Anne Billson - Suckers

At the main entrance the word MULTIGLOM was chiselled into marble over three sets of revolving doors. Each door was flanked by uniformed security guards who looked as though they might have cut their teeth on Treblinka. I tried to peer past them, but all I could see in the. black glass was my own distorted reflection. The guards watched me with hard, unblinking eyes. They made me nervous. It was getting on for lunchtime, so I decided to postpone my investigations and seek out some Dutch courage.

Over the street was something which had once been a warehouse, but which was now a brasserie-cum-art-gallery called the Bar Nouveau. From what I had seen of the area, it was the only watering-hole for miles. I assumed it would be doing a roaring trade in Multiglom workers, but it turned out I was the sole customer. There was a sign saying Barsnacks . I bought a half of lager and a Gruyere bagel, and asked the barman how he managed to stay open. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said, polishing a glass with his tea-towel. ‘Evenings, we’re packed out.'

‘Don’t they eat lunch? Where are they now?’

‘How should I know?’ Now he was looking vexed, as though I were distracting him from his polishing manoeuvres. I left him to it and wandered away with my drink and bagel to examine the small collection of oils hanging on the far wall. They were primitive in concept and execution, but there was one painting I liked: a picture of a tower-block, not in the Multiglom mould, but the chunky type to be seen on any sixties-built housing estate. Halfway up the building a big white ghost was leaning over a balcony, howling and flapping its sheeted arms in the air. I didn’t know why, but the picture made me laugh.

I settled down at a table near the window and watched people going in and out of Multiglom. I sat there for half an hour, dipping my lager and smoking cigarettes, and all in all, only two people went in, and only one came out. The one who came out was one of the two who had gone in, and he came out again pretty smartly, as though he’d been turned away at reception. I wasn’t sure I could get much further, but it was time to give it my best shot. A last cigarette for luck, and I was strolling, ever so casually, across the street.

One of the guards looked me up and down as I approached, but concluded I wasn’t an interesting enough specimen to be dragged off to the nearest death camp and watched impassively as I wrestled with the heavy revolving doors. I plunged through them into a different world. The daylight was blotted out and replaced by flat white lighting which bounced off the white marble and made me pull up, dazzled. It was like being in an empty cathedral. The floor was as vast and as slippery as an ice-rink, and the walls stretched upward for fifty feet or more, branching out as they rose into a high-vaulted ceiling. There were no chairs, no potted plants, no ashtrays on stems, and no magazines to flick through. Visitors, like diners in McDonald’s, were not encouraged to linger.

It took me about fifteen seconds to walk from the doors to the reception desk, but it felt like five minutes. So white and shiny was the floor, I found myself sneaking backward glances to check I wasn’t leaving a trail of dirty footprints. The reception desk itself was built on a sort of dais, designed so the receptionists could look down their noses at me as I approached. Both of them were dressed in black. I felt like kicking myself; I should have gone back to black, just this once, to blend in. But it was too late: here I was in Prince of Wales check, and it was obviously a serious infringement of the dress code.

I found myself gazing up at the nearer of the women. There was something unnatural about her skin. It was too smooth, as though the foundation beneath the powder had been a thin layer of liquid latex. Or perhaps it was the lighting, which made everything look flat and white and dead. Her facial expression would have made her a fortune at poker. She arched an eyebrow, no more than a fraction of a millimetre. 'Yes?'

'Uh,' I said. 'Which floor is Bellini ?' As the words came out of my mouth I realized the acoustics made my voice sound high-pitched and squeaky, like Mickey Mouse. The receptionist's reply, on the other hand, bore all the hallmarks of one who had majored in voice projection.

'Do you have an appointment?' she boomed.

'I didn't know I needed one.'

'You have to have an appointment.'

'I want to see Rose Murasaki. I knew her back in '75.'

Poker-Face barely cracked. She turned and punched out some numbers on a telephone. 'There is a person here,' she said into the receiver, 'who says she used to know the Editor.' She spoke as though she didn't believe a word of it.

There was a faint buzzing. Poker-Face turned back to me. 'What do you do?'

I explained. 'Creative consultant, freelance,' she echoed into the phone as though the words were descriptive of some unpleasant disease of the digestive tract. Then she hung up and said, 'Thirty-second floor. Lifts over there.'

I smiled weakly, and went off to summon a lift. While I was waiting for it, I scanned the small print on the floor guide. Micromart, Superdish, Pharmatex, Hi-Vista, Deforest, Double Image… and there, up against numbers thirty-two and thirty-three — Bellini .

The lift arrived and I stepped inside. The walls were stainless-steel inlaid with strips of solid black Perspex. It was a bit like a hi-tech microwave. I pushed the button for the thirty-second floor, half expecting my head to explode, but instead the doors closed. I didn't normally feel nervous in lifts, but this one made me feel as though a troupe of flamenco dancers were stomping all over my grave. The upward movement was as quick and smooth as the speed of light, but it was accompanied by an unpleasant clanking sound which set me thinking about all the movies I'd seen in which elevators plummeted down shafts so fast their occupants were plastered against the ceiling or sliced in half by steel cables snapped free from their moorings.

Not before time, the doors slid open. I stumbled out on to thick green carpet, into another reception area, though this was cosier than the one downstairs. Here there were no right-angles, only curves, but the same flat white light as below. And the receptionist looked as though she had graduated from the same charm school, except she was blonde, like Eva Peron. She was perched over some kind of Starship Enterprise console fitted with monitors and a couple of keyboards. From somewhere beyond a doorway to her left came a faint flutter of electronic sound. The place wasn't exactly bustling.

She looked up as I approached. 'You want to make an appointment.'

'I'd like to see the Editor.'

'That's right. You want to make an appointment.'

'Is she in?'

'She can't see you today. You need an appointment.'

'Oh, all right.' There didn't seem any other way of getting to meet Rose Murasaki. 'I'll make an appointment.'

Eva Peron was checking one of her screens. 'When?'

'Tomorrow?' I said hopefully.

She laughed derisively. 'Impossible . I can't fit you in until next week, at least.'

So why ask, I thought. Out loud I said, 'That'll have to do.'

She tip-tapped at the keyboard and inspected something which came up on her monitor. I leant forward and tried to inspect it too, but she flashed me such a look of fury that I shrank back, grinning fatuously and pretending my action had been part of a neck-flexing exercise.

'Next week. The 14th,' she said finally.

'Nothing before that?'

'The 14th. Take it or leave it.'

'OK, OK. The 14th. What time?'

'Nine.'

I winced. Nine was pushing it. I wasn't used to doing business until well after ten, with my brain kick-started by at least two jugs of strong black coffee. 'Can't you make it a bit later?'