Chapter 6 - The Scramble at Glenview
The heavy front door of my condo clicked shut behind them at 6:42 p.m.
The deadbolt turned with an authoritative, metallic thud that reverberated through the empty entryway.
Through the floor-to-ceiling glass, forty floors above the city, I watched the yellow headlights of an Uber pull away from the curb below, disappearing into the cold, river-bound traffic of Michigan Avenue.
Inside the car, the silence was suffocating.
Lorraine sat pressed against the passenger door of the rideshare, her camel-hair coat pulled tight around her shivering frame, her chest heaving with silent, ragged sobs of total, catastrophic defeat.
"How could you do this, Vance?" she wept into her trembling hands, her voice muffled by the sound of the tires on wet asphalt. "You told me she was soft! You told me she was an appraiser who spent all day looking at drywall and wouldn't pay attention to family accounts! You told me her condo was worth seven hundred thousand dollars and that the cash-out refinance would clear before the auction!"
Vance did not look at his mother. He stared straight ahead through the rain-streaked windshield, his jaw set in lines of sullen, humiliated fury, his phone clutched in his right hand.
"She’s an appraiser, Mom," Vance rasped through clenched teeth. "She looks at titles for a living. I didn't think she'd pull the chancery dockets on a Thursday night."
"The auction is in twenty-four days!" Lorraine screamed, turning to claw at his sleeve. "Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do? Northstar’s lawyers called my landline this morning! They said if the arrears aren't paid by Monday, they are filing for an emergency writ of possession!"
Vance ripped his arm from her grip. "I don't have fifty thousand dollars, Mom! Do you understand that? The restaurant LLC is dead! The equipment was liquidated at forty cents on the dollar to pay off the food distributors! I owe my landlord ten thousand dollars on Southport, and my checking account has fourteen hundred dollars left!"
His phone buzzed with an incoming text message.
He looked down at the screen:
ALERT: VENUE RESERVATION TERMINATED
THE LINCOLN PARK CONSERVATORY HAS RECEIVED FORMAL WRITTEN NOTICE OF CANCELLATION FOR OCTOBER 24 FROM PRIMARY CONTRACTOR: SLOAN MERCER.
SECURITY DEPOSIT FORFEITED // EVENT DOCKET CLOSED.
Vance’s breath caught in his throat.
A second notification chimed two seconds later:
FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF OMAHA // ACCOUNT ALERT
CARD STATUS: CANCELLED
AUTHORIZED USER 'VANCE STERLING' HAS BEEN PERMANENTLY REMOVED FROM LINE OF CREDIT ENDING IN #4418 BY PRIMARY CARDHOLDER SLOAN MERCER.
The black Amex card he had carried in his leather wallet for fourteen months—the card he had used to buy dinner for prospective commercial clients, the card he had swiped for his mother’s salon appointments, the card that had maintained his illusion of corporate success—was officially plastic scrap.
"She burned it all," Vance whispered, the phone slipping from his numb fingers onto the floor mats. "She burned the whole thing in forty minutes."
Lorraine slumped forward against the dashboard, weeping with the raw, ugly agony of a woman who had realized that her vanity had left her completely naked in the cold.
"Take me to your apartment, Vance," she sobbed. "I can't go back to Glenview tonight... the neighbors know... the sheriff’s notice is taped to the storm door..."
Vance stared out the window as the car crossed the Chicago River.
"I can't take you to Southport, Mom," he said, his voice flat, hollow, and utterly broken.
May you like
Lorraine blinked through her tears. "Why not?"
"Because the locksmiths from Hollingsworth’s management company arrived at three o'clock today," Vance whispered into the dark. "My clothes are in two garbage bags in the trunk of my car."
