The woman in 214 wanted the room cleaned without anybody going into it.
Mara had heard the request twice now, once through reception and once through the narrow opening the woman had made in the door. She was dressed for a wedding, except for bare feet and a pink plastic clip holding her hair away from her face. Behind her, a man lay on top of the bedspread with a towel over his eyes.
“It isn't that we don't want it done,” the woman said.
“No. You'd like it done.”
“But we're getting ready.”
“I can come back.”
“That's what the other girl said.”
The other girl was Bev, sixty-one, who had gone downstairs for clean pillowcases after being asked to return at eleven, then at twelve, then before eleven. It was ten forty.
“What time are you leaving?” Mara asked.
“We're not entirely sure.”
From the bed the man said, “One.”
“You don't know that, Peter.”
Mara waited. The woman looked back at him, and the opening widened enough to reveal a blue dress laid across both suitcase stands. The man put one hand on his stomach. He could have been an effigy somebody intended to carry out later.
“We've got things everywhere,” the woman said more quietly.
“I'll leave you towels and take the trash. Nothing else gets touched. When you go, turn the sign over. I'll let Bev know.”
“She won't be upset?”
“She'll live.”
The woman laughed with sudden relief. Mara passed the towels through the opening. A small wastebasket came back, followed by a paper coffee cup that the man somehow produced without taking the towel off his face.
“Thank you,” the woman said. “Could we have another bath mat?”
“You can have another bath mat.”
At the elevator, Jo was waiting with two full bags and the expression she wore when she had already explained something to somebody.
“They're in?” she asked.
“They're in.”
“Are they coming out?”
“Some of them. Eventually.”
Jo pushed the button again. “I had a man ask if the wedding would be loud.”
“Which wedding?”
“His. I said he was probably better placed to know.”
Mara tried not to laugh. It made the wastebasket catch the corner of her cart, spilling a shower-cap wrapper onto the carpet.
“You're a terrible influence.”
“I'd hate to be a mediocre one.”
They went down together. Jo's phone buzzed in the pocket of her black pants. She looked at it and held it toward Mara: a photograph of a small boy standing beside an open refrigerator, holding a jar above his head. Behind him, a second child appeared to be climbing a chair.
“Calvin's sent me evidence,” Jo said.
“What's the charge?”
“He asked where the peanut butter was. I said in the refrigerator. Now this is my fault.”
“Why is it in the refrigerator?”
“Because they put spoons in it after they lick them. Don't look at me. They were beautiful babies.”
The doors opened on the service level. Priya was outside the linen room with an empty rack, waiting for them to finish enjoying themselves.
“You can send him a map later,” she told Jo. “Has anyone got a cart with a working wheel?”
“Mine only squeaks on left turns.”
“Then turn right.”
“That's how I ended up here.”
Priya took one of Jo's bags without asking and led the way into the linen room. Mara stopped to shake out the wastebasket. Somebody had put an untouched little bottle of shampoo into it. She set it with the other supplies to sort, then washed her hands at the sink.
When she turned, Elena was in the doorway holding half a sandwich in a paper towel.
“Don't say it,” Mara said.
“I wasn't going to.”
“You were looking at me with lunch.”
Elena held the sandwich higher. “Would it help if I put it behind my back?”
Mara took it. Peanut butter, no jelly, the cut slanting the way Elena always cut bread when she had used the wrong knife and wanted to make it seem deliberate. Mara had left home without eating. She had not told anyone that.
“We've got ten minutes,” Elena said. “Before you promise them to somebody.”
The small meeting room was unbooked until three. A hotel rule allowed staff to use it for breaks when it wasn't needed, which meant that Simon could appear at any time to need it. Bev had put her lunch on a round table and taken the best chair, the one whose arms weren't loose. There was a green conference mint beside her sandwich. She had collected three more and lined them up like tablets.
“You can't eat all those,” Mara said.
“Good. Something to look forward to tomorrow.”
Priya sat, slipped off one shoe and inspected her sock. Jo left hers on and tipped her chair back until Mara put a hand against it.
“That one's bad.”
“I'm aware.”
“Not you. The chair.”
“Let me have a diagnosis on Monday.”
Elena sat next to Mara and pushed the rest of the sandwich between them. Through the frosted glass wall, somebody wheeled a delivery past, its shape widening and shrinking as it went.
“Two fourteen?” Bev asked.
“Towels and trash. They're turning the sign over when they leave.”
“When?”
“One of them says one.”
“I'll put him in charge.” Bev opened her lunch container. “Yesterday he thanked me for moving the furniture. I hadn't moved any furniture.”
“Maybe he had,” Elena said.
For a moment all five ate. It was their nicest sound, Mara thought: nobody calling, nobody asking for the thing beneath the other thing. Bev had pasta with some sort of orange sauce. Priya had rice and an egg, and Jo was eating the children's crackers from a bag that promised to be fun.
Mara pointed at it. “Were there no adult crackers?”
“These have legs. More nutrition.”
Elena reached across for one. Jo let her, then moved the bag away from Mara.
“You said adult crackers. Live with it.”
Bev put two folded dollars on the table.
“Before you forget.”
“I don't forget.” Mara took the money.
“You did in February.”
“I was having a tooth removed.”
“And we were all very supportive. Did it buy a ticket?”
Priya got her wallet out. Jo searched the pocket that held her phone, then the other one, producing a crumpled dollar and four quarters. Elena had her two dollars ready beneath her container.
The Saturday Club had been five women for twelve years, through three changes of hotel carpet, Jo having both children and Mara getting rid of a husband who took his good winter coat and left the broken vacuum. They did not meet outside work every Saturday. They did not all believe they would win. But every Saturday Mara bought the tickets, photographed them and put the picture in their group chat. It was harder to tell someone to get lost when you might owe her a million dollars by Sunday.
“How much?” Jo asked.
“One hundred and eighty-six,” Mara said.
“That's a stupid amount.”
“Million,” Bev said. “Don't let her stop you at a hundred and eighty-six.”
“First thing,” Jo said, “I'm buying pants nobody can put a tissue in except me.”
“I'll get someone to check your pockets,” Elena said.
“Now that's wealth.”
Priya shook her head. “First thing, I'm sleeping. In a bed I haven't had to get somebody else out of.”
“You could do that now,” Bev said.
“At the time I choose.”
“I want a balcony,” Bev said. “Not one of those ledges you stand on to smoke and regret your life. A real one. With room to put something ugly on it.”
“Will you be on it?” Elena asked.
Bev looked at her over the container. “You can visit on the condition you bring better jokes.”
“What are you doing, Mara?” Jo asked.
“Putting everybody somewhere decent.”
“You can just buy pants,” Jo told her. “It's allowed.”
“If I've got a hundred and eighty-six million dollars, you won't be living above that man with his leaf blower.”
“He doesn't have leaves,” Jo said. “That's what makes it a hobby.”
They laughed, including Elena, whose knee touched Mara's under the table. Mara leaned down for the quarter that had rolled to the edge of her shoe. When she sat up, Elena had moved her lunch container onto her lap.
“Thursday,” Elena said quietly.
Mara looked at her.
“You asked me to tell you an actual day. Thursday's an actual day.”
At the far end of the table Jo was describing the man's tiny yard. Bev wanted to know whether he owned a leaf, and Priya said she wasn't buying anyone a garden just so they could justify equipment.
“We'll talk after,” Mara said.
“I need to know if you can come.”
“I said I'd help.”
“At two. While Daniel's out.”
Mara folded the ticket money into the small zippered pocket of her bag. Elena watched her do it. She was not usually so particular about time. It was one of the things that made it pleasant to have her near: you could say soon and mean different things without a quarrel.
“I'll look,” Mara said. “I don't think I've got anything.”
“Don't look at what he's doing.”
The table fell quiet at the wrong moment, the way tables did when you had trusted them not to. Jo tipped the last of her crackers into Elena's paper towel. Priya put her shoe back on. Bev began clipping the lid onto her container with loud, precise snaps.
“I've got to get back,” Mara said.
“We all have.” Elena stood. She put the uneaten crust into her own container and held a hand out for Mara's paper towel. “Have you had enough?”
Mara gave it to her. “I could have brought my own.”
“You could do lots of things.”
At the door Elena waited while Mara found the key card she had put away with the money. Then she took the corner of Mara's collar and turned it down. It had been folded under all morning.
“There,” she said.
Mara caught her wrist for a moment, pressing the familiar small bones through the sleeve. “I'll come.”
“Two?”
“Two.”
Elena nodded and went ahead of her toward the stairs. Mara watched until she turned the corner, then got her phone out. Daniel had sent her a photograph of a washing-machine door lying on his workbench.
The message said: Found where the money goes.
In the seal beside it lay a necklace, two coins and something that looked unpleasantly alive.
Mara smiled. She started to type that she had a better question for him, then put the phone away before any words appeared. There were rooms to finish. She could call him on the way home.