Chapter 7 - The Eviction of the Ego
By 4:30 PM, the rain had turned into a steady, freezing sleet.
The parking lot outside Vance Logistics was nearly empty. The employees, having caught wind of the morning catastrophe through the inevitable office grapevine, had cleared out early under the pretense of bad weather.
I sat in the passenger seat of Marcus’s sedan, watching the front glass doors of the building.
The double doors opened.
Daniel emerged. He was carrying a single cardboard box.
He had no umbrella. The sleet plastered his thinning hair to his forehead, soaking through the shoulders of his charcoal sport coat—the jacket that had started this entire sequence of ruin. He looked hunched, smaller, stripped of the manufactured swagger that had carried him through the last five years.
He walked toward the company Audi, stopped, and remembered.
The Audi was parked in the executive stall, but the keys were in Thomas’s pocket. Thomas had arranged for an Uber to pick Daniel up at the curb.
Daniel stood on the wet asphalt, the cardboard box getting soggy in his arms, waiting for a stranger in a silver Corolla to drive him back to his rented one-bedroom corporate apartment.
When the headlights of the Corolla pulled into the drive, Daniel didn't look at it. He looked across the lot, directly through the tinted glass of Marcus’s sedan. He knew I was in there.
He took two steps toward our car, as if he meant to bang on the window, to demand an explanation, to stage one final dramatic scene. But his foot slipped on the freezing slush. He caught himself on the bumper of a parked van, the box slipping from his grip, dumping folders, pens, a brass desk clock, and a framed photograph of him and Ben at a fishing tournament into the dirty, gray puddles.
He fell to one knee, frantically grabbing at the wet papers.
Marcus put the car in reverse. "Ready to go, Claire?"
May you like
"Yes," I said quietly, looking away from the rearview mirror. "Take me home, Marcus."
***
