SNOW CRASH

He has to override a well-worn reflex to stop himself from automatically punching SPECIAL LIMITED FACILITIES, which is what he and all the other U-Stor-It residents always use. Almost impossible to go in there and not come in contact with someone else’s bodily fluids. Not a pretty sight. Not at all gracious. Instead-what the flick, Juanita’s going to hire him, right?-he slams the button for LAVATORY GRANDE ROYALE.

Never been here before. It’s like something on the top floor of a luxury high-rise casino in Atlantic City, where they put semi-retarded adults from South Philly after they’ve blundered into the mega-jackpot. It’s got everything that a dimwitted pathological gambler would identify with luxury: gold-plated fixtures, lots of injection-molded pseudomarbie, velvet drapes, and a butler.

None of the U-Stor-It residents ever use The Lavatory Grande Royale. The only reason it’s here is that this place happens to be across the street from LAX. Singaporean CEOs who want to have a shower and take a nice, leisurely crap, with all the sound effects, without having to hear and smell other travelers doing the same, can come here and put it all on their corporate travel card.

The butler is a thirty-year-old Centroamerican whose eyes look a little funny, like they’ve been closed for the last several hours. He is just throwing some improbably thick towels over his arm as Hiro bursts in.

“Cotta get in and out in five minutes,” Hiro says.

“You want shave?” the butler says. He paws at his own cheeks suggestively, unable to peg Hiro’s ethnic group.

“Love to. No time.”

He peels off his jockey shorts, tosses his swords onto the crushed-velvet sofa, and steps into the marbleized amphitheatre of the shower stall. Hot water hits him from all directions at once. There’s a knob on the wall so you can choose your favorite ternperature.

Afterward, he’d like to take a dump, read some of those glossy phone book-sized magazines next to the high-tech shifter, but he’s got to get going. He dries himself off with a fresh towel the size of a circus tent, yanks on some loose drawstring slacks and a