House of Lies by Martin Kihn

Author:Martin Kihn [KIHN, MARTIN]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780446562461
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

The client is located in [Sadtown], Illinois, and is a large company involved in the manufacture, distribution, and selling of tires for cars and trucks. [Sadtown] is not really that close to Chicago, and by the time you’ve raised the job manager on the cell phone and extracted directions to the city, become lost, raised someone else on a different cell phone, and whittled your directional errors into a sense that you’re on the right track, it’s almost noon. And while it is understood that consultants from out of town arrive late on Monday morning it is supposed to still be Monday morning when they arrive. Some combat the risk of late arrival by flying in Sunday night, but you would really rather die.

This part of Akron or Cuyahoga Falls or wherever you are appears to have been designed not merely for but by your client. There is a [Client] Avenue, of course, but also a [Client] Library, a [Client] Test Track, a [Client] Veterans of Foreign Wars Center, a [Client] Road and [Client] Mews, a [Client] Auditorium, a [Client] Wellness Center and [Client] Playground, as well as the inevitable, majestic [Client] Museum of Rubber. And like St. Petersburg, Russia, the entire burg appears to have been erected in a day. By the same design firm using the same truckload of red bricks. Everything is red brick; not so red, as times have turned south for your client; times turned south some decades ago, actually, when the U.S. lost its ability to mass-produce commodities economically; and this southness is reflected in the tenor of the brick, which has descended now into a kind of brackish slimy gray with specks of red. The sky is wet like crime. Your radio can pick up nothing, because it doesn’t work or plausibly because there is just nothing to pick up in [Sadtown].

You keep it on. Static is the soundtrack of this film.

You’re about to drive and dial again when up ahead you see a large gray dome and a flag welcoming you to [Client] World Headquarters. There is a visitors parking, patrolled by two fat women wearing yellow. Their smiles are wide, in unison, as you power down your window.

“Hi there,” they shout.

“Howdy.”

“You a consultant?”

“How could you tell?”

“The car, for one.”

“Of course. Where can I park?”

“You park wherever you can find your car.”

“Great.”

You take the ticket and think: What a strange response. Not Wherever you can find a spot or Wherever you want to but Wherever you can find your car. There’s something deep here too, you think… until you see what they mean.

This parking lot is entirely outdoors, a single massive lot snaking around and enveloping the dismal [Client] Community Center. And once you press past the monster trucks of the actual visitors seeking community within the center—once past these evil machines that could crush a child, you find yourself adrift in a crimson tide of Matador Red Ford Tauri. Dozens and dozens and dozens of them. Consulting chariots, awaiting instructions.

It is difficult to feel special, in business.

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