Before Raoul, his replacement, arrived, he mopped the marble foyer, and diligently polished the brass tread on the door threshold. The day‐shift doorman changed into his smart grey uniform in the staff bathroom. The porter travelled to each floor in the service elevator, collecting the black sacks of trash and sorted recycling that people left out there. In the basement, the super checked his list to see who was on, who was away, who was having things delivered or taken away. He’d done this fifty weeks of each year for more than fifteen years. He and his wife lived in a small apartment at the back downstairs. They’d raised their boys there, though they were grown up and gone now. In apartment 7B, Maria Piscatella kissed her husband Earnest goodbye, chastely on the cheek, smoothing his hair down habitually as he left for work, and contemplated the breakfast dishes and another day. Her two children smiled down at her in their high‐school graduation outfits, from the 8′′ × 10′′ photographs that hung on the kitchen wall.
