Page 3 of Don't Tell

He looks at me from up to down. "You could smile more."

I smile and think about slamming my cart into his ribs. That makes me feel a lot better. I let out a breath just as he slams the door in my face.

In the elevator, I let the smile go. The doors are brushed steel. The woman looking back is in a housekeeping uniform with her dark hair in a low knot and her hands wrapped around a tray she does not remember picking up. She stares right through me.

Eight-fourteen is a different humiliation. The woman who answers is on her phone and stays on it. She waves me in without looking. She paces from the window to the bar and back again, narrating someone else's failure to a person on the other end of the line. For fifteen minutes, I’m stripping her bed and replacing her towels. She does not look at my face. Six days of cleaning the suite, and she never has.

When I finish, I stand by the door.

"Anything else, ma'am?"

She waves a hand without turning.

Back at the service desk, Roger has his arms folded across his chest and his mouth pressed into a thin line. "Six-twelve called again. The replacement breakfast was late. You will go back personally. You will apologize again. We don't have carelessgirls on this floor. We don't keep replaceable staff. You should be grateful you have this position."

He says it loud enough that two passing housekeepers turn their heads and immediately turn them back. Carmen, restocking her cart 5 ft. away, makes a small sound through her nose. Roger does not catch it.

I take the second tray.

When I knock on six-twelve again, the man who opens the door is mid-sentence to his wife. He does not stop. He takes the tray. As I'm turning away, he says, "I'll be reviewing your service on the website."

"Of course, sir."

The elevator down is empty. I press my back to the wall and close my eyes for the four floors it takes to reach the basement. I don't cry. I don't have the time.

My pager goes off as I push the cart out of the elevator.

Spill — underground level 2. Section C.

I sigh. My stomach grumbles angrily.Right. Food. I’ll take a break after this disaster to eat.I ride the elevator down to the garage. It smells like cold concrete and old gasoline. The smell and the aching hunger send a wave of dizziness through me. I push it aside and keep moving.

The fluorescents' sick flicker makes everything look ill. I crouch with the rag and a bottle of degreaser beside a navy sedan and work a smear of mustard out of the seal between two slabs of poured floor. It takes seven minutes.

Finally, I rise to my feet. My stomach grumbles again. I push my cart back through the narrow lane between the cars.

The mop handle catches. The sound is small, but loud enough to make my ears ring.

Oh Lord, please, no.

The handle drags 4 in. along the rear quarter panel before I can pull the cart back, and when I lean down to look, there is a hairline scratch the length of a fingernail in the paint.

I stand very still in the cold. My pager goes off again.

Jenkins! Service office. Now.

Roger is at his desk with the monitor turned toward me before I have closed the door behind me. The screen is paused on a single grainy frame. Me. Cart. The mop handle is making contact with the side of a black Aston Martin.

I swallow. I’m screwed.

"Tell me what I saw, Suzanne."

"You already know."

"I want to hear you say it."

He has the pen behind his ear and his mouth set, and I can see he has been waiting for this since he came on shift.

"I scratched a guest's car."