The Way Inn (12 page)

Had I passed out? What time was it? My watch and mobile phone were in my room—I had dressed rapidly in my sudden enthusiasm for a stroll and had not thoroughly reequipped myself. My keycard was the only thing in my pocket. Could it be morning already? Past morning, in fact, as the sun was high above us. And it
was
the sun, unmistakably, not security lights or anything else. The stones in the garden were dry; indeed, they looked baked, and I could feel the heat being held back by the air conditioning. There were no blushes of damp between the stones or puddles waiting in shadows. The woman was wearing clothes suitable for the gym, not a bitter autumn—leggings, running shoes without socks, a sweatshirt. A Way Inn sweatshirt.

The woman. Her long neck, framed by the sloppy collar of the sweatshirt, was porcelain pale; no wonder she appeared to exult in the sunshine. By her pallor this might have been the first time she had seen the sun in years. She would be able to explain, she would know the answer to this conundrum. I beat the flat of my hands against the window, feeling the pane barely vibrate under my blows, and shouted “Hey! Hey!” But she didn't move, not a flinch or twitch—if she heard me, she did a fine job of concealing the fact. It was night, I remembered, suddenly overcome with regret at causing such a noise when people were sleeping. How could it be night, though, with the sun in the sky? I needed to reach the woman, I needed to draw her attention—and I realized it was useless to try that from here; even if she heard me she would not be able to see me through the one-way glass. There would be a stairwell nearby, or a lift shaft—light well, stairwell, they went together, that much had been a consistent feature of the hotel's otherwise unhelpful internal scheme. And the stairwell would be easy to find; all I needed to do was follow the emergency exit signs—the little green man heading for the door with the backlit arrow was everywhere, by law.

I found one, and followed it; it led to another, which led to a corner. Around the corner was a fire door.

FIRE EXIT. THIS DOOR IS ALARMED. USE ONLY IN EMERGENCY
.

My hands hovered above the bar that opened the door; I let them rest on the metal, feeling its coolness in the hinge of my palm. On the other side of the door would be a staircase, a utilitarian concrete affair or a galvanized steel structure fixed to the outer shell of the hotel. But it would lead down to her; I could get to the garden and talk with her again. How serious was the alarm? Was it a true nuclear-strike-warning din that would wake everyone in the hotel, or one that would wake everyone in the corridor, or would it alert only the night staff, who would come up to investigate? If the sun was up, would it be the night staff or the day staff? Maybe the sign was all for show, and this was just a door, not attached to any grander system. But there were regulations, serious life-or-death regulations. There would be CCTV. I took my hands off the bar.

Perhaps one of the windows overlooking the courtyard opened. That didn't seem so unlikely. I retraced my steps, passing the little green emergency men fleeing in the opposite direction. She would still be down there.

There was no light from the light well. I had to cup my hands against the window like a visor to see anything at all against the minimal reflections from the nighttime, dim hall lighting on the glass. Low-power security lights suggested the features of the Zen garden—the boulders, the pond—but it was deserted. Drizzle flecked the glass. I closed my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose—again, the black lightning crackled, and the corridor carpet heaved under me. No sun, no light, no woman. It was more than twenty hours since I had woken in my Way Inn room, and that was after barely four hours of sleep—it was too much, I was exhausted, it had been an emotional day, delusions like this could be understood, all I needed was some sleep.

A nearby room number: 233. That was comforting. My door was only a couple of turns away, and I found it without drama. But the door, having been found, declined to open. The keycard, pushed into its slot, produced not the green light of admission but its evil red twin.

I inspected the door, wondering at the composition of the black wood—not hardwood, for sure; a good quality composite of some kind, fireproof and noise-resisting and pleasingly solid-sounding when it shut, covered in stained wood-grain veneer. The metal numbers screwed to the door continued their obstinate insistence that this was room 219, and taking it at its word I tried the keycard again, and again was shown the red light. Not really a red light, I saw—it was more an orange light, perhaps out of deference to the infallibility of the Way Inn customer. A truly red light would be too brusque; the orange light regretted the inconvenience and accepted that the guest probably did deserve access to this room but, unfortunately, access was impossible to arrange while the data held on the card failed to match the code stored in the lock's tiny memory. This made me only more tired and angry, because regardless of the geniality of the LED color choice, the overall result was identical: I could not enter my room. Why not? The keycard had been the only thing in my pocket, without any exposure to the supposedly memory-addling rays of my mobile phone or keys or anything else. Fury and tired acceptance of circumstance battled within me, and acceptance won. After one last try—orange light—there was no option left but to go to reception.

What time was it now? Approaching three in the morning, I guessed, perhaps later if I truly had zoned out during my trek. It took far longer than I expected to find my way back to the lifts, and in their recursive mirrors, I was treated to the sight of a greatly reduced man, not improved by his multiplication. An army of slouches, open collars, dark rings forming under the eyes, shadows at the jaw.

There was no clock in the lobby, but dawn was not visible through the main entrance, just the orange undawn of the motorway. To the credit of the Way Inn corporation, not one fiber in the appearance of the young man on the front desk betrayed the slightest surprise or distaste at my demeanor. On hearing my complaint he accepted my card with a sympathetic smile, fed it into his reader, blinked a couple of times at a screen I could not see and handed it back to me with another smile of greater magnitude than the first.

“It should work fine now, sir,” he said. “Would you like me to come up and make sure?”

“No, thank you,” I said quickly. “That won't be necessary.” Fortunately he did not need convincing to stay put.

“I'll be right here if you do need anything, sir,” he said.

“Thanks, good night,” I said.

This time, I got the green light. To enter I had to step over my room-service tray and the plastic bag containing my wine-soaked shirt and jacket, which I had left in the corridor for collection. Even through the fatigue that dogged my last waking moments as I kicked off my shoes and stripped off my clothes, the tray and the bag stayed in my mind like moths beating at a lightbulb. They, not the apparition of the woman in the sun-filled courtyard, were the last thing I thought of before sleep came. Because when I consulted my memory of arriving back at my room after my midnight stroll, and getting the orange light, the bag and the tray formed no part of that memory. There had been nothing outside the door—that other door, that other room 219. I would have sworn to it. Another room 219.

“H
ousekeeping.”

Words in space, like the monolith hanging above Jupiter at the end of
2001
. Obviously filled with meaning, but beyond meaning.

A modest knock. “Housekeeping.”

“Yes.” This was me.

A mechanism worked, metal moving neat against metal. The door unlocked and opened.

“No, wait.” I moved sideways quickly, out of the bed, planting feet on warm carpet. The Way Inn-branded dressing gown was hanging on the corner of the bathroom door—I put it on and stepped nimbly to the room door, which had opened wide enough to admit a head and a shoulder garbed in industrial pink.

“Oh, sorry,” the woman, the chambermaid, said in accented English. “Clean room?”

“No, thank you, not now, later,” I said.

She seemed chagrined by my reply, as if cleaning my room was a much-delayed treat. “Later?” she said. I couldn't place the accent.

“Later, later,” I said. “It's OK, it's not important.” I was in a bind—on the one hand I didn't want her hanging around, waiting to clean my room; on the other, I didn't want to dismiss her, to tell her or even imply that no cleaning was needed today. A clean room would be a pleasant thing to return to later.

“Later,” she said, giving me a serious but not unfriendly look. Did I mean it, this promise to her?

“Later,” I said, organizing part of my face into a smile, hoping it was the correct part.

The chambermaid receded and the door closed behind her with the softest click.

My purpose in sending the chambermaid away had been to return to bed. I had not set an alarm for myself. By no means did I intend to go downstairs and present myself at the breakfast buffet, or join the queues waiting for buses at the peak hour. Let the rush pass, then I would make my way to the MetaCenter in my own time, under fewer eyes. But the time on the clock-radio digital display was 11:22. My lie-in was over already; I had slept through it. Breakfast finished at ten. The day was advancing without me. This realization left me feeling cheated: I had been denied the pleasure of knowing I was skipping breakfast and starting late, the sensation of being able to go down and join in but instead choosing not to. The day had started in a state of alertness, not leisure. Rather than lounge and wait with a cup of coffee, I needed to go straight to work. There were conference sessions to be attended in the afternoon, and two days' work to be completed at the fair.

I washed and dressed. With me I had two suits, both unremarkable but well-made business numbers, one marginally smarter than the other. Lucy had sauced the smarter jacket, leaving me its humbler sibling. This was fine—no more parties, not this time. I thought of Lucy lensing rage at me; her remarks (that I was pathetic, that I deserved any future misfortune), though they stung when I recalled them, felt like only a preface to a more fundamental condemnation that, when she arrived at it, she could not put in words and had instead stated with pinot grigio. How could I express in words my sorrow at what had happened if her anger had exceeded words? Nothing I could formulate seemed up to the job. And only part of me wanted to express any sorrow or remorse—I also felt a strong impulse to simply forget the incident. In the past, this would have been my overriding sentiment: to hell with it, a fugitive moment with a single woman among thousands. But there was a persistent sense of the event persisting—that a permanent record of my actions existed somewhere, updated in indelible ink; that I was leaving a psychic trail.

These thoughts kept with me as I buttoned my shirt and fastened my belt. As I tied my tie, I went to the window to move my mind along; to address the day I was facing, not the day that had passed. The only credit that could be given to the weather was that it was an improvement on yesterday. A pale blot in the muesli-milk clouds betrayed the approximate position of the sun. Puddles wrinkled in the wind, but were not presently accepting new drops of rain. The streetlights were off. As I completed the knot at my neck, a plane descended into view, heavy and close and slow, easing itself into the airport. Only the faintest vibration sounded through the glass.

I was stalling—I knew it. I did not want to return to the MetaCenter, where the witnesses to my humiliation yesterday were all boxed up together. But I had to do my job. Just two more days, then this toxic concentration of people who knew me would be safely diffused into a more palatable, homeopathic solution. Until then, there were stands to visit, there was information to gather. It was a shame about the lost bag, and the duplication of effort it entailed, but at least I had a spare tote, from another conference last year, and I would not have to pick up one of the nauseating yellow MetaCenter bags.

When I left my room, I hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door handle, turned to the “Please Clean My Room” side. The chambermaid was busy in another room; I did not see her, just the open door onto a stranger's disordered sheets, her multistorey hygiene pantechnicon out in the hall, stacked with soaps and toilet rolls, a mobile fetish-altar for a religion based on cleanliness and making the past invisible. Complex, nonionic, surfactant scents rose from it like incense. The glimpse of another room, resembling mine but occupied by someone else, felt at once intrusive and utterly discreet, like seeing the open cavity of a body undergoing surgery, their face covered by green cloth. A vacuum cleaner was running, bumping against furniture. Power cords trailed along the floor. The lift, when I entered it, smelled of air freshener. The world was being made over. It raised my spirits. Everything that had happened yesterday—the event director's trap, the disaster with Lucy, my distressed nighttime excursion—had all taken place in an earlier, prototypical universe, one that had been superseded by this latest, improved model.

Way Inn red had replaced MetaCenter yellow as the dominant color in the lobby. It was an improvement. The chain was taking maximum advantage of its captive audience and had set up a promotional stand where the registration desk had been yesterday. And it had clearly spent more on the effort than the conference center: there were wide-screen plasma TVs, freestanding displays, a cornucopia of merchandise and a couple of brand-enhancement agents in tight white T-shirts and red hot pants and baseball caps. With the morning mêlée long gone, these brand agent, booth babes, whatever, were underemployed, and one bounced toward me as I walked toward the exit.

“Attending Meetex, sir?”

“Yes,” I said. Of course, what else?

She thrust a flier into my hand. Big smile. “Way to go!”