Uncertainty replaces monotony.
How much longer can my love live without a safety net and her life extending drugs?
Author’s Note:
The Actuary is a metaphor about the vulnerability of modern life. It demonstrates how the monotony of modern life masks the fact that each of us is one personal cataclysm away from destitution.