The Escape Room

by Megan Goldin

  ‘I dropped someone’s jacket,’ said Sylvie, bending to pick it up. She groped around on the floor in the dark to find it. Instead of grabbing hold of fabric, she touched something else. It was cold and hard. The shape was distinct. She knew exactly what it was the moment she ran her fingers over it.

  ‘Why is there a gun here?’ Sylvie asked.

  ‘What do you mean, a gun?’

  ‘I mean a gun, Vincent,’ said Sylvie. ‘A pistol, a handgun. It fell out of the jacket that I knocked down. Here,’ she said, handing it to Vincent. He examined it under the torchlight of his phone.

  ‘It’s a Glock,’ he said. ‘And it’s loaded.’

  He turned around to address everyone.

  ‘Who the hell brings a loaded Glock to a work meeting?’

  ‘Everyone, say hello to Sara.’ Vincent stood behind me with his hand on my right shoulder in what he probably intended to be a reassuring gesture. The team were spread around a large table in a meeting room, immersed in their work.

  As Vincent’s words registered, their eyes shifted from their laptop screens to me. I stood hesitantly in the doorway. I secretly cringed under their piercing scrutiny. It gave me that awkward new-girl-at-school feeling.

  ‘Hi Sara.’ I turned with relief in the direction of the first friendly voice in the room.

  ‘I’m Sam.’ Sam sat on a black swivel chair with his arms crossed and a cynical twist to his lips that belied the friendly tone of his voice. He had closely cropped blond hair that you could tell would be curly if he let it grow and large blue eyes that never missed a thing.

  It was 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning and they’d taken small liberties with the strict dress code. Jackets were flung over the backs of chairs. Ties were loosened. Shirt collars were unbuttoned.

  That was about as casual as it got at Stanhope and Sons. The firm was old school. Casual clothes and jeans were banned in the office even on weekends.

  Vincent guided me into the meeting room with his hand pressed against the small of my back. I felt like a lamb to the slaughter. I would have wriggled away but I was afraid of offending him. It was a relief when he let go of me to close the door.

  The blinds had been pulled down over the glass walls as well as the floor-to-ceiling windows, which I only much later discovered had a partial view of the Statue of Liberty. The lack of natural light made the place gloomy even with the overhead lights turned on.

  I’d arranged to go apartment hunting that morning, but Vincent quashed those plans with a single telephone call on Friday evening.

  ‘Sara, I’m going to have to throw you into the deep end,’ Vincent said. ‘I was planning on moving you between different teams for a few weeks until you get the hang of things but we don’t have the luxury. We have a bake-off and we’re under the gun.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘You’ll get a hang of the jargon,’ he said, amused. ‘A bake-off is when we are competing with other banks to submit a proposal. In this case, it’s for a possible acquisition. It means all hands on deck for the next two weeks until the submission deadline.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, mortified at my ignorance.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Sara. You’ll catch on quickly. That’s why I hired you,’ he said. ‘I am done with arrogant, entitled Ivy League graduates who don’t know the meaning of the word scrappy. Listen, the team is looking forward to meeting you. I’ll see you at the office at 9 a.m. tomorrow. Sharp.’

  It wasn’t a request.

  I texted the realtor to cancel the rental viewings I’d booked. I was sorry to miss my appointment for a studio apartment in the East Village that sounded ideal. The realtor had warned me that it would be snapped up quickly. Losing that dream apartment was my first taste of how the firm took precedence over everything. We had to be available as and when we were needed, short of a birth, death or marriage. And sometimes even then.

  Other than Sam, nobody else bothered to greet me as I entered the meeting room. They were absorbed in whatever they were doing on their laptops. I wasn’t sure whether they didn’t want to interrupt their train of thought by talking to me or if they didn’t give a damn.

  ‘Introduce Sara around, won’t you,’ Vincent instructed Sam as he flicked through a file while still standing.

  ‘Of course.’ Sam bounced up from his chair with an explosion of friendly charm that I sensed was never much more than skin deep. ‘I have the dubious honour of leading the team on this project. Under Vincent’s supervision, of course,’ Sam said, with a cheeky wink at Vincent.

  ‘It goes without saying that everything that takes place between these four glass walls is strictly confidential,’ he told me. ‘We don’t discuss it with wives, or husbands, or lovers, or mothers. Or roommates, for that matter. There are potential SEC violations for insider trading and other considerations that could get a person into very hot legal water if he, or she, decided to shoot his, or her, mouth off.’

  He took a deep breath to allow his words to sink in. ‘Do you understand where I’m coming from, Sara?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said a bit too vehemently. I was offended that he thought it was necessary to tell me the obvious. I was not a college freshman. I had two degrees, including an MBA with a major in corporate finance and investment banking. I knew the consequences of SEC violations. ‘We spent an entire day with legal during our induction discussing insider trading and other legal risks.’ I tried not to sound offended by his patronising attitude.

  ‘I hope they scared the living daylights out of you,’ he responded.

  ‘They sure did.’

  I shifted my gaze across the room. Laptops were open with power cords running everywhere and document boxes were piled up against the back wall. Across the table were files heaped in piles threatening to spill over.

  ‘I’ll get introductions out of the way quickly so that I can put you to work.’ Sam gestured towards his other colleagues. ‘Sitting across the table on the left is Jules. He’s the lawyer. That means you can’t tell lawyer jokes when he’s in earshot. Jules has very good hearing and very thin skin. You’ll work closely with him – he’s the guy usually telling us what we can’t do. Right, Jules?’

  ‘Hello, Sara,’ Jules said, looking at me with inscrutable smoky black eyes that contrasted sharply with his pale face. He flicked back a dark tuft of hair that had fallen across his forehead. ‘I won’t come around to shake your hand. Too lazy and too tired to get up. We were here until 2 a.m. and then back again at seven this morning.’

  ‘You must all be exhausted,’ I said sympathetically.

  ‘Nothing a Red Bull can’t fix,’ he said, picking up an empty can and tossing it into the nearest waste basket. ‘Your timing is perfect, Sara. We’re thrilled to have you.’ I didn’t miss the trace of sarcasm in his tone.

  ‘I’m looking forward to getting to work,’ I responded.

  ‘Good. We have about two months of work to do in twelve days, which means that you can forget about eating, sleeping or, sadly, satisfying any carnal desires. At least until deadline day.’

  ‘Vincent warned me that I was in for a marathon few days,’ I said with a confident smile that I hoped conveyed that I wasn’t daunted. ‘I eat very little. I’m good with virtually no sleep and I don’t know a soul in New York unless you count the doorman of my hotel.’

  ‘Well, that never stopped anyone,’ muttered a leggy blonde woman. She was sitting away from the table with her long legs stretched out onto a second chair. Her skirt had hiked up onto her thighs to display her tanned and incredibly toned legs. She wore a crème silk shirt. She had a navy jacket hanging on the back of her chair. The fabric of her shirt was sheer enough that I could see the outline of her bra.

  Her long caramel blonde hair fell in a curtain covering her face as she worked on her laptop. She didn’t bother looking up at me even when she spoke.

  ‘Sylvie. Take a second to say hello to Sara, won’t you? We’ve been begging Vincent for an extra pair of hands for weeks. Now that we have o
ne, be nice to her or she may run off to play with someone else.’

  ‘She’d be crazy if she did,’ said Sylvie, speaking about me as if I wasn’t there. ‘This is the most interesting project at the firm. I hope you’re a fast learner, Sara. The last thing we want is someone who is needy and asks lots of questions. We told Vincent to find us an analyst who can get up to speed straight away or not bother. We don’t have time for stupid questions and hand-holding. Vincent seems to think that you’re capable.’ Her tone suggested she was not convinced.

  ‘She is,’ said Vincent, without looking up from the documents he was reading. ‘Sara will be great.’

  Sylvie lifted up her head for the first time and surveyed me. Her dubious expression turned into burning contempt. I felt as if I’d been slapped across the face.

  Sylvie had a narrow chin and wide cheekbones that made her look both fragile and exotic. She was tall, thin, and intimidating in her beauty.

  Sylvie rose from her seat to her full height. Only Vincent was taller than her. I assumed that she was standing up to shake my hand and stepped towards her like an exuberant puppy excited at being shown a crumb of affection. She ignored me and leaned over to take a bottle of Evian from a tray on the table.

  She’d chosen a bottle of water that was just out of reach. She extended her hand to the bottle in a long, exaggerated feline stretch. She held that pose for several seconds until the eyes of every man in the room, Vincent included, were fixed on the tight fabric of her shirt. It had pulled across her breasts and left almost nothing to the imagination.

  I had the impression that only Sylvie and I knew what was really going on. It was a primitive demonstration of power; her way of telling me that she was the alpha female and I shouldn’t challenge her. Frankly, I don’t know why she thought I’d be a threat. I’m five foot six with shoulder-length brown hair and what I’ve been told is a dimple when I smile. Sylvie, by comparison, was a leggy goddess; a Barbie doll with brains and attitude.

  When Sylvie knew that she had everyone’s undivided attention, she twisted open the metal cap of the bottle, lifted her head back and took a long sip. Then she put the bottle back on the table, flashed a victorious smile at me and sat down to resume her work without bothering to drink any more of the water that she’d made such a fuss about seconds earlier. Nobody except for me noticed that Sylvie hadn’t actually said hello to me or spoken to me directly. That turned out to be classic Sylvie; bitchy, hierarchical and highly manipulative.

  ‘Sara hasn’t met the runt of the litter,’ said Sylvie, once she’d settled back into her chair. ‘Shouldn’t we introduce her?’

  ‘My bad,’ said Sam as he turned towards a dark figure in the corner of the room. I’d briefly noticed her when Vincent and I first walked into the room. She was so silent and reserved that she blended into the background. I’d totally forgotten she was there.

  ‘Last but not least, meet Lucy. She might not look like much, but she’s probably the smartest person in the firm. Yours truly notwithstanding, of course,’ said Sam.

  At the sound of her name, Lucy looked up momentarily from her computer. She either hadn’t heard or didn’t care about the back-handed compliment. She had a pale, expressionless face with eyes obscured by thick glasses that reflected the overhead lights. She was shorter than me, slight, with straight dark hair that she wore loose.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude.’ Lucy spoke in a monotone without any inflection. ‘I’m working on some calculations and don’t want to lose track. I look forward to having a coffee with you later and hearing your life story,’ she said in a slightly robotic tone, not meeting my eyes.

  ‘She won’t,’ whispered Sam.

  ‘Won’t what?’

  ‘She always says that but it won’t happen. You should know Lucy’s on the spectrum. She’s learned to say what’s expected but she doesn’t ever follow through. She’s … awkward in social situations. I’ve known her for three years and we’ve never once had a coffee, or talked about anything other than work.’

  Lucy wore a black jacket over a pale shirt and a skirt that reached her knees. The outfit was drab. I found out later that Lucy was colourblind. Her mother came to her apartment every few weeks to make sure her clothes were properly paired up with suitable shirts and accessories. We could always tell when her mother was away because Lucy would come to work in increasingly mismatched clothes. It was rumoured that the head secretary for our department had instructions to call Lucy’s mother when things started going downhill with her wardrobe. It was one of the concessions that was made for Lucy’s idiosyncrasies. And her brilliance.

  On that day of our first meeting, Lucy struck me as a computer nerd with goth tendencies and an obvious inability to connect socially. She also seemed to be the most sincere person in the entire team. That said more about the team than her.

  ‘Find a place to sit and plug in your computer,’ Sam told me.

  Vincent had slipped out while we were talking without me noticing. I didn’t see him again for almost five weeks. That was how it worked with Vincent. He travelled constantly and was highly secretive. He never gave anybody more information then he felt was absolutely necessary.

  ‘I’ve emailed you a report, Sara,’ said Sam. ‘You’ll need to print it off, proofread it and fix every mistake. I don’t care how small. I also need you to double check all the calculations. Make sure the commas and decimal points are in the correct places. The firm lost a deal last year over an incorrectly placed decimal in one fucking figure. Just one. The entire team responsible was fired. We have zero tolerance for mistakes.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, opening the document on my computer. It was fifty pages long, with page after page of tables filled with numbers. It looked like it would take days to check it all. ‘How long do I have?’

  ‘Five p.m.,’ said Sam.

  It would be a hell of a job to go through the document with the detail he was asking for, redoing hundreds of calculations, by that afternoon. I wasn’t actually sure it was humanly possible.

  ‘Sara, just to be clear.’ Sylvie’s voice was patronising. ‘Your job is to make sure that everything written here is perfect. If there is so much as an unnecessary space after a period, you will be responsible for the consequences.’

  ‘Of course.’ I was irritated by her immediate assumption that I would screw up. Sylvie had blithely made it clear that I was a gopher. I’d do all the grunt work and take all the blame.

  Over the weekend, when the secretarial staff were away, I did coffee and takeout runs. I sprinted to the copy room to collect printouts. It was my job to double-check everyone’s numbers and proofread every word of the report the team was pulling together. We were going to go through a dozen drafts before we had the final document. I had to check each and every single line in every version.

  Vincent was away somewhere in London, then Dubai, and after that Tokyo. He called in all the time and sent emails with instructions, both to the whole team and some of us individually. Figures that he wanted pulled so he could look over them, reports retrieved from archives, or whatever else he needed on any given day. He knew what was going on to the last detail even though he was in a time zone on the other side of the world.

  Sam spoke to him on the phone several times a day. Never in front of us. He’d disappear into an adjoining room and shut the door. Sylvie would bristle at being left out. Through the slats of the blinds, I’d see Sam pacing across the room while he spoke.

  A couple of times, Sam and Jules would argue quietly about an issue. ‘We need to discuss this with Vincent.’ They would both storm out together to call him in the adjacent room.

  Everything was secretive. Nobody updated me on the background of the deal that we were working on, or provided any other information. Everything that I knew, I gleaned from the report I was proofreading. I was new and untested. I had to earn their trust.

  Late one night, Sylvie whispered loudly to Jules in the back corner of the room. ‘Vincent sai
d that he didn’t want her to know.’ They both stopped talking when I raised my head slightly.

  They left, ostensibly to make coffee. Through the half open door, I saw them standing in the corridor having an animated discussion. They seemed to be at loggerheads. I tried not to look up. They silently disappeared into a meeting room down the corridor, where they remained for ages. When they came back into our meeting room, not a word was said. The secretiveness left me on edge.

  We were constantly reminded about being discreet. The meeting room blinds were permanently down. Nobody except for us was allowed to come in, not even the admin staff helping us. The room was always locked when we weren’t in it. That was a strict rule. There was a sign on the door to remind us.

  For close to two weeks, I would leave work at two or three in the morning, returning to my hotel room for a shower and five hours’ sleep. Six if I was lucky. Then I was back at the office for another day.

  It was mentally gruelling, especially as I was terrified that any mistake might get me fired before the probation period was over. Everyone was too busy to provide much in the way of explanations. Sylvie had made it clear that none of them would waste time answering dumb rookie questions. It was sink or swim. I swam.

  ‘Does Sylvie not like me, or is she like this to everyone?’ I asked Jules when he joined me on a late-night takeout run the night before our deadline.

  ‘Sylvie is Sylvie,’ said Jules. ‘You’ll get used to her. She’s tough as nails, but that’s probably because of what she’s been through.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard of her?’ There was a slightly incredulous note to his voice. ‘She was famous once, a top teenage model. The face of some brand like Miss Dior. You would have seen her face on the cover of magazines. She was cast in a Hollywood movie!’

  ‘Really, which one?’

  ‘Oh, I can never remember, but it doesn’t matter. She never made the movie. Sylvie was damaged goods by then. In more ways than one.’