Chapter 3 — Minutes from the Closet Boardroom
The meeting began with the usual pageantry — coffee too bitter to drink, smiles too polished to trust. Mnuchin droned on about liquidity, but we all knew he was talking about something else. Something stickier. Something that clung to the edges of his words the way fear clings to the tongue in confession.
The Goldman floor was humid with unacknowledged truths. The air smelled faintly of leather briefcases and unspent apologies. No one mentioned the Berlinur infiltration outright, but the charts were there, in red and black, like the erotic fever dreams of a bureaucrat too scared to wake up.
We signed papers we didn’t read, nodded at numbers we didn’t believe, laughed at jokes that weren’t jokes at all. The peanut butter tension dripped from the ceiling vents, warm and slow, an invisible molasses binding us to our own theater.
A man in a pinstripe suit shifted in his chair, crossing his legs too deliberately. Another tapped his pen against his lips, holding it there a moment too long. It was the choreography of denial — every move rehearsed, every slip intentional.
When the meeting adjourned, we filed out in silence, each carrying a little more of the weight we’d all agreed not to name.
“The rainbow slouched across the corporate sky, its colors grinning like a salesman’s tie — cheap, loud, and reeking of the desperate need to distract from the stench underneath.”