The Escape Room

by Megan Goldin

  To say that I was upset was an understatement. We’d been apart for weeks. I became paranoid and decided that he’d met someone else while he was away and planned to break up with me that weekend.

  Kevin texted me in the morning to apologise for being too tired to come over. He told me he’d booked a table at Mikado for dinner that night. It was a French–Japanese fusion restaurant that had rave reviews and a two-month waiting list. Kevin had pulled off a near impossible feat getting us a table at short notice.

  It struck me that Mikado wasn’t the sort of place for a breakup. The ambiance there would turn the most hardened cynic into a romantic. An indoor koi pond. Japanese lanterns on the tables. Origami table napkins. I wore a midnight-blue evening dress that left one arm bare and an orb-shaped pendant necklace that Kevin had given me for my birthday.

  After a dinner of French-influenced sushi and various other delights from the tasting menu we took a cab to Central Park, where Kevin insisted we take a carriage ride. I’d once confessed to him that it was on my bucket list of kitschy New York things to do. ‘We’re going to work through your bucket list tonight,’ he said cryptically as he helped me into the carriage.

  Kevin gave the driver $200 and told him to keep going around the park until it was all used up. We stopped only once, when a delivery guy pulled up alongside our carriage and handed Kevin a magnificent bouquet of long-stemmed roses. Kevin had obviously ordered them in advance. There were dozens of red and white roses.

  The bouquet was so enormous in my arms that I was barely able to see the small box that Kevin held in front of me. He lifted the lid and suddenly my world was spinning. Nestled in the velvet lining of the jewellery box was a magnificent emerald-cut diamond ring. I looked at Kevin uncertainly. He nodded his head imperceptibly. We hadn’t even moved in together and he wanted to marry me.

  ‘Do you like it?’ asked Kevin.

  ‘Like it? It’s incredible!’

  Kevin put the ring on my finger and asked me to marry him. I spent the following days in a giddy daze of sheer, unadulterated happiness.

  The week that followed was filled with excited calls to my mother and Kevin’s family to announce the news. We decided that we’d let friends know when we made the official announcement. Still, that didn’t stop me from buying a pile of wedding magazines. I fell in love with an off-the-shoulder bridal dress. I made the first draft of my side of a guest list and read several articles about the latest wedding cake trends.

  We made plans to travel to New Hampshire so that I could meet Kevin’s family. I’d recently met his mother and two of his sisters when they were in New York for a show, but I hadn’t met the rest of his family. Kevin hesitantly suggested we have the wedding in his mother’s garden, in the fall, when it was at its best with leaves the colour of burnished rust and gold. I agreed without hesitation.

  I stayed at Kevin’s place the following weekend. We were invited to a dinner party at the home of the managing partner at his law firm. Kevin introduced me as his fiancée. It was the first time that he’d used that term. The following morning, Kevin and I woke late and went for a run along the Hudson. As we ran we talked about where we should buy our first apartment as a couple.

  ‘I have the name of a good realtor,’ said Kevin. ‘We’ll look at places when I get back.’

  ‘Get back?’ I stopped running. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I have to fly back to California tomorrow.’

  ‘Can’t you get out of it?’

  ‘I wish,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to ruin the weekend by telling you earlier. It’s going to be a three-week stretch. But I promise that I’ll do everything that I can to come back in the middle, even if it’s only for a couple of nights.’

  ‘You’d better, Kevin.’

  The elevator lights woke them almost immediately. They instinctively covered their eyes. They’d been in the dark for so long that the sudden brightness felt as if it was burning into their retinas.

  Sylvie was embarrassed to realise that the soft pillow her head was lying against was Vincent’s chest. Her hair was intertwined in his fingers.

  ‘I hope this means that we’re getting out of here,’ said Sylvie nervously, pulling away from Vincent. She could tell that Jules had already noticed the intimate way they slept. He smirked at her as if to say, That was quick work.

  In the full glare of fluorescent light, they couldn’t escape their reflections in the mirrored walls. Grey sunken faces, bloodshot eyes. Skewed, crumpled clothes dirty from grit and perspiration. Sylvie swiftly put her shirt back on to cover the ugly ridges of her burn scars from the car accident that had taken Carl’s life.

  The destruction was obvious. The displaced ceiling tiles, the dis carded clothes. Abandoned laptop chargers scattered across the floor. The mirrored wall that had been shattered into a spider-web of cracks, smudged with blood. Jules ran his hand over his rough jaw where Sam had punched him earlier. His stubble was stained with blood from his nosebleed. The superficial scratch on his throat from where Vincent had hurt him was already scabbing over. There were streaks of crimson on the floor.

  Sylvie’s hair was tangled and her makeup was smudged. She thought herself garish in the unforgiving light. Something akin to an ageing burlesque dancer. She dabbed at her makeup as best she could with a wet wipe from her purse until her face was wiped clean.

  She examined herself closely in the mirror. The cut she’d received to her face when the elevator had plummeted was just below her hairline. Sylvie was relieved. It wouldn’t leave a visible mark. She didn’t need more scars. She already had more than enough.

  Sam’s homemade sling, which was made from Vincent’s ripped white undershirt, had yellowed from sweat. His shirt was unbuttoned and untucked. Sitting up, he slowly fastened the buttons with his one good hand and tucked it into his pants. He too wanted to look his best when they were rescued.

  Vincent’s jaw was flecked with dark-blond stubble. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. His chest was bare and his tattoos were exposed, making him look more like a street fighter than a banker. He’d often thought the two were interchangeable. He didn’t clean himself up like the others. He figured he’d do it once he knew for sure they were free.

  Their rescue seemed imminent. The elevator lights coming back on was obviously the work of the technicians who must have been fixing the elevator at that very moment. Time passed. The elevator didn’t move. The doors remained shut. They were bitter with disappointment.

  They returned to their places on the floor and sat about with nothing to look at in the blinding light but one another. It felt as if they were staring into each other’s naked souls. Of all the emotions they could see in the others’ faces, it was the fear that scared them most.

  Vincent checked his watch. They were due for their next ration of water soon. He would drag it out for as long as possible. He needed to make that small bottle of water last for days, if necessary.

  ‘It doesn’t look as if anyone is coming.’ Sam’s eyes were glassy from fever. ‘How long can we last like this?’

  ‘Three days without water,’ answered Vincent. ‘Four if we’re lucky. Food is less of an issue.’

  With the lights restored, everything had reverted to its previous order. Vincent was in charge. They heeded his authority. After all, Vincent was the only one who knew the combination code to access the food and water in his briefcase.

  When he removed the bottle and energy bars some time later, Sylvie looked at the half empty bottle and said, ‘If that’s all the water we have left, we really are in trouble.’

  ‘It should be enough to keep us going until Tuesday morning at the latest,’ said Vincent. ‘We’ll have to be rescued before then.’

  ‘And if we’re not?’

  ‘We’ll be severely dehydrated by Tuesday night,’ Vincent said in a tone so clinical that it almost felt as if he was talking about someone else. ‘Our kidneys will start shutting down and our hearts will go into arrhythmia. Some of
us may well be dead by dawn on Wednesday.’

  ‘Monday morning is in thirty-six hours time,’ mumbled Sam. ‘I’m sure we’ll be rescued on Monday. We can all hang on until then, right Vincent?’

  Vincent muttered something affirmative, but he was worried about Sam. His fever was high and they had no medication to lower it, or antibiotics to treat the infection. Under the surface of Sam’s clammy skin, bacteria was pumping through his body. Sam was dying before their eyes.

  Vincent opened one of the energy bars and divided it among the four of them. He handed out each piece as if it was not a tiny morsel of food but a lavish meal. He estimated that each piece provided perhaps 70 calories. Hardly enough to stave off starvation.

  He carefully poured water into the cap of the water bottle, holding it steady to prevent spilling. They could not afford to lose a single precious drop of water. They all came to him, one after the other, and opened their mouths so that he could pour the water directly into their parched mouths as if they were receiving communion.

  When Vincent was done drinking his own portion, he closed the bottle extra tight and returned it to his briefcase, which he locked. The countdown to survive had begun.

  ‘The most remarkable part of all of this is that we’ve been able to stand each other’s company for this long,’ remarked Jules, in another clumsy attempt at humour.

  ‘It’s not remarkable at all,’ said Vincent, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. ‘I’m sure we’ve spent more time together over the past seven years than we have with our families. I’d say we have tolerated each other quite well.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve had our ups and downs, haven’t we, Sylvie?’ said Jules, with a sardonic wink in her direction. Sylvie ignored him.

  Jules stood up to stretch his legs. Sam followed suit, standing slowly and clumsily. He noticed writing on the escape room screen and shuffled over to read it. ‘Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt,’ he read out loud.

  ‘It’s another clue,’ Sylvie explained. ‘But we haven’t been able to figure it out.’

  ‘It’s Sun Tzu,’ said Sam, turning around to face them all. ‘This isn’t a clue,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘It’s a declaration of war.’

  It was several weeks later that I noticed slight, almost imperceptible changes at work. I was excluded from meetings that I would ordinarily have attended. At first, it didn’t bother me. If anything, I was grateful. I chalked it up to Vincent considerately allowing me to ease back into work after my father’s death.

  When it continued for several weeks, I began to worry that it was permanent. I wasn’t invited to client meetings, internal meetings and work lunches that in the past I would have attended without question. Vincent, Sylvie, Sam and Jules met in a glass-walled meeting room in another part of the office, not the one we usually used. They lowered the blinds so nobody could see inside. They never invited me.

  I became neurotic about every glance that came my way. Every meeting I wasn’t invited to. Every quiet huddle in a corner of the office that broke up when I walked past. Every phone call that became hushed or was taken out of my earshot when I was nearby.

  The usual back-and-forth repartee that we engaged in at our desks was stilted and awkward. Everyone chose their words carefully when they discussed issues related to work, whereas in the past we all talked openly about whatever we were working on.

  Something had changed. It wasn’t tangible but I could feel it in a multitude of ways. My permission to view certain documents stopped working, there were even entire share drives I couldn’t access.

  When I called IT, the technician insisted that it could be rectified in minutes. He made me feel as if I was a dope for not knowing how to work the share drive. After checking things on his end, his tone changed. ‘Unfortunately, we have an infrastructure issue.’ It sounded as if he was reading a prepared statement. I knew that he was giving me the run around.

  My computer kept acting up. When I tried to close all the processes running, I found that I couldn’t close one of them without an administrator’s password. When I searched the name of the application online, I discovered that it was a type of corporate spyware. The firm was watching my every keystroke.

  Meanwhile, Sylvie criticised everything I did. It was more vicious and far more personal than the snide little asides she’d made in the past. When she found a single typo in a fifty-page draft report I’d submitted, she said at the top of her voice so that everyone could hear: ‘Your spelling needs some work, Sara.’

  Sylvie and Jules insisted on reviewing every tiny task that I performed as if I was a new hire requiring close supervision. I bristled at my sudden lack of independence and their obvious mistrust.

  When they looked at my work, they tore it apart. Work that had been considered excellent just a few weeks ago was now slammed. Their criticism was brutal and almost always unfounded. It took a heavy toll on my self-confidence.

  ‘Well, that’s an interesting way of doing it,’ Sam said patronisingly, as he leaned over my computer to check a spreadsheet. ‘It’s a shame your assumptions are all wrong.’

  ‘I set up this financial model two months ago, Sam, and you agreed with all the assumptions then,’ I responded. ‘What’s changed?’

  ‘I don’t need to tell you that finance is not static. We can’t stick to old strategies and models just because we’re too lazy to change them.’ His retort was like a slap in the face.

  I held back from telling him that I knew for a fact that he was using financial models from when I first started at the firm three years earlier. I shut up. It wasn’t in my interest to start an all-out war.

  Work was given to me with ridiculously tight deadlines, with no obvious reasons for why I hadn’t gotten it earlier or why it was needed so soon. It was not humanly possible to meet those deadlines. As a result, I was constantly handing in work late and getting emails from Vincent, or Sam, or others in the team, asking why I hadn’t yet handed in a report or an analysis they were waiting on.

  The situation persisted. I couldn’t deceive myself anymore, my position at Stanhope was becoming precarious. I would have confided in Kevin, but he was still in California indefinitely, dealing with the legal aftermath of a major data breach at one of his clients. The government had opened an investigation and the company’s share price tanked. Needless to say, Kevin barely had time to talk with me on the phone, let alone visit.

  When we did talk, he sounded stressed and exhausted. He told me he missed me and mentioned flying back to see me. It never eventuated. Something always came up. He called me a few days before he was due to return to tell me that he’d have to stay on for at least another two weeks. The following week I told Kevin that I would fly over to visit instead. He said he’d have to work over the weekend and that it would be a waste of time and money for me to fly across the country so we could spend an hour or two together.

  He sounded evasive. My paranoia went into overdrive. It felt as if my life was falling apart. The euphoria of my engagement had disappeared. I still hadn’t had a chance to talk to Kevin about Lucy’s diary entry or what was happening to me at work. I badly needed his advice. Most of all, I worried he didn’t want me anymore.

  ‘Sara, I’d like to meet with you at 4 p.m. tomorrow, please.’ Vincent’s email arrived not long after I got home from work. Its curt tone threw me into a panic. I barely slept, and arrived the next day bleary eyed with a knot of anxiety in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘Close the door behind you, Sara.’ Vincent said when I entered his office at the appointed time. ‘It’s come to my attention that there have been a number of serious mistakes in your work recently.’ He reached out for a file and put documents in front of me like a lawyer presenting evidence in court.

  I flushed under his rebuke. In all the years that I’d worked at the firm, nobody had ever taken me to task. They’d always been happy with my work. I looked at the documents he presented. Two of the
mistakes were minor, the other two weren’t mistakes at all.

  ‘Vincent, I’m not sure why this particular work has been brought to your attention, but I can assure you that —’

  ‘I don’t need your assurances, Sara,’ he cut me off. ‘I simply need you to produce the standard of work we expect from our staff at this firm. I was patient with your absence, dealing with family matters, and its effect on your productivity for weeks after you returned. But that is over now and I expect you to get back on track,’ he said. ‘The stakes are too high for you to be distracted or make even small mistakes. These are billion-dollar deals. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes. But I’d like to mention that —’

  ‘I don’t want excuses or explanations,’ he cut me off again. ‘Either your work is of the highest standard or you don’t work here. It really is that simple.’

  ‘Yes, Vincent.’

  ‘I have no choice but to put you on probation. I hope that will encourage you to get your game together.’

  I turned white at his words. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said stupidly.

  I walked out of Vincent’s office in a daze. I felt his eyes boring into me until I closed the door behind me. I sensed someone watching me. Vincent’s personal assistant hastily lowered her head and pretended to be busy.

  I don’t know how I made it to my desk without falling apart. I felt Sylvie’s eyes on me. I refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I held it together until I went home that night, collapsing on my bed too devastated for tears.

  I dreaded going into work each morning. The office was cold and hostile, the team was barely talking to me. I felt shut out. Their hostility seemed to influence others as well. People at work with whom I’d been on good terms suddenly stayed away from me as if I was anthrax. It was like high school all over again.