Heart racing from his brush with mortality, the semi’s blare echoing in his skull, Richard self-administered three hard slaps, powered up the defogger, stabilized his jittery eyeballs, and guided the Pontiac down the treacherous stretch of I-90 until he was safely deposited in the driveway of his house in Brookline.

It was a two-story colonial with a one-car garage and a patch of lawn that had been commandeered by a freakish oak tree that Richard had been meaning to do something about for years—uproot it, prune it, he wasn’t sure, nor would he ever be at this point. A crumbling concrete stoop and roof with slates pelted out of alignment by the region’s signature blizzards and apocalyptic nor’easters lent the edifice an attitude of fortress-like immutability, as if it welcomed any and all challenges to its endurance. An arsenal of icicles as deadly-looking as samurai swords hung from sagging gutters. The façade’s white paint was starting to peel in places, exposing woodwork that had since rotted and turned brown. Holly and spruce hedges garnished the dead-winter scene; with their fluffy domes of fresh snow they resembled Brobdingnagian marshmallows waiting to be impaled on tree limbs and roasted over a burning barn.

Richard kicked the snow from his Merrell hikers and entered through the garage into a mudroom adjacent to the kitchen.

Here he stood: middle-aged, never married, no children, siblings, close friends, or woman-friend to speak of; parents carted off by disease; mired in an office job that had Frankensteined into a middling career, clinging to a dull, decrepit house that probably wasn’t worth half of what he’d paid for it.

Let’s see, what else? Overweight though not obese (yet). Honey-chestnut hair cheated of the luster it had once flaunted, subsumed by mischievous gray and trespassing baldness. Wet, algae-colored eyes harassing a bulbous nose. Pouchy lower jaw. Chin dimpled like a golf ball. Flaky rose-pink skin that went livid at the slightest pressure, and ignited like flash paper in direct sunlight. Chronically cricked neck and lower back, products of an avid indoor lifestyle.

At one point, Richard thought he’d obtain in due course what everyone around him seemed to already have: a gratifying career, loving spouse and kids, vacations, interests and passions. He thought that such things—maybe not all of them, but some of them, or even just one of them—would, well, you know … occur. Of course he knew how idiotic this sounded.

But consider: fortyish male, in decent health, non-psychotic, non-violent, no substance dependence, no animal or peanut allergies, bathes regularly, semi-intelligent, stably employed, owner of a home in a respectable neighborhood with low crime rates and above-average schools—he was quite a catch, really. All he needed to do was make himself available, put himself out there, right?—ay, there’s the rub. Whatever qualities, innate or learned, that are fundamental to ensuring that such species-propelling, socio-biological faits accomplis—love, commitment, career, family—do indeed bloom in the hearts of modern-day hyper-connected women and men were, for Richard, either unsustainable or missing altogether. Be social. Start conversations. Make friends. Make contacts. Go to parties. Facebook. LinkedIn. Match.com. Find someone. Fall in love. Hard sells for a Category Five introvert who was cripplingly shy in social settings, given to brooding among bookshelves or behind houseplants.

That said, Richard did not rail against society or stoop to something so banal as self-pity. Nature had thwarted nurture. It had been a fair fight, totally aboveboard, and he had accepted the outcome.

Over time, Solitude had chosen him. The ideal mate, really. Quiet, unfussy, accommodating.

After a dinner of Stouffers salisbury steak, a quarter-sleeve of low-sodium Ritz crackers, and a Sam Adams Light, Richard descended into the basement. Although he lived alone, he had always thought of the belowground level as his space. He went there whenever he craved a more concentrated dose of seclusion. It was no mancave: situated among haphazardly shelved keepsakes and hillocks of half-forgotten possessions were his father’s wingback chair, an empty credenza, the trestle table from the old house in Brooklyn, a Zenith from the early 90s, hooked up to a cable box, and a coffee table-cum-ottoman topped with magazines and dog-eared paperbacks in various stages of completion.

He plopped into the wingback, succumbing to its suction, and took up a month-old New Yorker, which featured a David Denby retrospective on the films of Otto Preminger. Richard’s eye had leapt from the author’s name to the oversized dropped capital “O” that began the opening sentence when Otto (the other Otto, not the director, who died in 1986) rumbled into his consciousness for an impromptu tête-à-tête.

Arrangements. Just thinking about that damned, doomed project caused Richard to wince with real pain. Its distresses would continue to fester and multiply. They mirrored the weather: impairing, unsparing, unrelenting.

How had this happened? This job. This life. This … this. Staring at tripe all day, drowning in deadlines, collaborating with a moron, coming home to an empty house, few prospects, zero expectations, thoroughly unenthused, optimistic about nothing.

Next Chapter: Part One: The First Sphere, Chapter III