“A Chance Encounter”

A Short Story by Bob Hodges

Copyright © 2010 by Bob Hodges

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Elgin Beckersmith did not partake of society, and specifically that part of it which
involved any kind of interaction with his neighbors. He considered it a distraction
from his retired life as a statistician. He ventured outdoors only to get his morning
paper and check his rain gauge, and then only when the coast was clear of any
potential intruders into his regimen. His ledger of the comings and goings of
neighbors, mail carriers and newspaper carriers indicated a very low probability of
encountering any of them on this Wednesday, a day which, statistically, lent itself to
very average activities of daily living, as opposed to weekends or holidays.

In fact, he had once reflected, the worst mistake he had ever made in his life was in
marrying the woman he had met purely by chance when a hotel desk clerk
inadvertently gave her a key to his room. When she insisted on being admitted to
resolve whose room it was, he let her in. When he discovered she was a college
mathematics teacher, they initially found what romantics would call a common
chemistry between them. It was a metaphor which, months later in the relationship,
he rejected in favor of the physics concept that like poles of a magnet repel each other.
When he arrived at this analysis and hence, the probability of failure in the
relationship, if not a homicide, he persuaded her to agree to a divorce. She departed
years ago with their only vehicle and their bank account, and he was left with a more
certain means of transport, a used bicycle he was able to garner from a yard sale.

On this Wednesday decades later, he was sustained by the comforts of an ample

retirement pension, accumulated over thirty years of a Spartan existence. During his
working years, spent in endless days in a cubicle, he had devoted himself to such an
existence, an ascetic life style bereft of luxuries in diet, dress, entertainment and
human contact. Having been an unwanted child born unexpectedly into the Great
Depression, he had always been made to feel responsible in some way for any
misfortune which ever befell his parents and siblings, and so he left his home, his
parents and his siblings at the unpredictable age of eighteen. He never looked back
and had been successful in denying their existence, not only in such documents over
the years which had inquired into his next of kin, but also in his mind. Where they lived
today or even if they lived, he had no notion, nor had he made any attempt to discern
their whereabouts. He had convinced himself that his self-imposed exile was justified
in that it relieved them of the continued burden of his own existence. To dwell on the
fate of his parents and his siblings would be to indulge in nostalgia, a pursuit he
deemed fraught with lack of logic and unproductive use of his time.

He kept up with his time on a gold watch given him on his last day after 40 years with
the Old Faithful Insurance Company, whose coffers he had personally enriched from
his lonely cubicle in the underwriting department. His expertise, known and respected
throughout the company, was calculating the life expectancy of potential
policyholders. Through days, weeks and months of study and reflection he had
developed a formula which took into account multiple factors, including age, sex,
standard of living, genetic proclivities and various medical texts and studies reflecting
survival rates for a plethora of diseases and other nemeses to the human race. His
formula and his research work were carefully guarded by him and never reduced to

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writing. Old Faithful came to rely almost exclusively on him in determining whether to
write or not write a life insurance policy. It became well known in the industry that if
Elgin Beckersmith opined a man or woman or child would die on a year certain, you
could bank on it. In his entire 40 years, his formula and his opinion failed only once. On
his opinion that a 28-year-old healthy young man just out of law school would live to
the age of 90, the company issued a million-dollar life insurance policy. The newly
insured policyholder met his death a month later when he was hit by a truck while
crossing a street in downtown Atlanta. While the company easily absorbed the loss,
Elgin never forgot how chance and fate had again trammeled his fortune.

On this Wednesday, Elgin stuck his head out the front door and peered up and down his
street. Every time he left his home his exit was the same, like a beleaguered turtle,
testing the environment outside his shell. There was no activity either down to the cul-
de-sac or back the other way to the intersection. He retrieved the mail and his
newspaper and went back inside.

In less than a minute his doorbell rang. He had once disconnected the door bell, but out
of frustration had connected it again, preferring the bell to the incessant banging at
his door by the more persistent solicitors. As was his practice, he ignored the doorbell,
but after a few minutes of it, he gave up and went to the door. From the peephole in the
door he could see a young girl dressed in Girl Scout green, standing akimbo with her
jaw set in defiance and her face framed in red curls topped by a green beret. He
cracked the door and spoke through the crack.

"Go away.”

"You could have the courtesy and good manners to at least let me tell you why I
have been ringing your doorbell!" This delivered while blowing curls out of her
face.

"I don't know you."

"And if this rudeness is an example of your normal behavior, you will not have
the pleasure of my acquaintance. I am here only to take orders for cookies, and
assuming you are not as giving as each of your neighbors has been all the way
up this street, there will be no need further for you to know me or me to know
you."

"Fine. I want no cookies. Go away."

For a minute they glared at each other through the crack in the door. He knew he
should have left it at this, but something in her look and demeanor dredged up in him a
memory of himself at the age of twelve, long ago and far away, precocious and defying
a world through the eyes of an unwanted child.

"Wait. Are your parents with you?"

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 "I don't have any parents, and before we get into our life stories, mister, all I
need to know is your name, what kind of cookies you want, and how many."

"I don't care what kind and I will buy as many as you need to make your quota,
but I am not giving you my name. You can deliver them here the same way the
mailman does, addressed to occupant.”

"Why? Are you running from the cops?"

"That is a very personal and annoying question, the answer to which is none of
your business, but no."

“Then I shall hereafter address you as Mister Occupant. How much can I count
you in for?”

“Here is ten dollars. Do with it what you will, but before you go, at least give me
the courtesy of knowing whom I have entrusted my donation to.”

“Turn about is fair play, so you can call me Anonymous. You know you should
never end a sentence with a preposition.

“How old are you? Your language and your impertinence belie your
appearance.”

“Twelve. Maybe it is because my grandmother is in MENSA.”

“I doubt it. There is little large-scale evidence of intergenerational transmission

of IQ scores.”

“You said a mouthful. You sound like a professor. I’m sweating out here. Could
I have a glass of ice water?”

“Yes. Come inside out of the heat.”

“You’re not one of those weirdos, are you?”

“Depends upon your point of view, but no, not the kind you should be concerned
about.”

She came in, sat on the solitary chair in the room, and he went into the kitchen to pour
her some water.

“Where’s the ice?”

“I have no ice because I have no refrigerator. Here. Take it or leave it.”

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“Where are the pictures of your family?”

“I don’t have any family.”

“How sad.”

“Not really. Are you sad that you have only your grandmother?”

“Not sad. Just angry.”

“Angry at what?”

“The same thing my dad was angry with, whatever caused my mom to get
leukemia, and whatever caused him to die angry and alone, and angry with the
gods of fate who are somewhere out there rolling the dice to decide why shit
happens and who it happens to.”

“That is not the language I would expect from a cultured twelve year old. I
believe things happen with a reasonable certainty and for a probable cause.”

“Bet you never bought a lottery ticket. Who is the stuffy-looking guy in the
picture?”

“Benjamin Gompertz, an Englishman I very much admire, and who would take
my side of this intellectual discourse.”

“Why?”

“He developed the Gompertz law of mortality…a mathematical equation

eventually used to calculate life expectancy.”

“Why do you admire that? I mean, who wants to know when they’re gonna die?”

“Anyone who has an estate, to get his finances in order, for one…and his
insurance company.”

“Have you figured out when you’re gonna die?”

“I have indeed. In 12.66 years, in October, before my 84th birthday.”

“God, how depressing! Have you told your friends?”

“I don’t have any friends, and watch your language.”

“I will be your friend.”

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“And what good would that do you or me? Friends cause entanglements, messy
emotions and useless socializing. Suppose you were my friend, just for the sake
of this discourse. What good would that do for me?”

“Well, first of all we could start planning things for you to do with the time you
say you have left…We could go to an ice cream parlor and get a banana split,
and go to a silly movie, and swing on the porch and see who can sing the words
to the most songs, and…”

“I don’t have a swing on my porch.”

“Get one. My grandma told me when my mom was a kid they would sit on the
porch at night and swing and play sing along. Grandma says the front porch
swing at night, in the sound of the crickets, wafted away the troubles of the day,
and left her all clean and calm for the next day.”

“There is no logic to that whatsoever. If you are so keen on spending my time

with banana splits and porch swinging, inane pursuits, let’s see how you would
spend the time you have left. As you said, turn-about is fair play.”

“I would like to spend it dancing in the rain, chasing fireflies, running on the
beach in the wind, and…and… sleeping beside a frightened puppy who had no
home.”

“You are devoted to a serendipitous lifestyle which is destined to no good end.”

“Seren…serendipitous?”

“Serendipitous. Having the characteristic of serendipity. Unexpected good

fortune, out of blind luck.”

“Maybe I can be your seren…seren-dip-i-tous friend. It was blind luck that

brought me here, wasn’t it? I mean we never heard of each other until I rang
your doorbell.”

“Nonsense. You were on a pre-calculated Girl Scout task, with a pre-calculated

route which obligated you to knock on every door on this street and probability
eventually brought you to mine. Without further factors figured in, the
mortality tables say you will live another 68.59 years, or roughly until you are
over 80 years old. That is a helluva long time to be dancing, swinging on the
porch, running on the beach and sleeping with puppies.”

“Please watch your language. A year or 68 years, I don’t care and I don’t wanna
know. I am a child of blind surprises, and we blindly love a surprise and we love
to be blindly lucky.”

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 “If you want to be my friend, we need to have some more of these sessions. You
remind me of someone I knew once, and I want to try to talk you out of some of
this foolishness. If I take you as a friend, will you ask your grandmother if you
can come back?”

“Only if I can bring us a banana split, which will probably melt, since you don’t
have a refrigerator…and only if you say, scout’s honor, that I am now your
friend.”

“Scout’s honor. Just ring my doorbell whenever your grandmother approves.”

“You’re on, Mr. O. I suppose a hug would be, at this stage of our complicated
relationship, inappropriate.”

“Yes. Let’s not encumber this discourse we have with a messy emotion.”

“Okay, Mr. Occupant. Let’s just shake on it, and I’ll see ya.”

He shook her hand and watched her stride away, the red curls bouncing underneath
her beret and his ten dollar bill clutched in one hand. Through the crack in the door,
as she walked out of sight, he uttered, underneath his breath, “Goodbye Miss….Miss
Anonymous.”

He did not hear from her for two weeks and then his doorbell rang and he found on his
front porch only a gift-wrapped package. He took it inside, opened it and found five
boxes of Girl Scout cookies with a scrawled handwritten note on top:

“Dear Mr. O – I am sending this to you from Grace Children’s Hospital. This is my
fifth time here in a year, but this time they tell me I am not gonna make it out. I
never told you, but your large-scale studies were wrong about leukemia not
traveling in the genes. And you were wrong about my expiration date, but I
promise I am not angry. Stuff happens. (Thanks to my new friend, I have
cleaned up my language.) Since my mortality table is copping out, I wanna get
my finances in order, and these five dozen cookies I owe you, when delivered by
my grandma, will put my estate in order. But these cookies come with a return
promise on your part. Every time you eat one of these, you must get on your
bike and ride out there…just out there with no destination…and find someone
new each time and find out all you can about them. With the number of cookies
in here, you should have sixty new friends by the bottom of the box, with any
blind luck at all. If you keep this promise, there may not be any more people in
my life who die angry and alone…if your serendipity holds up. With much love,
but no sloppy emotions - Miss Anonymous.”

-The End-

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