Chapter 2
The midnight count never began.
Rafael came out of the service corridor at ten past twelve with Bianca half a step behind him and thirty-one captains already standing, because in this building you stand when the floor changes hands and every one of them had felt it change an hour ago.
"For the rest of the season," he said, "the floor clears through Bianca."
Nobody moved. Ortega looked at me. Sofia looked at me. Old Marisol, who taught me to fold a napkin when I was six years old and who carried my father down the service stairs the night his heart went, looked at the carpet.
"Rafael." I said his name the way you say a name to a man across a room. "Say that again with my father's name in it."
"Your father is why I'm saying it."
He said it kindly. That is the part I want written down. He said it the way you tell a woman her coat is on the wrong hook.
"Eight years I have watched you carry this place on your back," he said. "Let somebody else hold it for one season."
Then he waited, and I understood that he was not asking, and I understood something worse, which is that he had picked the one hour of the year when every captain in this hotel was standing in the same room in a clean jacket.
Marisol went first. Not because she wanted to. Because somebody had to break the silence and she has been breaking silences here since 1989, and she said, "Yes, señor," to him and not to me.
After her it was easy for the rest of them.
Sofia found me in the linen alcove where the carts come through.
"Elena. Tell me what to do and I'll do it."
Through the gap in the doors I could see Bianca standing where I stand, with her hands behind her back, looking up at the board the way I look up at the board.
"Do what he said."
"Elena — "
"They have families. Do what he said."
Sofia did not move for a second. Then she went out and did what he said, and I stood in the alcove with the smell of hot linen and I counted to twenty before I followed her, because twenty is how long it takes for a face to come back.