The Way Inn (10 page)

A beat went by—she appeared at last to be at the end of what she had to say. I thought I might be able to reply, to begin atonement for my mistake, and redeem myself somehow. Although I had no idea what I could say—or even where to start—I knew I had to say something. But as I opened my mouth to begin, she lunged, and threw the contents of her wineglass in my face.

It didn't feel liquid—the impact had real firmness to it, and I thought for a moment that I had been slapped. But my face was running with wine, alcohol stung my sinuses, and wetness spread across the front of my shirt.

“Nice to meet you, Maurice,” Lucy said. The journalist, his jaw hanging slack, found enough composure to bob a little bow in reply. Lucy, though, did not see—she had already turned her back to us, and was heading for the lobby.

I ran my hand across my mouth and flicked wine from my fingers. The shock of the assault had caused me to jump, and I had jolted icy whisky out of my glass and down my sleeve. My shirt clung wet and cold to my sternum. A few heads had turned toward us as Lucy's diatribe reached its climax, and those onlookers had all been rewarded with a good view of me getting the wine in the face. Some still looked in my direction, smirking or holding their hands up, feigning shock in order to conceal amusement. I wanted to leave, but it would look like a humiliating retreat. Nothing gives the appearance of running away like running away. Besides, Lucy might still be near, waiting for a lift, and I could not stand the thought of seeing her again. Not right now.

A puffy pink hand rested on my shoulder. “Mate . . .” Maurice said tenderly. He was obviously uneasy, most likely in the grip of the conflicting emotions of those who find themselves at the ringside of high emotional drama—childish excitement mixed with the overpowering knowledge that they must appear absolutely serious and concerned. “Are you OK?”

My tornado of feelings narrowed for an instant into rage at Maurice—once again, the harbinger of humiliation—but this failed to endure.

“No,” I said. “That was my fault. I've got to get out of here.”

“What was that all about?”

“Wasn't it obvious?”

“Forgetting the name of someone you've slept with,” Maurice said in a philosophical tone, examining the situation from arm's length as if he was a disinterested expert. “Unpleasant.”

I glared at him. “You had to ask.”

“Well, old chap,” Maurice said with chiding emphasis, “I thought you would know!”

“Fucking hell,” I said—to myself, not to Maurice. It was true, he could hardly be held responsible.

“Pity she wasn't wearing her thingy,” Maurice said thoughtfully. “Her name badge. They've helped me out of tight spots more than once.”

“Look, Maurice, I've got to clean up,” I said. Ridding myself of the stickiness creeping around my chest and neck had become top priority. “I'll see you later.” I drained what was left of my whisky, a good slug of it. It froze and burned; my back teeth hurt. It felt good.

“I wanted to talk with you about what happened earlier,” Maurice said. His demeanour had altered, and surprised me—he was all business. “At the conference.”

I summoned myself. “I want to talk to you about that too, but this isn't the best time.” Stickiness was developing between my fingers and under my chin. “Can we do it tomorrow?”

Maurice looked doubtful but didn't say anything right away. Instead, he took a pen and a card—my business card, I saw—from his inside jacket pocket. “What's your mobile number?”

Only hours ago it would have been inconceivable for me to give my number to Maurice. Circumstances had indeed changed. I told him, and he jotted it on the back of my card. “I'll give you a call,” he said. “I want your side of the story.”

“Right,” I said. “I'll see you later, then, Maurice.”

“Good show,” said Maurice, his normal joviality returning. “Don't worry, the drinks will be on me!”

The keycard worked on the second try. The first time, the little red light on the door lock was enough to make me deliver a sharp kick to the bottom of the door and swear. After a deep breath, I tried again, and the light blinked green, the lock behind it opening with a satisfying click. No need to go down to the lobby, I could lock myself in and put the day behind me.

Inside, with the door closed, I took off my jacket and shirt and stuffed them into the red plastic sack provided by the hotel dry-cleaning service. I hadn't been wearing a tie. In the bathroom I filled the sink and washed my face with the warm water. There was wine on my neck, down my front, in my hair. Another shower? I had taken two already today; the notion of taking a third struck me as almost decadent, whatever the immediate need for it. But this was a hotel shower. Even though I spent most of my life in hotels, I still revered their showers: hot water at a pressure that scoured the skin; clean, dry washcloths and towel; no fungus or grime between the tiles; the bright white light of a NASA dust-free lab. Not to forget the little individual soaps and bottles of shampoo that so impress people unaccustomed to hotels, though those are just part of the greater truth of the hotel shower. The whole experience is like one of those little bottles. It is used only once or twice, then replaced. Every day the whole shower is reset by invisible staff, as if you had never been in it. In your shower at home, your repeated visits will eventually accumulate, and you must continually clean the unit. This, more than the dribbling water or the Swiss watchmaker precision needed to set the temperature between glacial and scalding, is the true disappointment of the home shower: you are constantly encountering yourself. What should be a fresh experience becomes a rendezvous with scum, mold and hair. But the hotel shower is permanently renewed.

And I needed renewal. My chances with Lucy were now zero. Probably less, a terrifying negative value a great distance from zero. I had flunked with women before—had come on too strong, or inadvertently insulted them, and they had cut me dead, called me a prick, stormed off, whatever. And it had been nothing: a ping-pong ball against a suit of armor. So why did I feel profoundly affected by the collapse of this passing and not long-sought flirtation? I had a sense of some distant and serious damage being done—the deep vibration though a ship's hull that says it has struck something and is taking on water, felt long before the decks begin to list and the passengers head to the lifeboats.

In previous times I could have contented myself with anonymity. When I was not known, my failures and foul-ups were not noted or remembered—I could simply disappear again. I was a meaningless part of the background. But Lucy remembered me, and I had been remembered at the fair. For the first time, I suspected I might have a reputation, and I suspected it was not a desirable one. My ability to live as I pleased, with no consequences, was compromised.

I dried myself and put on one of the dressing gowns that hung by the bathroom door. It was not too late to order something comforting from room service—perhaps a dessert—but the idea felt somehow effeminate, so I resisted it. I switched on my laptop, intending to write an email to Adam telling him what had happened today. But the room's WiFi signal was perilously weak. The computer would connect to the Internet and show a few tantalizing signs of loading up websites—then the progress icons would slow to a crawl and eventually stop altogether with an apologetic bubble-message stating that the connection had been lost. Once I had repeated these steps three or four times, there was no sign of improvement and I had little inclination to persist.

Instead, I took a half-bottle of red wine and a glass from the minibar and lay on the bed, sipping mindlessly through the television channels. Sitcoms and crime dramas gave way to telecasino operations, home shopping and sign-language repeats of documentaries. My surfing soon beached on a music channel, about the only source of brightness or novelty on the digital dial as the hour got later. I had seen the news many times over already, the same stories in their constant loop, a spectacle so excruciatingly tedious that I found myself yearning for a major disaster—a natural catastrophe somewhere with a high incidence of cameras per head, an ornate political scandal, an episode of histrionics on the financial markets. So I watched the music channel, sound low. Men and women, mostly women, strutted and thrusted and shimmied. I considered that perhaps my restlessness had an angle of unrelieved tension, and turned my mind to the hotel's on-demand “adult” television services, their promise of rapid gratification in return for a discreetly worded but substantial addition to your room bill. The menu was reached via the welcome screen, and I passed again the hotel's personalized greeting, its forecast for tomorrow's weather and its helpful hints about how to book a business suite. Once I found the adult pay-TV options, past the feature films and the kids' programs, the titles did nothing but stir my self-loathing, and I returned to the less penetrative displays of secondary sexual characteristics in the music videos.

The half-bottle of wine seemed very parsimonious, disappearing in less than two glasses, and it made way for two whisky miniatures. I thought that after a drink I might begin to be ready for sleep. But although the day had taxed me greatly, it did not seem to have tired me. There was, I believed, no original thought left to have about my various confrontations, but still they turned over and over in my mind, certain phrases bubbling back up, certain moments replaying in a loop. I formulated snappy and witty rebuttals, unanswerable comebacks; I scripted and rehearsed future encounters. And this ceaseless, futile mental activity disgusted me even as I felt myself unable to stop indulging in it. The alcohol had done some valuable work, dissolving the worst of my embarrassment and regret. Consequences mattered less now. But rather than giving me peace, instead I felt a rising anger: anger at the event director for his ruse, anger with Lucy for making an unnecessary scene and for not giving me an opportunity to apologize, anger at Maurice for his thick-headed insouciance in the face of everything, for blundering into the wrong moment again and again and for generally being Maurice. It was extraordinary that anyone so shambolic could thwart me so effectively and consistently. But more than anyone I was angry at myself.

Meanwhile, the party downstairs and the other functions around the hotel were breaking up. Guests returned noisily to their rooms, bumping along the corridor and slamming doors. Some travelled in pairs and groups, intent on sex or combined raids on minibars, or simply stretching out the joy of boozy togetherness to the ultimate possible second, before they reached their doors and had to part. Maybe they were using their mobile phones, too, drunkenly texting wives and girlfriends, or husbands and boyfriends, and setting plans for tomorrow with colleagues and lovers—I guessed this, because the clock radio by my bed began to trill with interference, burbling and bleating along to some imperceptible traffic in the air around it. I braced for my mobile phone to ring or receive a text, but nothing came and the noise continued. Muting the TV, I leaned over to see if the radio had a volume control or standby button I could use to shut it up. Between its electronic yelps and growls, there was a velvety purr of static—so low it could barely be heard—with silvery variation. I ceased my fiddling with the controls to focus on this background layer. It suggested the faintest trace of music or speech coming from the speakers, even with the radio turned off. Was that possible? I had heard speakers pick up taxi radios before, delivering a short burst of dispatch communications, but that was when they were turned on—could the same happen when the radio was turned off? Was it truly off? It was plugged into the mains, to power its bright red display. Every time I felt I was getting close to the subliminal pattern, almost identifying a tune or a voice, another bout of loud static chatter broke in and I lost it. Frustrated, I reached under the bedside table and yanked the plug from the wall.

Nothing happened. The clock showed the same time as before, and continued to natter and whisper. How was that possible? A backup battery, perhaps, to keep the alarm set through any power outages—shrewd design, but was it plausible? How long could it stay on? The muttering had developed a sinister, repellent aspect. It dredged up a memory—I had heard it before, that morning. It had woken me, intruding into a dream, and dissolving before I could grasp it.

Uneasiness grew in me. I unmuted the television and watched, trying to enthral myself with the seedy commercial pop videos, and ignore the treacherous, whispering device beside me. But their appeal was waning. The drink had made me woozy, but still not sleepy. Perhaps if I turned off the TV and lights and got under the covers, sleep would come. A formless, visceral distaste adhered to that idea—I didn't want to go to sleep, I had to cancel my sense of being a victim with some kind of action. I wanted to do something—anything—with an urge that felt almost animal. Returning to the bar was out of the question—it would probably be closed now, while the staff arranged the restaurant in preparation for breakfast tomorrow. If by some miracle it was open, there would be stragglers from the party down there, and I had no intention of amusing them with a ghostly reappearance. Still, I had to get out—this room, which had beckoned so hospitably through the day, was tightening around me. While it had been so pristine on my return from the conference, I had now sullied it with my presence—clothes scattered abou t, condensation in the bathroom, a clutter of empty miniatures and cans on the bedside table. And the squalls of static from the clock radio continued to trouble me, with their suggestion of a pervasive disquiet in the invisible spectra, and their indifference to mains power.

Some actions could be taken. In a burst of energy, I rose from the bed, gathered up the empty bottles and cans and dropped them in the room's bin. I hung up the towel I had used, wrung out the flannel and folded away my clothes. I opened the room door and left the dry-cleaning bag in the hall for collection, along with the tray and plate that had carried my room-service sandwich.