Security(2)

In the elevator, she presses the button for the eleventh floor. The glass doors slide shut, the nineteenth floor rises in front of her, and Tessa’s posture slackens, an exhale showing in her shoulders. She’s pretty, but not an obvious pretty. She tried modeling in college (“Because I’m a twig,” she said once), and the photographers told her she only looked right in three--quarter profile, due to a face that’s a little long, a chin that’s weak, and cheekbones that don’t protuberate. Tessa’s the kind of person who latches onto criticism thankfully and treats compliments like insults. It’s infuriating.

She makes a check mark on her clipboard as the eighteenth floor passes, and another as the seventeenth floor appears underneath her. The elevator is excruciatingly slow. This is because it is diamond shaped and made of glass. Every day at five o’clock, Tessa descends from the ballroom to the foyer, scrutinizing each floor for problems, and the process takes an hour. She usually walks the halls, but she doesn’t have time for that today. Her view from the elevator consists of the long hallway that links the north and south wings of guest rooms—the middle stem of a letter “I”—and this doubtlessly grates on her, to check off the premises as passing inspection without inspecting them thoroughly. The front sheet of her clipboard shows a diagram of Manderley’s layout with floors numbered one through twenty. The twentieth floor is shaded.

Tessa makes a check mark on her diagram for the sixteenth floor. She taps her boot impatiently. Before the fifteenth floor appears, she makes a check mark in its space. She pinches the bridge of her nose, her eyes falling shut and staying that way, which means when the fifteenth floor does appear, and Vivica in the bright white hallway spies Tessa in the elevator and waves, Tessa doesn’t see her. Vivica is carrying a purple bottle of carpet cleaner and a white cloth, which she flaps ineffectually until Tessa sinks out of sight. Vivica’s mouth draws down in disappointment. She walks toward the north end of the hall, turns left, and sinks to her knees in the entryway of Room 1516. She sprays the carpet cleaner on a round, red stain the size of a quarter and curses it in a flurry of Spanish. She thinks an electrician cut himself. This is not what happened.

The Killer is on the seventh floor. He’s washing his hands in Room 717, scrubbing vivid red from his nail beds and knuckles into the bathroom sink. He picks a fine, light hair from his shirt cuff, studies it with brief interest, and flicks it behind him. It lands on the white bath mat. The water in the sink is paling from a strange, swirled red orange to a shade that matches the gold leaf of the taps. A knife the length of an average man’s forearm is drying on a white towel beside the basket of assorted guest soaps.

Tessa opens her eyes at the fourteenth floor, nods, and makes a firm check mark.

She waits, and makes another for the twelfth floor.

There is no thirteenth floor; Charles Destin is extremely superstitious.

As the eleventh floor grows beneath her, Tessa winds a section of her thick, black hair into a twist at the nape of her neck. She does this many times throughout the day. She says her hair is too heavy to tie it all up, but her neck gets too hot if she leaves it all down. The elevator dings, the tone soothing, but when the doors slide open, she cringes at the scream of a drill. She follows the sound to the south end of the hallway and turns right, where the thickset lead electrician lets off his drill’s bulky trigger. He smiles, showing bad dental work.

“Dirtbag leave?” he says.

Tessa cocks an eyebrow. She would look disapproving, except her lips curl upward on one side.

The lead electrician laughs. “All right, sorry. Did Charles Xavier Destin the Third leave yet?”

“Imagine going through life with that name,” says Tessa, glancing around Room 1109 to make sure it’s pristine. “I think you’re doing fine, Pat.” She glances at a few flecks of drywall by his feet. “Not great, but fine.”

The lead electrician stoops. His meaty fingers look incongruous picking drywall out of carpet. “I thought Chucky wanted us to stay on till we finished. Actually, I think his words were, ‘You f*cks can stick around until your old ladies seal the f*ck up from waiting—’ ”

Tessa holds up a hand. “Yeah, I know. But we’re only using luxury suites for the party. That’s fourteen through seventeen, and they’re done. Right?”

“Yes. Yes, ma’am, floors fourteen through seventeen are good to go.”

“Then there’s no need for you guys to pull overtime, unless you want to.” She backs up a step, says, “Let me know,” and heads for the elevator.

“That’s an easy one,” the lead electrician says, following her. He unclips a walkie--talkie from the waistband of his jeans. “I’ll tell the guys we’ll knock off now, but only if you’re sure Chucky Destin won’t come yelling at you tomorrow.”

“Let me tell them,” Tessa says. “And Charles doesn’t yell at me. He knows better.”

Tessa smirks as she leaves the lead electrician laughing, satisfied she has undone the damage Destin inflicted when he threatened to fire the lead electrician and ruin his reputation by telling everyone who mattered anywhere that his company was a pathetic operation f*cking incapable of following a f*cking timetable and that he would have to relocate from California in order to ever work again. Destin made the same threat to every employee in the hotel. He does this whenever he visits. He is now very probably lounging in his limousine en route back to the city, on his cell phone to a business associate—Destin thinks he has friends, but he doesn’t—chatting about how scared employees are productive employees. There are apprentice electricians in Room 921, Room 525, Room 511, and Room 301, and Destin yelled at all of them. So Tessa visits all of them, one by one, and deploys her professional yet conspiratorial smile. She calls them each by their first names. She implies insults to Charles Destin without precisely insulting him. She is not above bending a shapely knee when the apprentice in Room 301 sulks that on top of everything, he lost his walkie--talkie today. Tessa relates a story about losing one shoe at a concert festival in college and hopping across the park like an idiot to buy flip--flops at Walgreens. She leaves him laughing, boards the elevator, and checks her watch when the third floor rises away.