Chapter 8 - The Weight of the Floor
Two weeks later, Daniel Mercer’s apartment in River North was completely empty.
The minimalist grey couch had been sold on Facebook Marketplace for four hundred dollars. The single lamp, the dining table, and the minimalist art prints had all vanished, leaving behind only the polished hardwood floors and the faint, rectangular outlines where furniture had once stood against the walls.
Tessa had not called or texted since the day she walked out of the seafood restaurant. Through mutual industry contacts, Daniel heard she had accepted a lateral marketing position at a boutique agency in Dallas, effectively scrubbing any trace of her association with his public fallout from the Chicago market.
Daniel stood in the center of the echoing living room, holding a single cardboard box containing his passport, a few old photograph albums from before his career took off, and the faded leather journal he had kept during his first year in business school.
His phone rested on the floor beside the box. It didn't vibrate. There were no forty-three messages waiting for him. There was no corporate crisis demanding his immediate attention, no zoning board meeting to prep for, no high-society networking dinner to endure.
There was only the quiet, unrelenting stillness of a man who had finally reached the bottom of the ladder he spent a decade climbing—only to discover he was standing entirely alone.
He bent down, picked up the box, and walked out the front door for the last time. He locked the deadbolt, dropped the brass key into the leasing agent’s brass drop-box in the lobby, and stepped out into the crisp December air.
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He didn't call an Uber. He didn't look at his phone.
He zipped up his coat—an old, heavy wool jacket he had bought back in Queens, long before the West Loop offices, long before the marble countertops, and long before he forgot who helped him buy his first pair of shoes—and started walking south toward the river, one step at a time, feeling the solid, unyielding concrete beneath his feet.
