Free The Way Inn by Will Wiles

and other bric-a-brac had been cleared away, and only the banner remained, now clearly false. You can no longer register here.
    I took the stairs to the second floor, not wanting to find myself cooped up in a lift with any Meetex people. But when I reached my floor I became disoriented. It was not that the hallway was unfamiliar—on the contrary, it looked equally familiar in both directions, and I couldn’t readily tell which way lay my room, number 219. For a moment I tried to figure it out from where the lift stood in relation to the stairs in the lobby, and where I stood now, but it was not possible. I was thrown by the stairs’ dogleg between floors, the way they doubled back on themselves to end above where they began. And I could not be at all certain of my other calculations regarding the relationship between my room and the lift shaft—walking casually, following signs to the lift, it was quite possible to make a turn without thinking, and certainly without remembering it. Ahead, opposite the stairs, windows looked out onto a courtyard containing one of those neat little Japanese meditation gardens. Across the courtyard was a row of windows, tinted metallic blue and opaque to me. This was definitely the courtyard that was next to reception—where was that in relation to my room? Was there more than one courtyard?
    I picked a direction almost at random, relying on a sliver of instinct, and was rewarded with a promising ascent of room numbers—210, 211, 212, 213. Between each door and the next hung an abstract painting, all from the same series—intersecting latte and mocha fields. The corridor took a right angle in one direction, and then in the opposite direction. Facing 220, beside a painting of a fudge-colored disc barging into a porridgy expanse scattered with swollen chocolate drops, was 219. I inserted my keycard in the slot on the door lock and nothing happened. The little red light above the door handle remained red. The door was still locked, the handle was unmoving. I withdrew the card and tried again. Nothing. A lead pellet of frustration dropped in my stomach. I flipped the card over and inserted it again. The red light glowed insolently, refusing to turn green. I tried a fourth time, this time jiggling, cajoling, exercising force of will. The world, or at least my immediate surroundings, remained spectacularly unchanged—the red light, the immobile handle, the sleeping doors of the other rooms, the paintings, the faint perfume of cleaning fluid, the soft background hum of the hotel’s air conditioning, which to my ears now sounded a note of complacency, an indifference to the injustice of the world.
    Irritated, I returned down the corridor to the stairs and descended to the lobby. The same suited men in the same armchairs, still reading the same newspapers. The staff at the front desk heard my purposeful approach and looked up, smiling benignly.
    â€œI’m locked out of my room,” I said, flashing a brief, formal smile of my own. “My keycard doesn’t seem to want to work. It’s two-nineteen.”
    The man behind the desk beamed at me. He was young, no more than early twenties, and wore—like all his colleagues—a long-sleeved, red polo shirt with buttons at the collar and Way Inn embroidered in white over the breast. “This can happen sometimes,” he said in accented English; Dutch, maybe. “Have you had your card in your pocket with perhaps your keys and your cell phone?” Keish, shelfon. “The card can lose its magnetism. Please, let me see it.”
    I gave the man the card. It disappeared from sight beneath the counter to be reenchanted. Seconds passed, and I took in the reception desk. Above it, Way Inn was spelled out in bold Perspex letters, lit red from behind. The desk was more a counter on my side, high enough that it required me to raise my elbows if I wanted to rest them on the dark, polished wood.
    â€œOK