"Neal Stephenson - Spew" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

probably hidden even from you, including your position in the food chain, which
is as follows: the SRVX group is the largest zaibatsu in the services industry.
They own five different hotel networks, of which Hospicor is the second-largest
but only the fourth most profitable. Hospicor hotels are arranged in tiers: at
the bottom we have Catchawink, which is human coin lockers in airports,
everything covered in a plastic sheet that comes off a huge roll, like sleeping
inside a giant, loose-fitting condom. Then we have Mom's Sleep Inn, a chain of
motels catering to truckers and homeless migrants; The Family Room, currently
getting its ass kicked by Holiday Inn; Kensington Place, going for that
all-important biz traveler; and Imperion Preferred Resorts.
I see that you work for the Kensington Place Columbus Circle Hotel, which is too
far from the park and too viewless to be an Imperion Preferred, even though it's
in a very nice old building. So you are, to be specific, a desk clerk and you
work the evening shift there.
I approach the entrance to the hotel at 8:05 p.m., long-jumping across vast
reservoirs of gray-brown slush and blowing off the young men who want to change
my money into Hong Kong dollars. The doorman is too busy tapping a fresh Camel
on his wrist bone to open the door for me so I do it myself.
The lobby looks a little weird because I've only seen it on TV, through that
security camera up there in the corner, with its distorting wide-angle lens,
which feeds directly into the Spew, of course. I'm all turned around for a
moment, doing sort of a drunken pirouette in the middle of the lobby, and
finally I get my bearings and establish missile lock on You, standing behind the
reception desk with Evan, your goatee-sporting colleague, both of you looking
dorky (as I'm sure you'd be the first to assert) in your navy blue Kensington
Place uniforms, which would border on dignified if not for the maroon piping and
pseudo-brass name tags.
For long minutes I stand more or less like an idiot right there under the big
chandelier, watching you giving the business to some poor sap of a guest. I am
too stunned to move because something big and heavy is going upside my head. Not
sure exactly what.
But it feels like the Big L. And I don't just mean Lust, though it is present.
The guest is approaching tears because the fridge in her room is broken and she
has some kind of medicine that has to be kept cold or else she won't wake up
tomorrow morning.
No it's worse than that, there's no fridge in her room at all.
Evan suggests that the woman leave the medicine outside on her windowsill
overnight. It is a priceless moment, I feel like holding up a big card with 9.8
written on it. Some of my all-time fave Television Moments have been on
surveillance TV, moments like this one, but it takes patience. You have to wait
for it. Usually, at a Kensington Place you don't have to wait for long.
As I have been watching Evan and you on the Stalker Channel the past couple of
days, I have been trying to figure out if the two of you have a thing going.
It's hard because the camera doesn't give me audio, I have to work it out from
body language. And after careful analysis of instant replays, I suspect you of
being one of those dangerous types who innocently give good body language to
everyone. The type of girl who should have someone walking 10 paces in front of
her with a red flashing light and a clanging bell. Just my type.
The woman storms out in tears, wailing something about lawyers. I resist the
urge to applaud and stand there for a minute or so, waiting to be greeted. You