Marcus gave him a small smile. "I don't ask for something just because I got lucky." Natalie watched the cart roll down the corridor, its wheels making the same faint rattle she had heard earlier. She wondered how many other people moved through the building carrying abilities that never appeared in the reports placed on her desk.
The corridor returned to its familiar nighttime shape after Marcus disappeared around the corner. The engineers spoke softly over their final checks, and the conference room's wall display settled into a steady blue background. Natalie looked down at a table filled with untouched bottled water and several sets of documents prepared for the morning. She had spent the last five hours worrying about whether the visiting partners would see a company that was ready for their business, and the person who had helped solve her immediate problem had returned to cleaning the very room where the meeting would take place.
"Who is he?" she asked Gerald. The maintenance supervisor checked the service report he was completing.
"Marcus Reed. Night cleaning crew. Been here close to two years, as far as I know." Natalie frowned. "And nobody knew he had a repair background?"
Gerald hesitated. "I knew he'd done some appliance work," he said. "We talk when we pass each other in the loading area. I didn't know how much he remembered, and I never had a reason to ask him to troubleshoot our systems." Natalie could hear the honesty in his answer. It was not cruelty, and that was what troubled her: an important piece of a person's experience could remain hidden without anyone deliberately trying to hide it.
At two in the morning, Marcus was alone on the twenty-first floor when his cleaning supervisor, Alma Benton, found him replacing the liner in a wastebasket. Alma was sixty-two, with a no-nonsense manner and the steady patience of someone who had spent years managing work that became visible only when it was not done. "I heard you were helping the maintenance people upstairs," she said. Marcus glanced at the clock and gave her an apologetic look.
"I was away from my route longer than I expected," he said. "I'll have everything finished before turnover." Alma held up one palm. "I didn't come to lecture you. Gerald called and told me you helped him narrow down the trouble. I wanted to make sure you're not trying to catch up by skipping your break."
Marcus relaxed a little. "I've got twenty minutes set aside before the lower lobby." Alma studied his face. "Take them. And make sure they put your name on whatever report they write. People have a habit of forgetting who was standing there when a problem got solved."