Autumn came heavy with rumors the kind that moved faster than truth whispers of funds collapsing margin calls spreading like infection and traders who had been heroes months ago now ghosts walking through the office halls we pretended it wasn’t happening said the market would stabilize said the worst had passed but even the air felt thinner as if the city itself was holding its breath
Dalton stopped smiling that was the first sign he still wore the same suit still barked the same orders but the spark behind his eyes was gone he stared at the screens like they had betrayed him and maybe they had the models that once told him he was invincible now showed him how fast gravity works when faith runs out
Clients began calling one by one angry frightened desperate some pleaded others threatened some just went silent you can measure the collapse of a business not in dollars but in the seconds between those calls getting longer until the phone stops ringing altogether
I watched him unravel quietly at first late nights in the office staring at spreadsheets that no longer mattered he told me we just need one good quarter one good trade to remind them who we are I nodded though I knew it wasn’t true the magic had drained out the way blood leaves a wound slow and unstoppable
Julia called me then out of nowhere said she’d heard about the fund asked if I was okay I said I was fine she said you don’t sound fine I almost told her everything but the words caught in my throat she said maybe this is your chance to walk away I said maybe but I didn’t mean it she sighed said take care of yourself and hung up it felt like losing something I never had the courage to keep
Weeks passed like years the office emptier each morning more desks abandoned coffee cups left half full Dalton came in one day wearing sunglasses though it wasn’t bright his hands shaking said he was flying to Geneva to meet investors to save what was left he never came back
They said later he’d disappeared some said debt some said disgrace I didn’t ask I just cleared my desk and walked out into a city that looked the same but wasn’t
I found work at another firm smaller quieter full of survivors like me people who’d seen too much and learned too little we traded conservatively for a while pretending wisdom while waiting for the next wave because there’s always a next wave
The tech boom was already starting whisper of startups and websites and companies with no profits but infinite dreams the young analysts glowing with conviction the same fire I once had I watched them with a strange mix of envy and pity
My father called again said he’d sold the house in Florida said it was too quiet there said he missed New York the noise the chaos I told him I’d visit soon again that same word soon he laughed said you’ve been saying that for ten years son and I didn’t have an answer
At night I sat by my window watching the city breathe the glow of monitors in towers across the river like a constellation of sleepless ambition and I felt both part of it and apart from it
Sometimes I thought about Dalton about all the men who rise and fall in the same rhythm about how greed isn’t really about money it’s about fear the fear of being ordinary of fading without echo
I started keeping a journal again small notes between trades lines like I’m still here or maybe I’m just staying because I don’t know where else to go it wasn’t poetry but it was honest
The markets recovered as they always do and new money poured in clean eager forgetful I was older now my hair thinner my patience shorter but the hunger still there like a scar that never heals
One evening walking home through the chill wind I stopped outside a café saw a group of young traders laughing loud over laptops the sound bright full of hope I wanted to tell them something warn them maybe but the words stayed inside
They wouldn’t listen even if I did tell them I hadn’t listened either once
So I kept walking under the lights of the city that never learns thinking maybe that’s what keeps it alive