The Escape Room

by Megan Goldin

  The last time Sam had received a credit-card bill that huge, he’d immediately lowered Kim’s credit limit. Kim found out when her payment for an $11 000 Hermès handbag was rejected at the Madison Avenue store in front of her friends. She was mortified. They had a huge blow up that night and he reluctantly restored her credit limit. Now he paid all her bills without a word of complaint. Even if it meant taking out bridging loans. Even if it meant constantly feeling on the verge of a heart attack.

  Sam knew that Kim spent money as much for attention as out of boredom. She complained that Sam was never around to help with the twins. He’d had to point out that they’d hired a maid to give her all the help she needed. Three maids, to be truthful. Three within the space of two years. The third had walked out in tears a week ago due to Kim’s erratic temper.

  Kim was never satisfied with anything. If Sam gave Kim a platinum necklace, she wanted it in gold. If he took her to London, she wanted Paris. If he bought her a BMW, she wanted a Porsche.

  Satisfying her unceasing demands was doable when his job prospects were good, but the firm had lost a major account and since Christmas word had spread of an impending restructure. Everyone knew that was a euphemism for lay-offs.

  Sam never doubted that Kim would leave him if he couldn’t support her lifestyle anymore. She’d demand full custody of the girls and she’d raise them to hate him. Kim forgave most of his transgressions, she could even live with his infidelities, but Kim never forgave failure.

  It was Sam who first heard the footsteps sounding through the vast lobby. The long, hurried strides of a man running late to a meeting. Sam swung around as their boss arrived. Vincent’s square jaw was tight and broad shoulders were tense as he joined them without saying a word.

  ‘You almost didn’t make it,’ observed Sylvie.

  ‘The traffic was terrible.’ Vincent ran his hand over his overcoat pocket in the habit of a man who had recently stopped smoking. Instead of cigarettes, he took out a pair of glasses, which he put on to examine the message on his phone. ‘Are you all aware of the purpose of this meeting?’

  ‘The email invite from HR wasn’t exactly brimming with information,’ said Sam. ‘You said in your text message it was compulsory for us to attend. That it took precedence over everything else. Well, we’re all here. So maybe now you can enlighten us, Vincent. What’s so important that I had to delay my trip to Antigua?’

  ‘Who here has done an escape room challenge before?’ Vincent asked.

  ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ Sam interrupted. ‘I abandoned my wife on her dream vacation to participate in a team building activity! This is bullshit, Vincent. It’s goddamn bullshit and you know it.’

  ‘It will take an hour,’ said Vincent, calmly. ‘Next Friday is bonus day. I’m sure that we all agree that it’s smart to be on our best behaviour before bonus day, especially in the current climate.’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ sighed Sylvie. Her flight to Paris was at midnight. She still had plenty of time to get home and pack. Vincent led them to a brightly lit elevator with its doors wide open. Inside were mirrored walls and an alabaster marble floor.

  They stepped inside. The steel doors shut behind them before they could turn around.

  It’s remarkable what a Windsor knot divulges about a man. Richie’s Italian silk tie was a brash shade of red with thin gold stripes running on a diagonal. It was the tie of a man whose arrogance was dwarfed only by his ego.

  In truth, I didn’t need to look at his tie to know that Richie was a douche. The dead giveaway was that when I entered the interview room, a nervous smile on my pink matt painted lips, he didn’t bother to greet me. Or even to stand up from the leather chair where he sat and surveyed me as I entered the room.

  While I categorised Richie as a first-class creep the moment I set eyes on him, I was acutely aware that I needed to impress him if I was to have any chance of getting the job. I introduced myself and reached out confidently to shake his hand. He shook my hand with a grip that was tighter than necessary; a reminder, perhaps, that he could crush my career aspirations as easily as he could break the bones in my delicate hand.

  He introduced himself as Richard Worthington. The third, if you don’t mind. He had a $200 haircut, a custom shave and hands that were softer than butter. He was in his late twenties, around five years older than me.

  When we were done shaking hands, Richie leaned back in his chair and surveyed me with a touch of amusement as I settled into my seat across the table.

  I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. Did he see a struggling business-school graduate with a newly minted MBA that didn’t appear to be worth the paper it was written on? Or was he perceptive enough to see an intelligent, accomplished young woman? Glossy brown hair cut to a professional shoulder length, serious grey eyes, wearing a brand-new designer suit she couldn’t afford and borrowed Louboutin shoes that were a half-size too small and pinched her toes.

  I took a deep breath and tried to project the poise and confidence necessary to show him that I was the best candidate. Finally I had a chance at getting my dream job on Wall Street. I would do everything that I could humanly do to not screw it up.

  Richie wore a dark-grey suit with a fitted white shirt. His cufflinks were Hermès, arranged so that the H insignia was clearly visible. On his wrist was an Audemars Piguet watch, a thirty-grand piece that told everyone who cared that he was the very model of a Wall Street player.

  Richie left me on the edge of my seat, waiting awkwardly, as he read over my résumé. Paper rustled as he scanned the neatly formatted sheets that summed up my life in two pages. I had the impression that he was looking at it for the first time. When he was done, he examined me over the top of the pages with the lascivious expression of a john sizing up girls at a Nevada whorehouse.

  ‘You look cold. Do you want me to turn off the air conditioning?’ He asked with a half smirk as he meaningfully lowered his eyes. Confused by the question, I looked down to where his eyes had settled. They were lingering on my nipples, the outlines of which were visible through the fabric of my top. I immediately turned red. His smirk turned into a full-blown grin. He was enjoying every second of my discomfort.

  The line had sounded rehearsed. Richie had deliberately cranked the meeting room’s thermostat to the coldest setting to provoke that physiological response. It was a cheap parlour trick. I guessed that he’d played it before with other female candidates.

  I blushed again. Richie revelled in my embarrassment as he ran his eyes over the rest of my body. My cup size and the shape of my crossed legs, visible under the glass table. To Richie, I wasn’t a high-potential graduate for the firm to recruit. I was fresh meat.

  I faked ignorance of his little joke as best I could and ignored his intimate appraisal of my body. I was there for a job interview and I would damn well keep the interview on track.

  I had prepared for the interview for days, I’d even researched Richie. He’d graduated from Princeton with an undergraduate degree but he’d never gone to graduate school or studied an MBA, which made him less qualified than me. But then he was Ivy League. My business school had a national reputation, but nothing compared to the cachet of Princeton.

  Being a Princeton graduate automatically gave Richie a gold ticket in life. And didn’t he just know it! He probably used his network to get himself into his first job and never looked back. That had been seven years ago, when the markets were red hot and any bozo could climb the corporate ladder so long as he wasn’t stupid enough to wear the same tie two days in a row. And if he had connections.

  I was nervous as hell as I waited for Richie to ask the first question. I needed to sound the part; I already knew that I looked the part. I had gone into debt to afford the designer suit that I was wearing.

  It was the nicest outfit I’d ever owned. And the most expensive. I saw that suit as an investment. If it got me the job I wanted I’d get my money back and then some. I’d be earning seven figures in under a decade.
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  When I first tried on the suit, back home in Chicago, I was concerned it made me look too feminine. Too sexy. I wanted to be taken seriously. It’s hard getting that balance right when you’re a woman going for a job interview. Was the skirt too short? The jacket too tight? As I examined myself in the dressing-room mirror the department store assistant assured me that I looked like a high-powered executive. When I handed her my credit card at the cash register a few minutes later, a lump in my throat at the huge bill, I reassured myself that my first pay cheque would more than cover the cost.

  Since I’d maxed out my credit card to buy the suit, I used my rent money to get my hair coloured and cut into glossy brown tresses that I flicked off my shoulder nervously under Richie’s blistering scrutiny.

  On paper, I was an ideal candidate. I ticked all the boxes of the job description. I’d graduated summa cum laude. My GPA was pure gold. I’d done an internship at an investment bank in Chicago. My references were practically sycophantic. My professors loved me and they weren’t shy about expressing it in their reference letters. They described me as smart, driven, an original thinker and an asset to any firm that hired me.

  I had been confident that I had a good chance of getting the job until the moment I looked into Richie’s bored blue eyes at the start of the interview.

  ‘So you’re from Chicago,’ he said, as if it was a different country. I nodded. He glanced at his watch. Bad sign.

  ‘I was just in Chicago on a business trip,’ he said.

  I swallowed the impulse to say, ‘I know.’ My interview was supposed to have taken place in Chicago during Richie’s visit. It was cancelled at the last minute with the explanation that, unfortunately, he couldn’t fit it into his packed schedule. Four days later, the recruiter called me again as if nothing had happened. ‘Mr Worthington would like to meet with you on Wednesday at our New York office.’ She made it sound as if I was being granted an audience with the Pope.

  There was no offer to fly me to New York. I didn’t feel comfortable asking. I was too broke to buy a plane ticket. It was peak travel season and prices were exorbitant. So I took the train all the way to Penn Station. Twenty-one hours of Amtrak hell. The guy next to me snored so loudly that I barely slept

  ‘I went to the Cubs–Yankees game during my trip. It was my first time at Wrigley Field. Amazing experience.’ Richie was so self-absorbed he didn’t immediately realise he’d effectively divulged that he stood me up on his supposedly jam-packed trip to Chicago in order to watch a baseball game. My expression must have reminded him because he hastily added, ‘The baseball game was a networking event for our clients.’

  Yeah right, I thought. You didn’t need to graduate from Princeton to know a junket when you saw one.

  I kept a sappy smile pasted on my face. But everything that had transpired so far told me that my chance of getting the job was precisely zero. You don’t treat a candidate with such disrespect if you’re planning on recruiting her.

  The only reason that I scored the interview was because one of my college professors heard that I was still looking for work. He was baffled as to why his best student was scrambling around for a job months after graduation. He contacted an old friend with connections at the firm and called in a favour. That’s how I landed up interviewing with Richie.

  I squeezed my fingernails into my palm to remind myself to be on my best behaviour. Shut up and smile, I told myself. The pain of my nails in my flesh would be nothing compared to what would happen if I didn’t get this job. I’d be broke and my career would be dead before it ever began.

  I was a few months out of graduate school and, despite stellar grades, I was still unemployed. If that went on for much longer I would be entirely unemployable by the time the next batch of graduates left business schools. A graduate on the job market for too long was like a piece of rancid meat. Nobody wanted to touch them.

  It was bad luck that I graduated at the same time as a downturn hit the markets. There had been talk of a mini-recession. Confidence was down, financial industry shares plummeted. Firms immediately slashed their hiring. There were plenty of graduates just like me who were struggling to get jobs.

  ‘We get thousands of candidates applying for jobs every year. We have the pick of the crop. Why should we hire you?’ That was Richie’s first question.

  I knew from his air of overindulged entitlement that he wouldn’t understand what it meant to work your guts out through college and graduate school to get straight As for a chance at a career he took for granted. He would have stumbled into his job as if it was a birthright.

  I took a deep breath. I had prepared for questions like this all the way on the train ride over. And it was one long train ride. I’d memorised a clever answer for this question word for word. It was articulate. Well reasoned. And most importantly, relatively succinct. Nobody wanted a job candidate who rambled.

  As I began to answer his question, Richie reached into his briefcase. My eyes followed his movements as I continued speaking, doing my best not to sound too rehearsed. Richie was digging around in his briefcase, looking for something. I figured he wanted a notebook or a pen. I found out what he was looking for when he triumphantly removed a foil bag and ripped it open.

  The sound of crinkling packaging was almost deafening as he shoved his hand inside the packet and scooped out a handful of mixed nuts, which he promptly shoved into his mouth.

  I powered through my response to his question even though it was distracting, talking to someone who was shovelling nuts into his mouth.

  Richie crunched so loudly that all I could hear was the crack of teeth on nuts. Crack, chew, swallow. Crack. All the while I was giving my best sales pitch.

  I looked into his eyes and realised that it was deliberate. His chiselled, venal face had the same look of amusement he’d had when he played his air conditioner trick.

  When I finished my answer, he took another handful of nuts, began chewing and asked his next question with his mouth full. ‘Have you ever worked in a high stakes environment? How did you deal with the pressure?’

  I answered that question. And then another. It was hard to be eloquent when all I could hear was Richie’s teeth crunching almonds and cashews with the mechanical efficiency of an industrial grinder. I couldn’t hear myself talk and was pretty sure that he couldn’t hear a word I was saying either. I inadvertently raised my voice slightly so that I could be heard over his crunching. He crunched more loudly. With a straight face.

  It was plain as day that he didn’t have the slightest intention of hiring me for the job. It didn’t matter how well I presented, how eloquently I spoke or how good my experience was. I was there purely as a box-ticking exercise.

  The thought occurred to me that Richie probably had to interview a woman or two as part of the hiring process. I fit the bill. It was all about covering his ass. He was asked to bring me in for an interview, that didn’t mean he had to treat me as a serious candidate. He just had to go through the motions and that’s what he was doing.

  I had an overwhelming urge to stop talking, get up and walk out. I didn’t have the luxury. I had student loans to pay off. Mounting credit card debt. And rent to pay. I had more than enough to keep me in the red for the next decade unless I landed a good job. I couldn’t risk burning my bridges by making a fuss over the way that Richie treated me. Who would believe me anyway?

  In my sad reality I had little choice but to answer Richie’s dumb-ass questions while he all but gave me the finger as he shoved another handful of nuts into his mouth.

  When it was finally over, he told me someone would be in touch. Then he walked out and left me alone in the meeting room to show myself out.

  I left the interview feeling sick to my stomach. Sick that someone could treat me with such contempt. Sick at the fact that I had another 21-hour train ride back home. Sick at the thought I had to cover a huge credit card bill for my suit and was short of next month’s rent money.

  I returned my visitor�
�s pass to the reception desk and walked in a daze into an elevator. Before the doors closed, some guy pushed his way in. I didn’t pay him any attention. I’d had enough of his kind for one day. Another suit with an overpriced haircut and a watch that cost more than my parents’ car.

  There was a film of tears in my eyes from frustration. I was still holding my résumé – I’d intended to hand it to Richie to make sure he had a hard copy. I resisted the urge to rip it up.

  ‘I hear that Michigan State has an excellent finance program.’ I looked up in surprise at the man who was breaking elevator etiquette by talking to me. He was tall with a broad frame and dressed in a de rigueur charcoal suit with a light blue shirt and a dark tie. There was something about him that made me realise he was the exact opposite of Richie. He didn’t flash his success but he oozed presence.

  His English was flawless except for the vague hint of a European accent. His eyes were the lightest shade of blue I’d ever seen. Blue chips of ice.

  ‘I graduated from the program recently,’ I said. ‘It was excellent. They have John Baker running it. He was one of my faculty advisors.’ Baker was a former Federal Reserve economist who cemented his reputation by predicting the previous financial crises when everyone was still bullish on equities.

  I was a little creeped out that this man peeked over my shoulders to read the first page of my résumé. He must have known what I was thinking because he gave me a rueful, slightly apologetic smile, which was infectious. I smiled back.

  ‘I follow Professor Baker’s analysis closely. He has a brilliant mind. I admire him for going back to his alma mater to head its research institute rather than take an Ivy League position,’ he said.