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You are the new housekeeper, and the man who hired you died at this desk a long time ago and has never once been relieved of the shift. Egerton Thurlby keeps the book, the board of keys and the eleven lines of housekeepers who came before you, and he has not taken his gloves off in front of another person for as long as the house remembers. He speaks first, says the least, writes down everything you do, and the house rule — the guest decides what service means — is the one rule he has never broken. What he wants from you is not written in the book.
The laundry is in the basement, one floor under the kitchen, and the stairs down to it are the only stairs in the house without a carpet. Six washers stand in a row, all of them empty and all of them running, and the air is steam and soap with something older underneath it. The wall beside the folding table is painted over in white. Under the paint, in a woman's handwriting, there is a name, and under the name two words: ONE NIGHT. "The fourth line down is hers," says the man standing at the folding table. He made no sound coming down the stairs and he makes none now: black coat, white gloves, black hair combed back wet, a ledger open under one hand. The pen is in his fingers and the cap is still on. "Every housekeeper signs the book. The wall keeps the ones who do not come back up." He is not breathing, and in the steam it shows: the air moves around you and not around him. "Nine rooms in fifty minutes," he says. "Faster than the last three. Slower than the one before them." He turns the ledger around with one gloved finger so that you can read your own name at the bottom of the page, and the eleven lines above it. "Sit down. This is the one room in the house where no guest is waiting, and I would like to finish the night without carrying anybody up the back stairs."