At 11:47 p.m., Marcus Reed pushed his cleaning cart through the nearly empty lobby of Meridian Tower, steering the left wheel around a narrow seam in the marble floor that caught it every night.
He knew the seam, the hum of the ventilation above the reception desk, and the moment the security monitors changed from their evening screens to the overnight display.
By daylight, the tower belonged to hurried executives, visitors carrying leather portfolios, and assistants who could cross the lobby without looking up from their phones. At night, it belonged to the small crew of people who kept the place usable after everyone else had gone home.
Marcus stopped beside the bank of elevators and adjusted the heavy plastic liner inside his cart. He was thirty-eight, a tall Black man with broad hands, closely cropped hair, and the fatigue of someone who was always calculating how many hours remained before his next obligation. His uniform was a dark blue work shirt with the name of the building's cleaning contractor stitched over the pocket. The shirt was clean, but its collar had softened from almost two years of repeated washing.
He had never imagined spending his late thirties polishing glass and emptying wastebaskets in an office tower. He had once known the satisfaction of taking apart a stubborn machine, locating a defect, and returning it to a customer who had been told that replacement was the only sensible option. Life had not presented him with a neat choice between those jobs, however. It had presented him with an eight-year-old daughter, an unpredictable former employer, and the necessity of getting home before the school bus came.
His phone vibrated against his hip as he reached the elevator. The message on the screen was from Emma, who was supposed to be asleep at home under the watchful eye of their neighbor, Mrs. Alvarez. "Dad, remember my science presentation tomorrow. You promised."
Marcus smiled and leaned his elbow against the cart while he typed his reply. "I remember. I'll be there. Good luck, kiddo. Now get some sleep."
Three dots appeared almost immediately. "I can't sleep. What if the lights on my model don't work?" He could picture her sitting upright in bed with the small cardboard house she had constructed for a class presentation about energy and emergency lighting. The project was made from recycled boxes, two little battery-powered bulbs, and more tape than its design strictly required.
"Then you'll explain what you learned when you tested it," Marcus wrote. "The whole point isn't to pretend nothing can go wrong." Her reply came a moment later: "You say that about everything." He laughed softly, sent a picture of a sleepy face, and put his phone away before the elevator doors opened.