Free The Way Inn by Will Wiles Page B

moment a chain hotel imagined itself making a positive intervention—the weary guest comes in from a challenging day of combative capital-B Business and finds solace; a private cube of climate-controlled air; a cold beer; a yielding bed covered in well-stuffed cushions. The group intelligence of the operating corporation’s marketing and public relations people, its designers and buyers, its choosers and describers had considered this moment, it had considered me. It was only a simulation of hospitality, of course, but still it provided some respite.
    I sipped the beer straight from the can and listened to the quiet sounds of the hotel around me: the low vibration of its air systems, distant doors opening and closing. I closed my eyes, but sleep didn’t seem likely or desirable. Instead, I mentally replayed the day, examining and twisting it like a Rubik’s Cube, trying to line up its faces so it made sense. A man I had thought to be a prospective client was instead the event director of Meetex. I had given him a very detailed description of the service we offered, and in short order he had named me as a threat to the meetings industry. A threat to the meetings industry! How pompous, how vain of Laing to see himself as the guardian of a stronghold of civilization, an “industry” no less—though he would probably consider it a “community” and a “family” as well, the self-aggrandizing prick. It was a stunt, a bid to look important and concerned for his customers, but a splash that would ripple away quickly. What troubled me, as a matter of pride as much as any practical concern, was that my anonymity had been breached—certainly this afternoon many more people knew the nature of my work than did this morning. Adam had really labored the message that I had to be discreet on this particular job: he had told me so in every email relating to it, and in all our recent phone conversations. Perhaps he had had some premonition of what was in store, or had picked up on clues pointing to the ambush? If so, why hadn’t he warned me? But I was getting too far ahead of myself.
    Adam would have to know about all this—in time. For a couple of minutes I considered emailing him right away, and I experimented with different wordings in my head. But I did not want to attach an air of emergency to the incident, and make it into a bigger problem than it really was. Sure, Laing knew who I was and what I did, but how many others? A couple of hundred people heard him—but were they listening, and did they care? A couple of hundred out of tens of thousands. There was Maurice to consider. He had gone to some effort to sit next to me. Maurice, early for a talk! He was a consummate latecomer, a man who no amount of tutting would deter from blundering past the knees of seated audience members to reach an empty seat in a middle row while a speaker was in midflow. It was, in retrospect, an incredible performance by him. If he had not found me after lunch (how long had he been looking?), I could be fairly sure that he would have lain in wait at the door of the lecture hall until I happened along. And now I remembered his request for a business card, our conversation about what I did. Cunning—far more cunning than I had imagined him to be—but, mysteriously, I once again found it hard to muster much anger toward the journalist. And for the first time in our acquaintance, I discovered I was looking ahead to the next possible moment I could contrive a meeting with him. I needed to know his view on what had happened, and minimize it in his eyes.
    He would be at the party tonight, of course. The party. With so much looking back—dismantling, examining and reassembling the recent past—I had neglected to look forward. For a brief while I considered not going to the party. But that wouldn’t do—hiding away, acting as if I had something to be ashamed of, was not the way to