The Upgrade

by Paul Carr

  Keen to avoid another Super 8 Motel fiasco, I’d actually taken the opportunity of a lunch stop to look up hotels in the area. There was a nice-sounding one on the main drag, according to TripAdvisor. I hadn’t had time to call and negotiate over the phone, so we’d have to try our luck at the desk. We rolled into town about four, and soon found the hotel, right by the sea, as advertised.

  It certainly looked nice—easy access to the beach, a restaurant and bar, Wi-Fi. I left Michelle to park the car while I went in to sort the rooms. The board behind the reception desk advertised a rack rate of $125 per room. That wasn’t going to break the bank but still I decided to pull a variation of the upgrade trick, just for fun.

  “I’m looking for three double rooms,” I said, sliding my passport across the desk. “Is $125 the best rate you can do?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir,” replied the guy at reception. He looked even younger than Veronica. “We’re pretty slammed tonight.”

  He took my passport and, despite the fact that I hadn’t actually confirmed that I wanted the rooms, he walked into the back office to Xerox it, while the registration cards began to print.

  “I’m just going to need a credit card,” he said when he came back.

  “Actually,” I said, “is there any chance I can see the rooms first?”

  “You don’t want them?” said the receptionist, irritated by all the effort he’d put into the Xeroxing.

  “Oh, no, I’m pretty sure we want them, I just want to look at them first.” The receptionist sighed; he was the only one on duty. He handed me the three keys and I promised to be right back once I’d checked out the rooms.

  They were absolutely fine—not huge, but decently sized and beautifully decorated, with views over the beach. And for $125 a night. A bargain, really. I went back to reception and explained that, unfortunately, I’d have to leave them.

  “But I’ve already printed the registration cards.”

  “I know,” I said, “and I’m sorry to mess you around—it’s just that I’m a journalist and I’m writing a story about my road trip for my paper back in London. The Times,” I lied four times in quick succession.

  The receptionist seemed to perk up at this. “The London Times? Serious?”

  “For my sins,” I lied again.

  “OK—I shouldn’t do this, but if you pay the $125 I could upgrade one of the rooms to our honeymoon suite. It has a Jacuzzi and a deck that leads to the beach. How would that be? Apart from that, I don’t think we have any other rooms.”

  I made a big show of thinking about it. “That’s good enough for me.” He gave me a huge smile as he traded one of the double-room keys for the honeymoon suite.

  “Enjoy your stay, and if you need anything at all during your stay, I’m Malcolm.”

  “Thank you, Malcolm—I’ll remember that when I write my article.” I considered for a second taking the honeymoon suite for myself, but after Michael had dropped three grand on the car, I figured he’d earned his night of passion with Veronica. And not least because, presumably, he was going to dump her the next day when we got to San Diego.

  407

  Our night in Laguna Beach passed without incident. Except for the part where a ghost invited us to her wake.

  We got to know a bit more about Veronica—as much as there is to know about a twenty-one-year-old—and we drank cocktails in a bar just a little way down the beach. At about midnight, Michael and his date headed off to bed, leaving Michelle and me to one last nightcap before we hit the sack ourselves. We still had a two-hour drive in the morning, and then a full day’s conference to attend.

  The Guardian was still keen on the idea of me writing something for them, a fact I’d used to blag a $1000 conference pass for free, plus a hefty discount on a hotel room. All I had to do was finish my drink, say goodnight to Michelle and walk the—I dunno—two hundred yards from the hotel bar to my room.

  408

  Michelle and I woke up at ten the next morning. I know this because she was lying beside me. We were both fully clothed—which was a good sign—but we were also both in the same room, which was less good. On the dressing table were two gigantic—and I mean gigantic—bottles, one half full of Captain Morgan rum and the other maybe a quarter full of Smirnoff.

  The memory came back in chunks, but mostly in the right order. We’d been about to leave the bar—Michelle had gone to the toilet and I was paying our tab—when I looked up to find a skinny girl with a pointy face and terrifying bulging eyes staring right at me.

  “You!” said the girl.

  “Me?” I sought to clarify.

  “You!” she confirmed, “I know who sent you.”

  “Actually, I’m not from around here. I think you probably have me confused with …”

  “Yes!” she said, “of course you’re English. She would have sent someone from England.”

  “I’m sorry, I really don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  She put her face even closer to mine. I don’t think even the girl in the green dress had got this close. Things had got very weird, very quickly.

  “Kos sent you to party with us.”

  Michelle got back from the bathroom and picked up her coat from the chair behind me. “Don’t let me interrupt,” she said, somewhat misreading the situation. But the girl with the skinny face turned to Michelle.

  “You!”

  Here we go.

  “You what, babe?”

  “She sent you too …”

  “Kos …” I explained to Michelle. A mistake: skinny-face girl took this as a confirmation and, grabbing Michelle in one arm and me in the other, began pulling us across the bar to where her friends had been standing watching.

  Happily, her friends were slightly less mental and they were able to explain that they were in town for the funeral of their friend Kos who had died a few weeks earlier of a drug overdose.

  “They drugged her. They put something in her coke,” explained one of the boys in the way that crazy people explain 9/11.

  “They spiked her drink?” I said. “That’s sick. Did they catch who did it?”

  “No,” said the boy, as if I were the one who was stoned, “not her Coke, her coke. And we don’t know who. She had enemies, dude.”

  The others in the group nodded their agreement. They were all totally fucked. And now Michelle and I had been dragged into a weird drink-and-drug-fueled wake, apparently on the basis that one of the girls—Mel, the others called her—had received “like a total psychic feeling” that Kos had sent Michelle and me to get drunk with them. Still, who were we to argue with a dead girl? We’d seen the end of Carrie; we knew what happened to people who did that.

  We spent the rest of the night back at the kids’ hotel room—a vast suite, paid for by someone’s dad apparently, with five or six bedrooms and a kitchen full of catering size bottles of booze. One of the boys had a guitar on which he could only play covers of Semisonic songs and every so often one of the group would excuse herself to vomit over the balcony, onto the cars parked below. I prayed Michelle had closed the roof of the Challenger.

  Still, the drink was free, the company was certainly entertaining and I knew that one day it would all make excellent fodder for an article.

  Michelle and I had eventually left at about 5 a.m., but not before grabbing a bottle each for the road. And now we were waking up to a monstrous hangover and the guilt of having crashed some poor girl’s wake and stolen her friends’ booze.

  “I can’t believe we did that,” said Michelle.

  “It’s what Kos would have wanted,” I replied.

  “That’s true,” said Michelle. “She must have known the risks when she invited us.”

  409

  The drive down to San Diego was exactly as painful as we deserved, and Michelle and I had to take turns with the driving while the other slept.

  Michael and Veronica sat in the back again, but even through our hangovers we couldn’t help notice that their dynamic h
ad changed overnight. Veronica was far more huggy and kissy than she had been the previous day while Michael was the precise opposite—polite, but distant. He spent the trip on his laptop, catching up with some work.

  “Do you think they’ve had a fight,” I whispered to Michelle as we neared San Diego.

  “No, babe,” she replied, like I was some kind of idiot, “I think they had sex.”

  410

  As agreed with the car rental company, we left the Challenger in the parking lot of the conference hotel: the Marriott in San Diego. The Marriott is a chain hotel with a rack rate of $250 a night, but I’d been able to swing a discount by sweet-talking Maureen, the conference PR coordinator, with promises of extensive coverage in some newspaper or other.

  At the end of her email confirming the discount, and my free conference pass, she added a PS … “Hope you enjoy the conference—can’t promise any girls in togas though.”

  In response to Rob’s constant emails demanding news, I’d started writing a blog about my travels, one of the first posts on which had included a photo of some of the hairdressers we’d met in Vegas, really only to make Rob sickeningly jealous. Clearly Maureen had been reading too. Michelle and I headed off to check into the hotel and collect our conference badges.

  “I’ll catch up with you guys,” said Michael. He pointed at the Amtrak station that was directly across the street from the hotel, “I’m just going to walk Veronica to get a train.”

  Wow. Had they talked about this last night, or were Michelle and I witnessing the world’s most casual and insensitive dumping?

  “You don’t mind going back on your own, do you? It’s just that I’m going to be busy with this conference for a couple of days.”

  Veronica just stared, first at Michael, then at Michelle and me.

  “Uh, no … that’s fine.”

  “Do you think he knew the station was opposite the hotel before we got here?” Michelle asked as we walked on ahead.

  “I have absolutely no idea,” I said, “but that was so horrible to watch it was almost brilliant.”

  Michelle punched me on the arm, hard.

  “God, I hate boys.”

  411

  For the duration of the two-day conference, I worked really hard, making careful notes during seminars with names like “How Technology Almost Lost the War in Iraq” and “Sexual Identity Online.” It was actually nice to have a couple of days off from hardcore boozing.

  As we sat at the back of one panel, Michael introduced me to a new social networking site called Twitter that he’d apparently become addicted to. I didn’t get it: it seemed to be a bit like updating your Facebook status, but for the whole world rather than just your friends. I told him I’d give it a try.

  Between sessions we lounged by the pool and I read a book called The 4-Hour Workweek, which I’d borrowed from Michael. It was well enough written, but the author—a guy called Timothy Ferriss—seemed to be arguing that the secret to a happy life was never replying to emails, selling herbal supplements on the Internet and then fucking off to Argentina to learn to dance. Fuck that, I thought; the secret to a happy life is getting drunk, going to the occasional conference and then writing about it for whoever pays the most.

  Chapter 500

  The Freaking Rolling Stones or Something

  After ETech, my original travel plans now a little more than a distant memory, I decided that I would fly to Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest Festival.

  Held every March, the festival brings together tens of thousands of independent filmmakers, musicians and—in recent years—Internet people to meet their peers, listen to panels and talks and, in the evenings, to get blind drunk at a succession of sponsored parties.

  The Internet portion of the festival is often described as “spring break for geeks.” My decision to attend was all Zoe’s fault: her readings in New York had gone well, and her publisher had secured her two gigs at South by Southwest: a reading and also a spot on a panel about online privacy. She had found a place to stay in Austin—an “amazing” two-bedroom condo right across the street from the conference center, and emailed to ask if I wanted to share it with her. Despite my not really knowing what a “condo” was, I agreed.

  The price was $100 a night and I had nothing better planned after San Diego. The whole idea of the festival being a party for geeks fascinated me and on the flight from San Diego International Airport to Austin I wrote a pitch to an editor I knew at the Financial Times, likening the event to Woodstock in 1969 …

  Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook is headlining and then there are a thousand other acts booked to speak on pretty much all aspects of interactive media. It seems that almost everyone in the UK and US dot-com industry is heading there—and not just for the legendary parties. Oh, the parties! And yet behind the scenes, it’s a really critical time for the industry where increased consolidation and lots of “cool” businesses coming to the end of their first funding round means that young entrepreneurs are under pressure to find a “liquidity event,” preferably through acquisition. To grow up, in other words. Like Woodstock in 1969, this year’s SXSWi could well mark the end of an era—and I’d very much like to get under the skin of it.

  I titled the pitch “Fear and Coding in Austin, Texas” and felt very pleased with myself for the rest of the flight.

  501

  On the second night of the conference I stumbled through the door of the condo at about 3 a.m. Right behind me was a girl called Eris, an interactive designer from San Francisco who I’d met a few hours earlier at a rooftop party.

  The circumstances of our meeting at the party had been slightly odd. Zoe had just introduced me to some famous website editor on whom she had a crush and, as required, I was making polite small talk about what a nice—and, unbelievably, available—girl Zoe was. My friendly duties complete, I was just about to leave them to their flirting when a small brown-haired girl ran the full length of the roof deck and jumped onto my back.

  “Heeeyyyy!” she shouted, swinging from my neck like one of those stuffed monkeys you sometimes get, “how are yooooooouuu?”

  “Heyyyyy!” I replied, “uh … whoooooo are yoooouuuu?”

  The girl let go and landed in front of me. She stared in my face, confused but still beaming: “I’m sure I know you,” she said. I swear to God, I had a horrible feeling that her next words would be “Kos sent you.” But, actually, the crazy brown-haired monkey girl probably did know me. I have a terrible memory for faces at the best of times, but I also meet a lot of people when I’m drunk and then have to deal with the embarrassment of having absolutely no recollection when I see them again.

  “Oh, yes,” I said, desperately looking for clues “where was it I last saw you?”

  “I think it was in San Francisco,” said the girl.

  “Ah,” I said, “then we definitely haven’t met. I’ve never been to San Francisco.”

  “Oh, well,” said the girl, “let’s meet now. I’m Eris.” She kissed me full on the mouth. “And by the end of tonight I’ll have convinced you to come to San Francisco.”

  I liked Eris immediately.

  502

  As Eris and I spilled through the door of the condo, drunkenly kissing and grabbing at each other’s clothes, I realized that I should probably have phoned ahead. Zoe’s bra was in our fruit bowl and a line of her clothes, plus those of a mystery stranger, formed a path from the leather sofa to her bedroom. A pair of thick-rimmed glasses was lying on the countertop.

  I led Eris into my room and closed the door, wondering for a split second who the lucky guy Zoe had brought home was. Ah well, I’ll find out when she blogs about it tomorrow morning. It’s amazing what some people consider “work.”

  Tomorrow morning duly arrived and Eris left early, heading for an early panel about interaction, or design, or something before catching her flight home. “You really should come to San Francisco,” she said. “I think you’d love it.” I promised her I’d think about it, show
ed her to the door and then went back to bed to await the inevitable hangover.

  And, sure enough, by the time I was woken up half an hour later, it was raging with full force. So I really could have done without the shouting from the kitchen …

  “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuckfuckFUCK.” Zoe’s morning was apparently not shaping up as well as her previous evening had.

  “FUCKKKKIING HELLL.”

  I stumbled out of bed, pulled on my jeans and opened the door. “What’s wrong?” I groaned. “You can’t possibly tell me you’re suffering from post-coital guilt. Doesn’t seem your style somehow.”

  In fact Zoe had a much more serious—and hilarious—reason to be upset. An hour earlier she had woken up—cheeks still flushed from her adventure on our rented upholstery—and switched on her laptop to catch up on the day’s news and gossip. And that’s when she had discovered the horrible truth—a commenter on a geek gossip site had seen her leaving the party with a guy and had decided to write about it. The blogger had become the blogged.

  Stifling a grin—with limited success—I poured her a cup of coffee and listened as she explained what had happened. The problem was not that she’d been spotted leaving the party with a guy—that was hardly news for someone who blogged about one-night stands—but, rather, the identity of that guy. Not only was he Internet-famous too, but he was even more well known than Zoe.

  “You mean, the guy last night was ___________?” I said, barely able to contain my laughter.

  “Yes.”

  “Holy shit. He’s like a fucking member of the geek A-list.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said.

  “Oh dear.”

  503

  But if Zoe thought her fifteen minutes of unwanted fame was traumatic, it was nothing compared to what would happen, a few hours later, and less than a mile from our rented apartment—to a business reporter called Sarah Lacy.