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“That’s”—I see him going for a calculator app and I cut him off.
“Twenty-three-point-four percent,” I tell him. “I’m very good at mental arithmetic.”
He gives me a sceptical look. “What’s eight times seven?”
“Okay, I worked it out in advance. And I get I’m asking a lot—”
“You’re asking for the fuckingmoon, pardon my French.”
I am. And I know I am and he knows I know I am. “It would be really helping me out.”
“It’d really help me out if you gave me fifteen hundred quid too.”
“No but, like,really.”
He’s looking less friendly.
“This is going to sound very slightly absurd,” I begin, knowingfull well it’ll be downhill from here. “But would you believe that I need to get this party planned under budget so that I can convince my boss who thinks I’ve got amnesia when I really don’t and who’s currently not talking to me because we got in a row about his dad that I know what I’m doing so he doesn’t fire me and everybody who works for me?”
That makes him sit back and blink exactly once. “I’ll believe it. Just not enough to give you a twenty-five percent—”
“Twenty-three-point-four percent,” I correct him.
“Discount on a room I could just give somebody else for full price while also keeping your deposit.”
When he puts it like that, it does seem like a bit of a silly thing to do from his end.
“Here you go.” He slides a brochure across the desk to me. It’s new for the new year—not the one I was looking at last time—although that probably just means they’ve put their prices up. “You want to switch to any other room, I can sort you out. You want a couple of quid off for good will, I can sort you out. You want a free gift of more than a grand, you can piss off.”
I sigh. He’s actually being pretty fair. I leaf through the brochure just in case one of the cheap rooms has magically got bigger, or the big room has magically got cheaper, and somehow they haven’t. But thereisa room that I’ve not seen before. And it takes a hundred and fifty with dinner and dancing, and it’s half the price of the other place. Although the photos make it look…questionable. I see exposed pipes that they’re doing their best to conceal and bare brickwork that’s a good three steps less classy than the marble panels of the room we can’t afford.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“Basement,” the feller explains. “Going on the list for next year, but it’s not done up yet so I can’t let you have it.”
After the budget situation, I feel there’s an important point toclarify here. “And when you saycan’t, do you mean that there’s an actual reason why you can’t, or is it just, like, policy?”
“I told you, it’s not done up yet.”
“Okay, butdone upisn’t a legally defined term, is it?” I’m sensing an opportunity here, although I’m also sensing my own desperation and I might be getting the two mixed up. “Is it unsafe?”
“Nah, done all the health and safety already.”
“And is there some kind of licensing issue?”
“Nope, those cover the whole building anyway.”
“So.” I’m increasingly sure thatopportunityis the right thing to be calling this. “It’s just that it looks sort of shitty?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Not done up properly.”
“And if I don’t care?”
He looks conflicted. “Got a reputation to think about.”
Alright Sam, time to turn on that charm that Jonathan seems to think you have. I smile at him. “Well, I don’t want to run down my own workplace like, but we’re a medium-sized chain of bed and bathroom warehouses, so our ability to damage anybody’s reputation is going to be extremely limited. We’ve got a hundred and thirty social media followers and one of them’s the boss’s mum.”
He’s still giving menot sureface.
