Jason\nSolomon has few items eliciting appreciation from his even fewer visitors. A\nsingle brass menorah and a fine, velvet kippah alongside it on the mantel drew\nthe eye before being wiped from that memory segment marked \u201cfleeting\u201d. Otherwise\nhis apartment was plain, but noticeably clean and, unusually for a recently\ndivorced man in his fifties, exceptionally tidy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His\ncleanliness was a tribute to his thirty-eight-year career as a baker in his\nfather\u2019s shop, a man for whom the godliness of cleanliness was visited upon his\nemployees with a wrath of scriptural ferocity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Contrasting\nwith its spotless appearance, the apartment smelled as high as a three-day old\ncadaver, and so it should, because Jason Solomon is dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He sits in\nhis armchair facing the small window overlooking the courtyard at the back of\nhis tenement block, eyes clenched tight in an echo of pain, a thin line of\ndried drool adorning his cardigan; a rivulet of impending mortality now baked\nhard by the streaming sunlight, the last ironic act of a life lived tidily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLooks like\na heart attack\u201d, said Judie Foss, after checking Solomon\u2019s vitals. She was one\nof two paramedics admitted to the apartment after Solomon failed to show up for\nwork two days running. Both of them knew what was coming before they gained\nentry, but they still drew an ill-advised breath at the summer sun-engendered\nstench coming from the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPoor\nbugger. He\u2019s been here a few days,\u201d her partner, Mike Standish replied. \u201cOpen\nthe window, Jude. I\u2019ll phone it in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She reached\nout and pulled at the window catch, but it refused to budge, \u201cI\u2019ll try the\nkitchen window.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mike pulled\nhis cellphone from his pocket and started to dial when he noticed a small,\npink, slip of paper lying on the floor, just under edge of the chair. He lifted\nit free and folded it open. It was a lottery ticket and Mike knew with absolute\ncertainty the cause of death. Glancing back at the kitchen door to make sure he\nwas unobserved, he pocketed the ticket and walked over to the small hallway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPopping\noutside, Jude. I can\u2019t get a signal in here.\u201d Mike said as he stepped out onto\nthe graffiti adorned landing. He took the stairs down two at a time, his heart\nracing with excitement and his finger stabbing feverishly at the National\nLottery app on his phone. Comparing the numbers, his excitement turned to\nexultation. They were a match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOh my God,\nI\u2019m rich,\u201d he said to himself as he stepped unseeing into the path of a\nspeeding bread van, which lifted him clear off the ground and threw him against\nthe far wall of the terraced street. He was dead before he hit the floor and\nthe lottery ticket bobbed and fluttered in the sudden breeze, taking it clear\nof the narrow, intersecting roads of the tenement blocks, along the broad\nexpanse of Whitechapel High Street until it settled at the feet of a young\npriest entering the London Hospital to dispense compassion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Picking it\nup, he immediately knew in his heart it was the winning ticket and visions of\naffording great works of charity flashed through his mind. He barely saw the\noxygen bottle falling from the fifth floor window as it hit him with the force\nof a pile-driver, driving his biretta through his skull and into his chest\ncavity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ticket\nfluttered on and on, riding the breeze like an avenging angel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Round and\nround it goes, where it will stop, nobody knows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jason Solomon has few items eliciting appreciation from his even fewer visitors. A single brass menorah and a fine, velvet kippah alongside it on the mantel drew the eye before being wiped from that memory segment marked \u201cfleeting\u201d. Otherwise his apartment was plain, but noticeably clean and, unusually for a recently divorced man in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,55],"tags":[66,65],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-august","tag-gold","tag-solomon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-1Z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}