The Escape Room

by Megan Goldin

  I left the crush of people and went up to the rooftop balcony to chill and check out the view. Upstairs was a table with drinks and mixers. I figured I’d make myself a cocktail. I’d done a bartending course when I was working at Rob Roy – I joked at the time that if I couldn’t get a job in finance then I’d become a cocktail waitress on a cruise ship and try to hook a sugar daddy.

  ‘Do you know how to make a gimlet?’ I looked up to see a man so good looking that my stomach cartwheeled. He wore a white open-neck shirt and jeans. His light brown hair fell over his forehead in a way that made me want to reach over and flip it out of his eyes.

  ‘I sure do,’ I answered to cover for my awkwardness. I felt incredibly self-conscious as I filled the stainless-steel cocktail shaker with gin and lime juice, mixed it, and added a spray of soda at the end. I salted the top of his glass before pouring in the cocktail and adding a thin wedge of lime.

  ‘Looks good,’ he said. ‘Make one for yourself. I hate drinking alone.’

  ‘My boss doesn’t let me drink when I’m working.’

  ‘Then you should sue him, or her, for unfair work practices.’ He said it with a smile that told me he knew I wasn’t a bartender.

  ‘My name’s Kevin,’ he said. ‘Amanda sent me up to find you. What she didn’t tell me is that you make a killer gimlet.’

  ‘That’s because I’ve never made her a gimlet. We share an apartment but, until recently, we could have counted on one hand the times we’ve been under the same roof.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he groaned. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen Amanda in …’ He paused to refresh his memory. ‘I honestly think over a year. Which is sad, because we used to be really close.’

  ‘Did you two date?’ I felt an irrational twinge of jealousy followed by a flash of embarrassment at my blunt question. He didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Amanda went out with my best friend when she was in grad school. They broke up years ago. It was a nasty split. Totally Chris’s fault. Anyway, they haven’t spoken since, but Amanda and I stayed friends and we try to get together every now and again.’

  Kevin mixed another gimlet as he spoke. This time for me. Though he struggled to get the salt on the rim of the glass as neatly as I had.

  ‘There,’ he said, handing me a slightly lopsided looking drink. ‘Now we’re even.’ We wandered over to two outsized egg-shaped chairs and pulled them close together. I slipped my shoes off and curled up in one of the chairs. He sat on the edge of the other, leaning forward so that our heads almost touched as we talked quietly.

  ‘I’m guessing that Amanda is trying to set us up?’ I said.

  ‘I presume that was the intention,’ he said. ‘But I’m not complaining.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I answered, with a smile.

  ‘Tell me about yourself, Sara. Are you in consulting as well?’

  ‘I’m in finance actually. I’m at Stanhope and Sons.’

  ‘Really,’ said Kevin in a way that told me he was impressed. ‘Stanhope is a tough place to get into.’

  ‘What about you?’ I asked, trying to take the attention off myself. ‘Where do you work?’

  Kevin told me that he was at a lawyer at Slater and Moore, which I knew was a top-five law firm by turnover. He specialised in the technology sector. He was in his fifth year and was determined to become the youngest partner in the firm’s history. Kevin was ridiculously ambitious in a city of ridiculously ambitious people.

  To be fair, Kevin didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter. Every member of his family had been a high achiever. His mom was a judge. His eldest sister was an assistant district attorney. His brother was a paediatric cardiologist. His youngest sister was studying fashion design in Paris and was already making more money than all her siblings by selling funky sleepwear via Instagram. Kevin proudly showed me her account.

  The party had started moving upstairs and someone turned up a hip-hop song. ‘How about we meet up tomorrow?’ Kevin half-shouted.

  ‘Where and when?’ I yelled back.

  It turned out to be unnecessary for us to make arrangements for the next day. I woke up in his bed sometime late in the morning on Sunday. The sun streamed into the bedroom so that I had to cover my eyes from the glare. Kevin brought in a tray of homemade brioche French toast with raspberries and crème fraiche, and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. I eyed my evening dress hanging off the bathroom door knob and tried to figure out how I’d retrieve it without taking all of Kevin’s bedding with me.

  And so Lucy was forgotten amid my burgeoning romance with Kevin. Hotshot lawyer, talented chef and all round good guy.

  In the dark, suffocating world of the stalled elevator, the rules were different. As time passed without any sign of rescue, Vincent seemed more impotent than omnipotent. Even Jules, whose throat was still burning from Vincent’s assault, lost all respect for him.

  It was apparent to both Jules and Sylvie that Vincent did not have a strategy to get them out, nor did he appear to be trying to come up with one. He sat passively in the back corner of the elevator, clutching his head. Sylvie and Jules didn’t know that he had a concussion; they thought he’d given up.

  Occasionally, he reassured them that he was certain they were being rescued. ‘Any minute now,’ he’d mutter. The silence that followed his words rendered them empty. And so they lost even more respect for him.

  They both blamed Vincent for their predicament. He’d brought them there with his text message insisting they all turn up, and he’d failed to get them out when things went awry. It was almost, Sylvie thought to herself, as if Vincent wanted them there. As if he was testing them.

  Sylvie looked at her watch as midnight approached. Her flight was taking off. Her trip to Paris was over and with it, most likely, her relationship with Marc. There was an outside chance that she could salvage things if she was able to call Marc before her flight arrived in Paris, seven hours from now, to let him know why she wasn’t on it. Otherwise Marc would wait for her outside the arrivals hall, just as they’d arranged, clutching a bouquet of roses. Cream. Maybe pink.

  He’d look for her among the stream of arriving passengers. When she didn’t turn up, he’d call her phone and leave her a voice message, trying but not quite succeeding at disguising his irritation. ‘Sylvie, darling,’ he’d say. ‘When you come out of customs, look for the impatient guy with the flowers standing by the car rental desks.’

  Eventually, as more time passed, Marc would assume that she’d stood him up. He’d toss the flowers into a bin and text her that it was over.

  He’d warned her once. They’d been in bed together in Paris, a week after she’d cancelled a trip at the last minute due to a crisis at work where a client got cold-feet and threatened to pull out of a deal. Sylvie rescheduled her Paris trip for the following week, thinking that Marc would understand. He knew that her job was demanding.

  ‘Sylvie,’ Marc said on that first night back together in Paris, lifting himself up on his arm and looking down at her lying naked under his white sheet. ‘I’m not your concubine. If that’s the relationship you want then have it with someone else. Not with me. I adore you, but I’ve never been the type to take second place to anyone, or anything. Least of all a job.’ He bent down to kiss her breasts.

  Sylvie thought about Marc’s ultimatum as she stared out into the wall of black, listening to the others breathing softly around her. It was strange how they could barely see one another in the dark and yet they were acutely aware of every aspect of each other. Their breathing, their moods, their various positions in the cramped space. They were packed so tightly together that Sylvie could almost feel their hearts beating in unison, as if they were a single organism.

  Occasional restless noises scored the silence. Sam whimpering in his opioid induced sleep. The clearing of a throat. Someone folding and unfolding arms, shifting cramped legs. A hollow cough. The rumbling of an empty stomach. It was an intimacy that Sylvie had only ever really shared with love
rs.

  The quote on the screen gleamed in the dark. The answer kept slipping away from Vincent just as he thought he remembered where it was from.

  It was so quiet that he wondered if the others were hatching a plan against him. They knew that he’d screwed them on their bonus and that he’d bad mouthed them to executive management in their performance reviews. There were no longer any secrets between them and that frightened him.

  Vincent stifled a groan of pain from his pounding headache. He couldn’t allow them to know that he was injured. His instincts told him they were already hyper aware that he was weak and helpless in the dark without his glasses.

  If they knew he was concussed and in danger of passing out then Jules would come after him. It was with this thought in mind that Vincent realised he could no longer feel the hard metal contours of the pistol resting reassuringly in the back of his pants. He checked his belt and rear pockets. The gun wasn’t there anymore.

  It worried him that the Glock was missing. He must have lost it when the elevator crashed. He surreptitiously tried to locate it, sliding his feet across the floor when he thought the others weren’t paying attention. All he found was broken glass from the smashed elevator mirror that crunched under his shoes. He checked the front pocket of his pants. The magazine was still there. That reassuredhim.

  Sweat poured down Vincent’s face. It was both from the heat and the physical exertion of not allowing himself to succumb to the pain. He had to fight a constant urge to take some of Sam’s Oxycodone. It would make him hazy. Vulnerable. He couldn’t afford to let down his guard.

  Vincent’s sense of smell had grown acute in the dark. He could differentiate each person’s odour. He could almost taste the antagonism in their rancid, unwashed mouths. He used the touch of his fingers in lieu of sight as he manoeuvred around the narrow space with the help of the handrails.

  Over time, Vincent’s hearing became sharper. He could hear their moods – the hiss of an inhaling breath, the impatient tapping of fingers. Their minds whirring as they plotted against him. Only the blackness that cloaked them all protected him.

  Jules unbuttoned his shirt to cool down. Vincent’s chest was bare. Sylvie still wore her cashmere wool-blend suit: a pencil skirt and fitted jacket. She wanted to look her best when they were rescued. After the humiliating revelations of her meagre bonus, and with her face grimy and hair in disarray – all she had left was her dignity.

  As more time passed, her clothes began to feel sticky from sweat. She worried that she’d get heatstroke if she continued wearing her heavy winter suit. Slowly, she began to unbutton her jacket.

  Vincent and Jules heard her fingers undoing each button and the faint rustle of fabric as she removed her jacket and dropped it in a heap on the floor. Then more buttons being undone and the sound of her shirt coming off her body. They didn’t need to see anything to know that the silky ripple hitting the floor meant she had tossed that aside too. They unwittingly wet their lips as they imagined Sylvie stripping off in the dark.

  Was she down to her bra? Or did she have nothing underneath that gossamer silk shirt, which she always wore with the top three buttons left tantalisingly open? Their imaginations ran wild as they moved closer to her, drawn to her like magnets.

  Jules took a deep breath. He made himself think of Geena. She was a cute redheaded law student who he’d met at a dinner party a few weeks ago. She was sharp witted in the endearing way of a graduate student trying too hard to impress. She made him laugh with stories of her professors, some of whom he knew from his time studying at the same law school.

  She told him that her parents had pushed her into studying a JD. While her preference had always been to specialise in international law, she was gradually drifting towards tax law. It seemed more practical.

  ‘That’s a good move, tax is where the money is,’ he’d reassured her, as they smoked on the balcony.

  They went on two dates. The first time he took her to a Japanese restaurant where a chef grilled a teppanyaki banquet in front of them while they drank sake from blue porcelain cups. The second time, they’d gone to Old Henry’s, a jazz bar in Hell’s Kitchen that served Cajun food on oversized red plates and had the best live acid jazz anywhere. Geena took a cab home straight afterwards with an excuse that she had a paper to submit the next day. It wasn’t exactly how he’d hoped the night would end.

  Within ten minutes, he’d found a replacement on a dating app. Also a redhead. They met at a bar and had a few drinks before he went back to her place. She was clingy and flaky. Not his type. A poor substitute, he thought, leaving her apartment before dawn.

  Jules had arranged to see Geena for brunch on Sunday morning. He’d been looking forward to seeing her again all week. As time dragged on in the elevator, he wondered if he’d make their brunch date. He’d have a hell of a story to tell her about this ordeal.

  He ran his hand over the back of his neck. It was slick with sweat. The thick, cloying heat reminded him of Louisiana in high summer. When he visited Lafayette as a young child, his grandmother would press ice cubes into his mouth as they lazed about on her porch swing in the sultry evenings. It was the only way to stay cool in the summer. He thought about sucking ice cubes as he fell asleep.

  I was in an internal meeting to review our strategy for a new deal when an executive assistant came quietly into the room and whispered into my ear that I had a call. I made my apologies and stepped out of the meeting. Sam looked annoyed at my sudden disappearance. I guess he thought I should have told the assistant to take a message, but my dad was in hospital again and I assumed the call was from his doctor. And, after two years at the firm, I felt that I didn’t need to explain my every move to Sam.

  I took the call at my desk while looking out of the window at a grey sky that threatened rain.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello. Sara. This is Cathy. Lucy Marshall’s mother?’ A wave of guilt washed over me.

  ‘How are you, Cathy?’ My voice rose into a falsetto of false exuberance as I tried to cover my embarrassment. I had promised Cathy to stay in touch, yet I hadn’t once picked up the phone in the year since I left her standing in the doorway of Lucy’s apartment looking frightened and confused, like a lost child, the day I helped her pack up Lucy’s things.

  ‘I’m fine, Sara,’ she said, without a hint of accusation. ‘I’m calling because the anniversary of Lucy’s death is coming up. I was hoping we could get together. That is, if you have time?’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘How about Sunday afternoon? At my apartment?’ She rattled off the address of her apartment in Queens.

  ‘That would be perfect.’ The timing worked out well. Kevin was away that weekend, which meant that I was free.

  If truth be told, I would probably never have seen or spoken to Cathy again if she hadn’t called me that day. I don’t have any excuse for my lapse other than that work still consumed me. My hours were brutal and whatever time and energy I had left, I put into my relationship with Kevin, which had become so serious that we were inseparable whenever we weren’t working. In my defence, I barely had time to see my own parents, let alone check in on Lucy’s mother.

  My father’s heart was in bad shape and he now needed dialysis every second day. Meanwhile my mother had to give up driving after a minor car accident, which the doctors attributed to residual weakness in her left arm following her stroke. She could no longer drive Dad to his appointments. I told Mom that I’d ask for a transfer to our Chicago office, or quit Stanhope altogether and find a job in Chicago. She immediately put a stop to that idea. ‘No, Sara,’ she told me. ‘I can’t think of anything worse than seeing you go backwards.’

  In the end I insisted on paying for a woman to routinely drive my father to dialysis and help my mother shop, as well as cleaning their apartment every week. It eased the burden on my mother and assuaged my guilt.

  I tried to see them when I could, but it was difficult finding the time. I’d try to steal a f
ew hours to visit them if I was travelling through Chicago for work, but such business trips were infrequent.

  The previous year I’d spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas with them, even though it caused friction with Kevin. He was mad that I didn’t go with him to New Hampshire to meet his family over Christmas. They traditionally had a catered Christmas lunch with over fifty guests. His brother and sisters would all fly in with their respective partners. The annual affair was a big deal for his family. That year Kevin was the only one there without a partner. He couldn’t understand why I insisted on going to Chicago for Christmas when I’d already been there for Thanksgiving a few weeks earlier.

  I adored Kevin, but he came from a different world. A world in which, for one thing, he didn’t carry the burden of expectation that came with being an only child. I tried to shield him from the harsh reality of my life. I was afraid that if he knew my family’s situation he might not want me anymore.

  On the really bad days, when my dad was in hospital and my mother was holding a lone vigil at his bedside, I told myself that at least my job helped cover their medical bills. I don’t know what they would have done otherwise.

  On the work front, everything was amazing. I was promoted and now had two analysts reporting to me. My salary had nearly doubled, as had my bonus. I’d paid back half my college loans and expected to be debt free within the next two years. I was even thinking of buying an apartment in Brooklyn as an investment.

  My life revolved around the firm. I was fully indoctrinated. I talked the Stanhope jargon like it was my mother tongue. Dissent was discouraged, no matter what our brochures said about diversity of opinion, and I tailored my thoughts to conform to the consensus of the firm. I kissed whoever’s ass I had to kiss and paid the necessary homage in the lead up to bonus time.