The Way Inn (5 page)

It wasn't impossible to see a whole show on this scale, but it was difficult. It took work. You had to be systematic, go aisle by aisle, moving up the hall in a zigzag, giving every stand some time but not so much time that it diminished the time given to others. That used to be my approach, but I found that route planning and time management occupied more of my thoughts than the content of the show itself. I was lost in the game of trying to see every stand, note every new product and expose myself to every scrap of stimuli—the show as a whole left only a shallow track on my memory. And my reports were similarly shallow. They were evenhanded but lacked any texture; they were mere aggregations of data. In being systematic, I saw only my own system. Completism was blindness: it yielded only a partial view.

After a year of trudging around fairs in this manner, I realized my reports were formulaic and stale, full of ritual phrases and repeated structures. And the entire point of the endeavor was to spare clients that endless repetition. They employed me because they already knew the routine aspects of these fairs or didn't care to know them—what they wanted was something else. So I threw away my diligent systems and timetables and started to truly explore. Today was typical of my current method of not having a method—I would strike out into the center of the hall, ignoring all pleas and distractions, and from there walk without direction. I would try to drift, to allow myself to be carried by the current and eddies of the hall, thinking only in the moment, watching and following the people around me. Beyond that, I tried to think as little as possible about my overall aims and as much as possible about what was in front of me at any given time. I would give myself to the experience, keep my notes sparse, take a few photos. It's not easy to be purposefully random, but it pays. Once I started taking this approach, my reports became colorful and impressionistic. They were filled with telling details and quirky insights. The imperfection of memory became a strength.

It's only on the second and subsequent days of a fair that I seek out the specifics that clients have requested and conduct any inquiries they might have asked for. More detail accrues naturally, organically, around these small quests.

Surrounded by conference organizers, I am the only professional conference-goer. It's what I do; nothing else. And they—the people here, the exhibitors, the venues, the visitors, the whole meetings industry—have no idea.

The stands passed by, hawking bulk nametags, audiovisual equipment, seating systems, serviced office space. Not just office space—all kinds of space are packaged and marketed here, and places too. You can get a good deal, a great deal, on Vietnamese-made wholesale tote bags at Meetex, but what it and its competitors mostly trade in is locations. Excuse me, “destinations.” Cities, regions, countries; all were ideal for your event, whether they were Wroclaw, Arizona or Sri Lanka, or Taipei, Oaxaca or Israel. All combined history and modernity. All were the accessible crossroads of their part of the world. All were gateways and hearts. All had state-of-the-art facilities that could be relied upon. All had luxurious yet affordable hotels. Most important, all of these hundreds of places across the world were distinctive, unique and outstanding. Consistently, uniformly so.

Those comfortable, cost-effective hotels and state-of-the-art facilities were also present at Meetex. Other conference centers promoted themselves, boasting of the inexhaustible square kilometers they had available on scores of city outskirts. Within a giant space, I was being coaxed to other giant spaces; a fractal shed-world, halls within halls within halls.

Another section was devoted to the chain hotels, and its promises of pampering and revitalization were hard to bear. Women wrapped in blinding white towels, cucumber slices over eyes. Men, ties AWOL, drinking beer in vibrant bars. Couples clinking capacious wineglasses over gourmet meals. Clean linen, gleaming bathrooms, spectacular views. These were highly seductive images for me. I wanted to be back at the hotel, reclining on the bed, taking a long shower, ordering a room service meal, perhaps with some wine thrown in.

It mattered little that the images were a total fiction—posed by models, supplied by stock photo agencies, the gourmet food made of plastic, the views computer generated, the bar a stage set—the desire they generated was real. Meetex was dominated by these deceitful images, defined by them. The location on sale is immaterial. The picture, the money shot, is nearly identical everywhere: a gender-mixed, multicultural group unites around an arm-outstretched, gap-bridging handshake, glorying in it; game-show smiles all around, with an ancient monument or expressive work of modern architecture as the backdrop. Business! Being Done! The transcendent, holy moment when The Deal is Struck. Everyone profits! And in unique, iconic, spectacular surroundings, heaving with antiquities and avant-garde structures, the people bland and attractive, their skin tones a tolerant variety but all much alike, looking as if they have just agreed to the sale of the world's funniest and most tasteful joke while standing in the lobby of a Zaha Hadid museum.

If they only looked around. Business was done in places like the Way Inn, or in giant sheds like the MetaCenter. Properly homogenized environments, purged of real character like an operating theater is rid of germs. Clean, uncorrupt. That's where deals are struck—in the Gray Labyrinth. And that's where I headed, because I had business to attend to.

The Gray Labyrinth took up the rear third of the center's main hall. This space was set aside for meetings, negotiations and deal-making, subdivided into dozens of small rooms where people could talk in private. It was the opposite of the visual overload of the fair, a complex of gray fabric-covered partitions with no decoration and few signs. All sounds were muffled by the acoustic panels. The little numbered cubicles were the most basic space possible for business—a phone line, a conference table topped with a hard, white composite material, some office chairs. Sometimes they included a potted plant, or adverts for the sponsor company that had supplied the furnishings. Mass-produced bubbles of space, available by the half-hour, where visitors videoconferenced with their home office or did handshake deals. They loved to talk about the handshake, about eye contact, about the chairman's Mont Blanc on a paper contract—these anatomical cues you could get only from meeting face-to-face. They wanted primal authenticity, something that could be simulated but could never be equalled. But it all took place in a completely synthetic environment—four noise-deadening, view-screening modular panels, a table, some chairs, a phone line. Or, nowadays, a well-filled WiFi bath in place of the latter.

I had booked cubicle M-A2-54 for 10:30 a.m. It was empty when I arrived, four unoccupied office chairs around a small round table. A blank whiteboard on a gray board wall. No preparation was needed for the meeting and I sat quietly, drumming my fingers on the hard surface of the table, listening to the muted sounds that carried over the partitions.

The prospect was seven minutes late, but I didn't let my irritation show when he arrived, and greeted him with the warm smile and firm handshake I know his kind admire.

“Neil Double. Pleasure to meet you.” False—I am indifferent about the experience. Foolish to place so much faith in a currency that is so easily counterfeited.

“Tom Graham. Likewise.” Graham was an inch or two shorter than I was but much more substantial—a man who had been built for rugby but, in his forties, was letting that muscle turn to butter in the rugby club bar. His thick neck was red under the collar of his Thomas Pink shirt. Curly black hair, sprinkled with gray, over the confident features of a moderately successful man. We sat opposite each other.

“So, Tom, why are you here?”

He jutted his bottom lip out and made a display of considering the question.

“A friend told me about your service, and I wanted to find out more about it.”

Word of mouth, of course—we don't advertise.

“I meant,” I said, “why are you here at the conference? Aren't there places you would rather be? Back at the office, getting things done? At home with your family?”

“Aha,” Tom said. “I see where you're going.”

“Conferences and trade fairs are hugely costly,” I said. “Tickets can cost more than two hundred pounds, and on top of that you've got travel and hotel expenses, and up to a week of your valuable time. And for what? When businesses have to watch every penny, is that really an appropriate use of your resources?”

“They can be very useful.”

“Absolutely. But can you honestly say you enjoy them? The flights, the buses, the queues, the crowds, the bad food, the dull hotels?”

Tom didn't answer. His expression was curious—not interested so much as appraising. I had an unsettling feeling that I had seen him before.

I continued. “What if there was a way of getting the useful parts of a conference—the vitamins, the nutritious tidbits of information that justify the whole experience—and stripping out all the bloat and the boredom?”

“Is there?”

“Yes. That's what my company does.”

I am a conference surrogate. I go to these conferences and trade fairs so you don't have to. You can stay snug at home or in the office and when the conference is over you'll get a tailored report from me containing everything of value you might have derived from three days in a hinterland hotel. What these people crave is insight, the fresh or illuminating perspective. Adam's research had shown that people needed to gather only one original insight per day to feel a conference had been worthwhile. These insights were thin gruel, such as “printer companies make their money selling ink, not printers” or “praise in public, criticize in private.” But if Graham got back from a three-day conference with three or four of those ready to trot out in meetings, he'd feel the time had been well spent. That might sound like a very small return on investment, and it is, but these are the same people who will happily gnaw through cubic meters of an airport-bookshop management tome in order to glean the three rules of this and seven secrets of that. Above those eye-catching brain sparkles, a handful of tips, trends and rumors is all that sticks in the memory from these events, and they can get that from my report, plus any specific information they request. Want to know what a particular company is launching this year? Easy. Want a couple of colorful anecdotes that will give others the impression you were at the event? Done. Just want to be reassured that you didn't miss anything? My speciality.

And if you want to meet people at the conference, be there in person, look people in the eye and press the flesh—well, we can provide that as well. I'll go in your place. Companies use serviced office space on short lets, the exhibitors here have got models standing in for employees and they use stock photography to illustrate what they do. That pretty girl wearing the headset on the corporate website? Convex can provide the same professional service in personal-presence surrogacy. We can provide a physical, presentable avatar to represent you. Me. And I can represent dozens of clients at once for the price of one ticket and one hotel room, passing on the savings to the client.

Of course I still have to deal with the rigmarole of actual attendance, but the difference is that I love it. Permanent migration from fair to fair, conference to conference: this is the life I sought, the job I realized I had been born to do as soon as Adam explained his idea to me, at a conference, three years ago. It is not that I like conferences and trade fairs in themselves—they can be diverting, but often they are dreary. In their specifics, I can take them or leave them—indeed, I have to, when I am with machine-tools manufacturers one day and grocers the next. But I revel in their generalities—the hotels, the flights, the pervasive anonymity and the license that comes with that. I love to float in that world, unidentified, working to my own agenda. And out of all those generalities I love hotels the most: their discretion, their solicitude, their sense of insulation and isolation. The global hotel chains are the archipelago I call home. People say that they are lonely places, but for me that simply means that they are places where my needs only are important, and that my comfort is the highest achievement our technological civilization can aspire to. When surrounded by yammering nonentities, solitude is far from undesirable. Around me, tens of thousands are trooping through the concourses of the MetaCenter, and my cube of private space on the other side of the motorway has an obvious charm.

Tom Graham appeared to be intrigued by conference surrogacy, and asked a few detailed questions about procedures and fees, but it was hard to tell if he would become a client or not. And if he did sign up, I wouldn't necessarily know. Discretion was fundamental to Adam's vision for our young profession—clients' names were strictly controlled even within the company, as a courtesy to any executives who might prefer their colleagues not know that someone was doing their homework for them. Today, for instance, I knew that clients had requested I attend two sessions, one at 11:30 and one at 2:30, but I had no idea who or why. After the second session, my time would be my own—I could slip back to the hotel for a few hours of leisure before the party in the evening.

A few hours of leisure . . . The thought of my peaceful room, its well-tuned lighting, its television and radio, filled me with a sense of longing, the strength of which surprised me. It was almost a yearning. Right now, I imagined, a chambermaid would be arranging the sheets and replacing the towel and shower gel I had used. Smoothing and wiping. Emptying and refilling. Arranging and removing. Making ready.

Also, a return to the hotel would give me another chance to encounter the redheaded woman—a slim chance, but it was an encounter I was ever more keen to contrive. Her continual reappearance in my thoughts was curious to me, and almost troubling—a sensation similar to being unsure if I had locked my room door after I left. Her shtick about the paintings might have been a sign that she was a miniature or two short of a minibar, but it had only increased her mystique. She was unusual—of course, that had been obvious the first time I saw her, years ago. Beautiful too. And there was something about the rapture with which she described the potential of the motorway site, its existence at the nexus of intangible economic forces . . . she knew these places, she had some deeper understanding of them.