The Way Inn (21 page)

Four paintings hung on the wall behind Hilbert, and they appeared to be nothing more than typical examples of the art found throughout the hotel; the same swirling earth-toned patterns, the same lack of content, that same essential sameness. What made these “particularly fine” was hard to say. Then I saw that they connected. The curving lines of the pattern on one continued to the next; the outer edge of an umber sphere, which scraped into the frame of the leftmost painting, rose through the middle pair to fill the rightmost frame, by which time its interior had erupted with new arcs and bubbles.

“You see it?” Hilbert said. He had been watching my eyes. “A congeries of spheres. A whole sequence. Your friend will enjoy that.”

“And what then?”

“The hotel's security systems log all keycard use. I am tracking this card. I will know when it has been used to open this room, and I will be with you forthwith.”

“And then?”

“Then nothing. You will have done your part.”

“And you want to talk with her? That's all?”

Hilbert smiled and held up his hands, a nothing-to-hide gesture, but the distortion of the bleeding stripes on his suit drove my gaze away. “Just to talk.”

These reassurances were not doing much to reassure me. It was hard to summon up any trust for Hilbert—hard, in fact, to summon up any human fellow-feeling at all. Where had he come from? I assumed he emanated from the hotel's higher management, rather than the staff of this branch. If he had travelled from a regional headquarters for this meeting, that would make this business more important than he was letting on. It was hard even to tell his age—between the possible rug and the smooth, pale skin that hung a little loose, he could have been anywhere from thirty-five to seventy. His offer had its flaws, too: even if I was able to reestablish a connection with the woman, doing so on behalf of a man who might well be her professional foe didn't seem like a way to make a good impression. I wanted more than just to get my phone back.

“I don't know,” I said. “It doesn't feel right to involve myself in Way Inn's office politics.”

Hilbert narrowed his eyes. “I see. Well, this ethical concern does you credit. Do you always apply this test to potential clients?”

I didn't immediately respond. No, of course not—in general I had no idea who my clients were, let alone their motives. But all the discretion and secrecy, the skulking around not telling people what I do—did—seemed like a disappeared world now.

“To be honest, I'm not sure I'm even in that line of work anymore,” I said at last.

“Yes, of course,” Hilbert said. “This unpleasantness with the people at Meetex.”

“How did you know about that?”

“This morning,” Hilbert said, referring to another sheet from his folder, “you were trying to arrange transport to the MetaCenter, and you told the front desk your conference pass had been cancelled.”

“Did I? I'm not sure I did tell them that.”

“Well, it must have been easy to infer. And I made my own inquiries . . . it's really not important. What is important is that we can help you fix it.”

“How?”

“You have time. You have executive use of the business suite. Book a meeting with the Meetex people in one of our rooms. I'm sure you'll get the result you want. Way Inn is the perfect environment for business.” A sales-pitch smile was alloyed into the words, a sign they had been repeated many times. “And, of course, this is a modern, flexible building—many of these spaces can be reconfigured to your requirements. You need only ask.”

It couldn't hurt. At least, it would have to be an improvement on me, exhausted and furious, spitting into a phone in the lobby of the MetaCenter. If, that is, I could get Laing into the room—I doubted he would even speak to me on the phone.

I reached out and took the black keycard. It was a little thicker and heavier than the regular one. More substantial. That extra weight was superficially pleasing—it signalled quality. Maybe those details made a difference. Like this room: the coordinated art, the tubular steel chairs; the palm in one corner and the Nespresso machine in the other; the brand-new projector on the ceiling and the teleconference hub on the table; the almost imperceptible sound of the air conditioning holding the temperature within half a degree of the chosen level; all these small touches that made it
the perfect environment for business
. So those people, the businesspeople, having gorged on stock photos and promo videos in which pretty actors smile and shake hands in places like this, enter a place like this and their conditioning kicks in. They smile and shake hands. Deals are done, agreements are forged, consensus is achieved. Business. And here I am, pocketing the black card and rising from my chair as Hilbert rises from his, agreement reached, deal done. I had little to lose from Hilbert's proposal, I calculated, and the alternative was simply to return to my room and the total lack of options that waited there.

At the end of the table, by the door, Hilbert and I came face-to-face, the closest we had been to each other. I was tending toward the conclusion that his hair was real but had been subjected to an extreme and retro treatment to give it an ageless veneer of artificiality. His suit fritzed and strobed over the jumbled angles of his limbs.

“I'm so pleased you're able to assist me in this matter, and I hope we are able to assist you. A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Double.”

It was handshake time. Hilbert's smooth skin was icy.

My father's funeral. Another train journey in my black suit to an unfamiliar town, though this time on my own, without my mother. Hard seats in a modern brick crematorium in the suburbs. A reading from Psalm 39: “You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure.” Triangular sandwiches in a function room in a small hotel that had once been in the countryside, but which was now surrounded by dual carriageways and DIY superstores. Strangers in suits, men I had never seen before and would never see again, told me how good it was I had come. Who were they? Where did they come from? What did they do? What purpose did they fulfill in the world? What was their connection to my father? To them
I
was the absence. Small talk of the smallest and least meaningful kind. I could think only of the fact that my mother was not present. She had not wanted me to be there. Her injunction, that I was not to contact “him,” had wounded me deeply. I resented the need to conceal my resumed communication with my father from my mother; I resented the fact that she wanted to deny me my father, and that my failure to conform was a betrayal to her. The end of their marriage was a rupture that drove all three of us apart.

A woman was there—middle-aged; short, curly, blond hair, visibly subsiding under bereavement. She was supported by a young boy about twelve years old—about the age I was when my father left.

I fled before speaking to them. I had nothing to say. Two weeks later, a lawyer's letter informed me I had inherited £20,000. I decided at once to join Adam in his conference surrogacy venture.

Psalm 39: “I dwell with you as a foreigner, a stranger, as all my ancestors were.”

Somewhere in the hotel, in those hundreds of rooms, my mobile phone was switched on and ringing. It rang seven times—that doubled electronic purr of a connection repeated seven times—before there was a break in the pattern, a space for hope to erupt . . . and it went to voice mail.

What did I expect? Why would she answer? However much I might want to believe she had stolen my phone as a flirty prank, she had still stolen it. I could be the police calling her to get a fix on her location. Within a second, I realized how stupid that thought was—as if the police would launch an elaborate operation to recover a stolen phone, anxious men in headphones watching red lines bouncing around maps as bloodhound software tracked cellular scent across satellites and transmitter towers, at last zooming in on an aerial view of . . . this hotel, presumably. As if she were a kidnapper or a secret agent.

The phone was still switched on, though. There was that. Even if it was in a wheelie bin.

My next call was more successful. I swallowed my indignation and adopted a contrite tone with Laing, the event director. The ban had come as a terrible shock, I said, and coupled with my ordeal crossing the wastes to the MetaCenter, well, I spoke crudely, and I was sorry about that. Laing's ruse, posing as a prospective client, had also upset me.

“You can hardly complain about that,” Laing said. “Isn't that standard procedure for you? Pretending to be someone else?”

I felt my fingers tighten around the beige plastic of the phone receiver—hotels are the last redoubt of the beige plastic phone—and I wondered how much pressure it would take to crush it.

“Well, quite,” I said. “What I mean is, we should meet properly, in person, and I'm sure we can put this dispute behind us.”

“Meet properly?” Laing said. He sounded amused. “Face-to-face, you mean? In the flesh?”

The handset creaked in my grip.

“Ha, yes. You of all people must acknowledge the value of that kind of personal encounter. I can see that value myself.”

“I most certainly do,” Laing said, suddenly full of bumptious rugby-club bonhomie. “And I'm curious to hear what you have to say. It must be good. I'm having a breakfast meeting at your hotel tomorrow; I could give you ten minutes before that. Eight thirty?”

“That's great,” I said. I wanted it to be sooner—today—but I wasn't about to push my luck. “Eight thirty. Come to the Gallery Room in the business suite at the Way Inn.”

The call ended. For all Laing's mocking tone, his obviously low expectations, I was pleased. It was something: the smallest handhold in a situation where previously there had been naught but an impregnable barrier. I was not finished.

With some of my confidence restored, I called my mobile again. And again it went to voice mail. But the transfer to voice mail—that pregnant, stagey pause—chopped into the middle of the fifth ring. It hadn't done that before, I was sure.

I called again. Two rings then to voice mail. Not only was the phone switched on, someone was holding it and refusing my calls. She still had the phone. This hint of interaction with her, however slight, was enough to fill me with joy. Maybe I could still reach her. I decided to leave a message.

“Hi, it's Neil,” I said after the beep. “You took this phone from me this morning. I don't know why, maybe as a joke. I really need it back I'm afraid, it's a real pain being without it, so maybe we could meet? It would be great to see you again, we barely got a chance to talk last time and there's a lot I'd like to talk to you about. I'm in room 219; you can call through the switchboard or leave a message. I'll be around, the rest of my day is, uh, pretty clear. OK. Hoping to see you soon. Bye, then.”

As soon as I put the receiver down, I began to appraise my performance. How had I done? A bit needy? This concern itself concerned me. I had never feared coming across as needy in the past. I needed no one particular woman because there were plenty of other women and they were all basically interchangeable. And seeing them that way didn't make me even slightly guilty, because I am sure they saw me in a similar way.

Except Lucy. She had not seen me that way. She had, in fact,
seen
me—seen an individual, and remembered him. And too late, I had seen her, and remembered her.

This other woman, Dee—she wasn't interchangeable either. She was unique. My chronically tenuous connection to her was becoming too much to bear. Yet I could not stand the idea of her regarding me as some desperate hanger-on or stalker.

What was happening to me? I was no longer the anonymous blur I wanted to be. There was a person here, and there were people out there.

And I had made a serious mistake. After all that discussion with Hilbert, I had not used the voice mail message to play the strongest card in my hand—the black keycard. The bait I was given specifically for this job. It was too good to not use. Hilbert's name would have to be omitted, in case there was bad feeling between them—but that didn't matter.

I called my mobile number again. It went to voice mail after three rings.

“Hi, Neil again,” I said, hoping for a casual air. “I forgot to mention, I've been using the business center for work and there are a couple of rooms there filled with paintings. Good ones, too, full consecutive sequences. You can really see the broader pattern. Anyway, I still have access to the rooms if you wanted to take a peek.”

I hesitated. There would be no further messages after this. Two was desperate enough, if she even listened to them. I had to make the sale.

“Ever since you told me about the paintings—about how they join up—I've been fascinated by them. I see it too. There's some kind of meaning there, you're right. Lately, since I saw you in the bar the other night, I've been feeling that everything is connected somehow, that it all lines up like the paintings. You, me, the hotel, all aligned together. I really want to see you again and find out more.”

There was nothing else to say. It was already possible that I had said too much. I hung up. The message was wherever it was, suspended in the air, in limbo, in a hard drive in a distant, anonymous shed, perhaps to remain there for ever. I was suspended, too; without tasks, without reason to leave the room. No business to do—but business would be wrapping up for the day in any case. There was no party in the bar tonight, but it would be filling up with conference-goers anyway, and I would not be showing my face.

Another night in the hotel. The minibar had been re-stocked, but for the time being I didn't feel like drinking. My smart suit, the one drenched by Lucy, had come back from the cleaners while I was meeting Hilbert, and had been left hanging in the wardrobe in a red plastic condom. Silence. Had the alarm clock been repaired or replaced? If I had been given a new one, it was identical to the old one. New or old, it was quiet now, and that's what mattered. The only sound in the room was the gentle hum of the air-handling units.