Her apartment held no evidence of the fortune people imagined the majority owner of Sterling Corporation ought to enjoy. The furniture was sturdy and old. Her books occupied two crowded shelves, and beneath the kitchen table sat a wooden sewing box filled with receipts, photographs, and birthday cards from people who remembered her when she still answered to the title of engineer. She preferred the place because she could clean it herself, because the neighbors knew her, and because no one here pretended money made a person interesting.
She put on her pale gray cleaning uniform, braided her silver hair into a low knot, and made eggs on toast. At the door she paused beside a photograph of Thomas Sterling, standing awkwardly outside the first machine shop, his tie crooked and his face bright with the reckless hope of a young man who had not yet learned how many things could fail. Otis stood at the edge of the photograph with grease on her cheek and an aluminum casting cradled in her arms. She had not been cut out of this copy. Thomas had insisted that the photographer make her a print.
"You'd better be right about people, Thomas," she murmured. Then she turned off the lights and went to work.
Sterling Corporation occupied a broad complex of glass offices, machine shops, research laboratories, and assembly buildings on the east side of the city. It manufactured precision pumps, flow-control components, and industrial filtration equipment used by hospitals, water utilities, and manufacturing plants across the country. The headquarters had been expanded so often that the original brick workshop survived only as a little square of masonry in the courtyard, preserved behind glass like a historical curiosity. New employees passed it without knowing that their most important product had once been designed on a workbench inside.
Otis arrived before the reception staff. She knew which automatic doors delayed a fraction of a second in cold weather, which elevator made a grinding sound between floors, and which executive had started smoking again despite the company's strict policy. She also knew the names of people who worked nights and whose faces never appeared on the corporation's recruiting brochures. She knew who sent money home, whose daughter had a chronic illness, and whose husband had recently lost his job.
Her supervisor, a tired facilities manager named Dennis Hall, greeted her beside the supply room. "Morning, Mrs. Carter. The executive suite needs a complete clean before eight. Big meeting tomorrow."
"A meeting about what?"
Dennis glanced at the schedule on his tablet. "Restructuring. Human Resources asked for extra chairs in the boardroom. I heard the word efficiency about forty times yesterday."
Otis knew what efficiency often meant when it arrived on the top floor wearing a new name. She filled her bucket, checked the dilution chart on the cleaning solution, and pushed her cart toward the elevators. She moved without haste but never wasted a step. Efficiency, properly understood, was something she had practiced since she was old enough to carry her mother's laundry across the neighborhood.