The Escape Room

by Megan Goldin

The episode with Richie had left a sour taste in my mouth. I wasn’t sure if I had the resilience to go through it again with Vincent. To lie awake at night filled with anticipation, counting my chickens before they hatched. That’s what I’d done before the interview with Richie. I’d even looked up apartments listed for rent, so I could figure out where I’d want to live. Talk about being overconfident.

That was another first. As I drank a glass of chilled French Chablis and ate a salmon frittata, I marveled at the surreal change in my fortunes. I had gone from taking the train to New York and getting splattered by a guy with sleep apnea to reclining on a leather seat while leisurely selecting cheese and dessert from a business-class lunch menu.

The idealist impatient to go out into the world and make a difference, like an overambitious home decorator who thought that a new roll of wallpaper would fix a crooked wall.

As much as he despised his life, Sam was addicted to it. His salary had become his morphine. His designer watches, suits, shoes, ski trips, cars, homes, and wife had become his coke. His success had become his heroin. It was killing him softly. Brutal hours at work, backroom machinations. Not to mention the pulsating stress that was a constant undercurrent of his life.

Kim’s taste in jewelry was as extravagant as her temper.

Occam’s razor: The simplest answer is usually the right one.

“The scarcest resource in the world is time.”

“Snow leopards are born blind,” she said. “It’s ironic. They’re born blind, but eventually they develop acute vision—among the best of any mammal. Humans, by contrast, are born with the ability to see but become blind—figuratively speaking. We learn to block out the things that we don’t want to see.”

They think I’m autistic—and for some reason they have decided that means that I’m also deaf.

“‘Pretend inferiority and encourage their arrogance.’ Sun Tzu, The Art of War.”

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

The cut seemed out of place on flawless Sylvie. A human mannequin. It was hard to believe that she bled.

It’s like putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually, you realize that you’re walking, but you don’t know how you managed to move so far and you’re not sure where you’re going. That’s how it feels right now.”

“Showering,” I replied. “Then I’ll put on a movie and probably fall asleep on the sofa. I’ve had a hell of a week.” “You’ve gotta be kidding! It’s Saturday night.” “I would never joke about something as serious as my Saturday-night plans.” “They’re the plans of a geriatric! Come on, Sara, you can do that when you turn eighty.”

Kevin was ridiculously ambitious in a city of ridiculously ambitious people.

My life revolved around the firm. I was fully indoctrinated. I talked the Stanhope jargon as if it were my mother tongue.

If something went wrong, we’d share the same fate. Death, after all, was the ultimate equalizer.

They were like capitalist soldiers in their two-thousand-dollar suits, pressed razor-sharp. Impeccably groomed. You’d think they’d never been touched by perspiration, dirt, or excrement. But no one gets to make the kind of money those four did without tarnishing his soul. Their hands were soft, and clean, and free of calluses. But only because they never touched the blood they spilled.

“Diamonds don’t make up for black eyes,”

I float for a while as I think about everything I’ve been through to get here: the loneliness and the overwhelming sense of helplessness when I felt trapped by seemingly insurmountable obstacles; all those times when I thought there was no way out. And yet here I am. A lifetime of worry and stress dissolves as I watch the sun’s rays glint against a cloudless azure sky.