“Does he know?”

“He knows I have it.”

“Does he know what’s in it?”

Nia looked at him.

“No.”

Walter smiled faintly.

“Keep it that way.”

Then Pierce appeared.

“The lounge is closed.”

Nia looked toward the nearly empty room.

“The lounge never closes.”

“Tonight it does.”

“What event?”

“Private.”

Pierce’s eyes went to Walter.

Then to Nia.

“You still keeping that little diary?”

She said nothing.

Pierce stepped closer.

“If one page reaches anybody outside this building, you won’t clean a room in this city again.”

Walter looked at Nia.

She looked down.

“I understand.”

Pierce walked away.

Walter waited.

“Why do you stay?”

Nia’s first reaction was defensive.

“Because jobs cost money to quit.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

She sighed.

“My mom had a stroke last spring.”

Walter’s face changed.

“She okay?”

“She couldn’t lift a spoon.”

Nia smiled.

“Now she walks to the kitchen by herself.”

“Good.”

“Therapy twice a week.”

“That can’t be cheap.”

“The hotel insurance pays for it.”

There it was.

The chain.

Not loyalty to Pierce.

Not love for the job.

Insurance.

Nia looked toward the staff corridor.

“That’s why I’m still here.”

Walter glanced toward the fireplace.

“Then why did you turn that fire back on for me?”

Nia seemed surprised by the question.

“It was cold.”

For her, that was enough.

For Walter, it meant everything.

Because forty years earlier, another Ashford housekeeper had answered the same question almost exactly the same way.

In 1978, Walter Ellison had been twenty-six.

New to Chicago.

Newly divorced.

Barely employed.

He worked the Ashford’s front door six nights a week.

Not as a manager.

Not as an executive.

As a doorman.

He carried bags.

Whistled for taxis.

Held umbrellas over people who rarely looked at his face.

The hotel manager at the time had one rule for certain employees.

They entered through the side.

Walter had never forgotten it.

Bellmen.

Dishwashers.

Housekeepers.

Many of them Black or Latino.

Guests entered beneath the brass canopy.

Workers used the alley.

Winter of 1984 nearly broke him.

One January night, Walter forgot his lunch.

By midnight he was dizzy.

A housekeeper named Ruby found him sitting outside near the staff entrance.

She was maybe fifty.

He never knew her last name.

Ruby opened her lunch.

Two sandwiches.

She broke one in half.

“You eat.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re lying.”

She handed it to him.

Years later Walter built his first business.

Then another.

Real estate came later.

Hotels later still.

He searched for Ruby once.

Never found her.

But he remembered that sandwich.

He remembered her sitting in the cold because employees like them were not supposed to eat in guest areas.