The Way Inn by Will Wiles Read Free Book Online

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.
    â€œNeil 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.
    â€œTom 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.
    â€œSo, Tom, why are you here?”
    He jutted his bottom lip out and made a display of considering the question.
    â€œA friend told me about your service, and I wanted to find out more about it.”
    Word of mouth, of course—we don’t advertise.
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œAha,” Tom said. “I see where you’re going.”
    â€œConferences 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