Skyline (conclusion)

In the days following the walk with Solomon, Elliot moved through his Park Avenue apartment like a man caught in a riptide—adrift yet restless, tugged by currents he couldn’t name. The walk had left a residue, a hum that wouldn’t quiet. He’d gone to bed that night with his notebook open on the dining table, pages scrawled with jagged lines and half-formed shapes. By morning, the euphoria had curdled into something heavier, a mood that flickered between exhilaration and unease.

Solomon’s words had planted a seed—creativity wasn’t about the sleek monuments Elliot Van Alen chased. It was about connection, about hearing the city’s pulse and letting it guide his hand. That realization thrilled Elliot, yes, but it also terrified him.

The tower he’d been designing, the one dismissed as “derivative,” had begun to morph in his sketches. Where it once stood rigid, a glassy spike meant to impress, it now softened—its base flared like roots sinking into the earth. Solomon had done that, with his talk of sound as structure, of buildings that didn’t just rise but lived.

Elliot saw it taking shape, a design that could redeem him, could silence the whispers of “has-been.” But with that vision came a challenge he hadn’t anticipated: to pull this off, he’d have to lean into something raw, something he’d buried beneath years of polished detachment.

This tower wasn’t his alone; it was theirs, a collaboration born from a blind man’s wisdom and a walk he hadn’t planned. That dependency gnawed at him.

What if Solomon’s insight faltered?

What if the design—their design—failed again?

Worse, what if it succeeded, and he had to admit he’d needed someone to pull him from the wreckage of his own stagnation?

The thought clawed at his pride, that old Van Alen entitlement he’d inherited like a birthright, the same pride that had once propelled him to the top and now threatened to drag him under.

Elliot’s instinct, honed by years of isolation, was to pull back. Distance was his refuge, a habit as familiar as the tailored overcoat he shrugged on each morning.

He’d distanced himself from Lena, his ex-wife when her quiet pleas for connection became too loud; from Claire, his sister, when her life’s milestones clashed with his deadlines; from the city itself, retreating to this high perch where the streets were just a pretty abstraction.

He sat at his drafting table, the apartment silent save for the faint hum of traffic far below, and tried to work. The lines wouldn’t come. His hand hovered over the paper, trembling slightly as if waiting for permission. He’d stare at the Chrysler Building through the window, its spire a silver rebuke, and feel the weight of William Van Alen’s legacy press down harder.

As a kid, he’d worshipped that tower, sketching it in crayon, dreaming of his own mark on the skyline. Now it mocked him, a benchmark he’d never touch—not because he couldn’t, but because he’d forgotten how to try.

Solomon had reminded him that his gift wasn’t in the name or the solitude; it was in the tether to others, to the city, to the stories humming beneath the steel. But accepting that meant dismantling the walls he’d built, and Elliot wasn’t sure he knew how.

By the third day, Elliot’s mood had darkened, a stew of frustration and longing. The pressure wasn’t just about the tower now—it was about who he’d become if he failed, or if he succeeded.

Irrelevance loomed, a specter he’d dodged for years.

By the fourth day, he stood at the window, forehead pressed to the glass, the cold seeping into his skin. The city glittered below, indifferent as ever, and he felt the pull of Solomon’s absence like a missing limb. He’d distanced himself, yes, but it hadn’t worked. The sketches stayed unfinished; the tower stalled in his mind.

The buzzer jolted him upright, a harsh buzz cutting through the apartment’s hush. Elliot hesitated, then crossed to the int