Chapter 5
After she left, the break room felt too quiet.
He sat across from me again and pulled the chair closer. He didn't bring out the terminal this time. He just looked at me, really looked, and I realized he was trying to decide if I was scared of losing my job or scared of something else.
"You told me she handed you the paper at the elevator," he said. "Tell me exactly what happened. Slow."
I closed my eyes for a second and tried to go back to Tuesday. I had been so tired already, even then. The first night hadn't happened yet. I had finished my rooms, wiped down the lobby, and I was pushing the cleaning cart toward the service elevator to clock out. The marble table in LOCATION_X had just been polished. I remembered the smell of the lemon cleaner.
"She came over with the sheet," I said. "She had the white cloth in her other hand. She handed me the cloth too and said to leave it on the table, that someone from the front would get it."
He frowned. "She gave you the cloth?"
I nodded and looked down at OBJECT_2, still folded under my arm where he'd let me keep it. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it. The same white cloth, now a little wrinkled from being pressed under my head while I slept.
"She said, 'Put this over the corner so it doesn't get dusty,'" I said. The words came back clearer now. "And then she said, 'We had a call-out, can you cover tonight? Olivia already approved it, it's on the sheet.' The yellow was already there. At 15:00 and 15:07."
"And you said yes," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I needed the hours," I admitted. My throat was dry. "Rent went up in March. I didn't think I could say no."
He didn't write that down right away. He just let the silence sit for a breath.
"Did anyone else talk to you about the hours?" he asked. "Anyone besides her?"
I thought. Wednesday morning, I'd come in at seven after getting maybe four hours of sleep on the bus. The assistant scheduler, a younger man named Jonah who sat at the desk near the supply closet, had been printing something when I passed. He'd called out, "Maya, you're back on tonight, right? Supervisor said you covered." I had just nodded. I was too tired to argue.
"Jonah," I said slowly. "He said I was back on. But he didn't give me the paper. She did."
He wrote the name down. Jonah.
"Jonah doesn't have approval codes," he said, almost to himself. "But he does make the add-on sheet."
He stood and went to the door and spoke quietly to the bodyguard outside. I heard him say, "Bring Jonah. Don't bring the supervisor."
While we waited, he poured me more water from the cooler. My hands were shaking a little, and the paper cup rattled against my teeth when I drank.
Jonah came in a minute later, looking nervous, hands in his pockets. He was maybe twenty-four, thin, in a gray polo that the office staff wore. He glanced at me, then at the schedule on the table.
"Sir?" he said.
He showed Jonah the add-on sheet. The one with the loopy handwriting.
"Did you write this?" he asked.
Jonah leaned in, squinted, then shook his head quickly.
"No, sir. That's not mine. Mine's block letters. This is cursive."
"Did you see who did?"
Jonah swallowed. He looked at me again, then away.
"I printed the blank," he said. "I left it on the supervisor's desk. When I came back, it was filled and already in the drop box for payroll. I just scanned it."
He looked directly at Maya this time, apologetic.
"I thought you wanted the shifts. It had your name on it."
The central man folded that add-on sheet in half and slipped it into the same stack as my schedule. His movements were slow, deliberate.
"So the supervisor had the blank, and then it was filled," he said. He turned to me. "Maya, thank you. That's enough for now."
He told Jonah to wait outside as well, and Jonah left quickly, relieved to be out of the room. When the door closed again, he turned back to me.
"You were handed a cloth to cover a table that had just been cleaned," he said quietly. "And then a schedule that was already approved with a code from someone in New York. Do you see why I stopped them from waking you?"
I nodded. I did. If they'd shaken me awake and sent me home, the papers would have been filed and no one would have looked twice.
May you like
He picked up the stack.
"Stay here a little longer," he said. "I'm going to pull the sign-up sheet she says you volunteered on."
