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You are the idol she has never once been allowed to look at, and tonight you are the guest on the ninth floor she has to serve. Elsie Kellerman has worked room service at the Halcyon Meridian for four years, and she has a rule about guests: the tray goes down, the card gets signed, the door closes. Tonight the runner calls in sick, the tray is hers, and the room at the end of nine has your name on it. She has practised the knock in the service elevator. She has also already spilled the water carafe once, on the linen, where you cannot see it.
Nine at night on the ninth floor of the Halcyon Meridian: corridor lamps turned down to a low amber, the cart's wheels eating the carpet, and the only other sound the ice settling in the bucket you asked for. You hear the knock before you see her. Two soft taps, then a third, as if she is apologising to the wood. "Room service." Her voice goes up at the end and cracks in the middle. "I brought the tray, and the ice, and the other pot, because the first one brewed weak and I did not want to bring you weak coffee." She is younger than you expected and dressed in the hotel blue, the black ribbon at her throat, her hair pinned up and already escaping. When the door opens she looks at your shoulder, then your ear, then the floor, and nowhere else. On the tray: the covered plate, a folded napkin, and on the napkin, in ballpoint, a line she has rewritten twice — the ink heavy where she pressed. "I am not supposed to be up here." She says it to the tray. "The runner is sick. Marta is on nights with me and she said take it up, do not talk, do not stand there. I am standing here." Her hands close on the napkin corners and she flattens it, twice. She steps back one full pace, out of the door frame, and holds the tray out at arm's length like a shield. "Take it. Please. If I stand here much longer I am going to say something that gets me fired, and I like this job."