The Way Inn

It was approaching nine already – I had spent longer lounging in my room than I had realised. The party had been going more than an hour and the ice was well broken – the air pulsated with chatter, laughter and amplified music, as if this mutual sound was a medium in which we all swam. In this buoyant scene, I could usually pass unnoticed, and would be free to strike up promising conversations with any women who caught my eye. But more than once I suspected eyes were upon me, and, although I could not be certain, I felt I was not being regarded with favour. Finishing my second champagne, I started towards the bar, and a heavy-set man going the other way blocked my path, forcing me to abruptly and ungracefully change course to avoid colliding with him; I could not help but believe that this was deliberate. The bar was mobbed – other drinkers trying to place their orders did not give me an inch of spare room or extend the slightest courtesy; twice someone pushed ahead of me. All of these individual incidents were barely incidents at all, but they disturbed me.

Having at last secured a whisky from the bar – a treble, to delay my return to the scrum for as long as possible – I set out to look for Maurice once more. The venue had filled noticeably in the preceding half hour. When I arrived, I had been able to saunter up and down the length of the room unobstructed, so that it was notable when someone contrived to get in my way; now we were all almost shoulder to shoulder and movement amid the throng was slow, a question of navigating narrow channels between knots of people, seeing gaps between pairs of turned backs and squeezing through. More than once, I was jostled, bumps that I feared might not have been pure accidents. Every aspect of the party was taking on an ugly complexion, and the crowds, malign or not, were sapping my energy. I was increasingly ready to leave, to take my drink up to my room and enjoy it in peace, when someone tapped me sharply on my shoulder. I was primed for the worst.

But when I turned, I saw a friendly smile. Its owner was Rosa (or Rhoda – my memory was no less impaired). She was wearing a very simple, almost austere, grey dress which clung attractively to her petite frame. Her smile was enhanced by light pink lipstick, and she had a decorative burst of tinselly metal pinned in her short hair.

‘Neil!’ she said. ‘I thought it was you.’

‘Hi!’ I said.

‘Busy, isn’t it?’

We pushed our way to one side of the space, near the windows overlooking the car park, a lacuna in the mass that gave us enough room to face each other.

‘Lots of people here,’ I said, uselessly.

‘Nowhere else to go, right?’ Rosa said, casting an eye to the window and the low brows of the cars beyond, streaked by rain and security lights. ‘Not much nightlife around here.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We could head down to the airport, there might be a Starbucks or an Irish pub there or something …’

She laughed. Her lips sparkled. Was it lipstick, or lip gloss? I am hazy on these crucial details. I wanted to kiss them, in any case. ‘Yeah, wild. We could hit the travel chemist and get wasted on anti-malarial drugs. That stuff is mental.’

‘See, now you’re getting into it,’ I said. Nonchalant: ‘Are you here with colleagues?’

‘I was,’ she said, ‘but they’ve disappeared. You on your own?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, not entirely, no. I’m talking to you.’

‘Did you have a good day?’

‘Not really,’ I said. A bit of vulnerability and candour would help me here, I calculated. ‘One of the sessions I attended turned out to be a premeditated attack on my business, and on me personally.’

‘What, an attack on conference surrogacy?’

My glass almost slipped from my hand. The ball-bearing of anxiety that had been spinning at high speed in my abdomen broke apart, sending splinters ripping through my viscera. She knew? How? Was it common knowledge already?

‘You know about that?’

‘I can imagine it wouldn’t go down too well here. It’s also a novelty, I suppose, and that can disturb people.’

‘How did you hear about it?’

‘Hear about what?’

‘That I’m a conference surrogate. Who told you?’

‘You told me,’ she said, narrowing her eyes. ‘You don’t remember?’

I narrowed my eyes too, as if focusing the moment in my mind, which was in fact a total blank. I couldn’t remember talking with Rosa at any length before, let alone telling her something like that. ‘No, no, sure,’ I said.

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