THE SIGN ON THE DOOR posted a discreet warning that “authorized personnel only” were allowed beyond that point. Oliver Miles certainly qualified. He even had the uniform to prove it, along with a badge and the five-digit security code. Despite all that, he still felt compelled to knock as he punched the required buttons and swung the door open. Seeing her there behind the desk embarrassed Oliver for some reason. He realized he didn’t really want to apologize for accidentally accusing Mattie. What he wanted was to get it over with.
But she didn’t look up. Instead, she stared at the long ribbon of adding machine tape in disbelief. The only sound came from the pencil she drummed between her teeth. The resulting echo wafted up through the open-air ceiling and repeated softly overhead like gossip. Oliver was about to clear his throat when Mattie blinked once, clamped her teeth around the pencil, and went back to work.
The sound registered before the image.
In perfect synchronicity, Mattie’s hands—both of them—assaulted the keys of two different adding machines. The fingers of her left hand mirrored those on her right as the machines coughed up a steady stream of tickertape. Mattie’s gaze remained fixed on a handwritten ledger propped between the dueling calculators. When the clattering finally subsided, her eyes flitted between the last line of the ledger and the printouts on either side. She blinked again and grinned at her handiwork. That’s when she noticed Oliver standing by her desk and screamed.
“Hey, sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Startled, not scared.” Mattie gripped the edge of the desk with both hands, then took two measured breaths before speaking again. “Ever hear of knocking?”
“I did knock.”
“Oh …” Mattie’s expression blanked, as if she was rewinding a videotape of Oliver’s entrance. “I suppose you did. Sorry, didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“It’s okay. I’ll try to remember to knock louder next time.”
“Thanks,” she said. “And you can put your arms down now.”
Oliver was surprised to discover his hands suspended in front of him, palms out, as if feeling his way in the dark. He motioned toward the adding machines as he lowered his arms. “That’s some trick.”
“Oh, that? It’s nothing.” A pink stain bloomed along her neckline, then migrated north until her cheeks filled with color. “Just something I learned to do on a dare. I’m actually out of practice.”
“Could have fooled me.”
Mattie nodded. Or maybe she shrugged; it was hard to tell. Finally, she said, “Didn’t your mother teach you not to stare?”
“I’m sure she tried. But somewhere between potty training and running with scissors, I was diagnosed with Attention Surplus Disorder. After months of physical therapy and countless vials of designer drugs, I was pronounced incurable.”
Mattie tilted her head and chewed on her bottom lip, causing Oliver’s affable grin to wilt, then trail off altogether. She stared back at him, adamantly not blinking.
Finally he said, “That was a joke.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But you forgot to laugh.”
“Some jokes are not quite as funny as they sound.”
“But … you admit it was a little funny, right?”
“If it will make you feel better, sure.”
“But you’re still not laughing.”
“Neither are you,” she said. “But you are still staring.”
Oliver tried again to avert his eyes, but they kept roaming back to the keys on the adding machines, replaying the image in his mind.
“And please don’t ask me to do it again. It’s not some carnival act.”
“What do you call it then?”
“A simple system of checks and balances. It’s standard practice to keep adding columns until you come up with the same answer twice. I just figured it would be faster if I used both hands.”
“The last auditor used this cool new device. I think it’s called a computer.”
“That was another joke, right?”
“Yeah, but I will admit it lacked some of the more humorous elements typically found in a lot of other jokes.”
“You seem to really like jokes,” she said.
“I’m kind of a comedian,” he said. “At least when I’m not here serving and protecting.”
“I gathered that. And you know, there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Who said I was ashamed?”
“Never mind,” she said, allowing her eyes to drift back to her work. “Anyhow, I’ll eventually log all this into Excel and email it to the comptroller. There’s just something gratifying about doing it the old-fashioned way. Besides, what else am I supposed to do all night?”
“You could help me catch robbers.”
“Is that what this is all about?”
“What what’s about?”
“Well, you finally stopped staring. But now you’re just standing there, trying way too hard to look casual.”
“Okay, well I did want to give you a heads-up about Mr. Sherman. You may have noticed he has a bit of a paranoid streak when it comes to the hotel.”
“More like a mental disorder.”
Oliver met her eyes, prepared to share a conspiratorial laugh at their boss’s expense. But apparently she wasn’t kidding.
“Anyway,” he said, “you can expect an onslaught of questions about the other night. He’s grilled me three times already. And if he detects any lack of consistency in our stories he’ll turn it into an inquisition.”
“You actually think he’ll suspect one of us of doing something wrong?”
“It’s not personal. He suspects everybody.”
“So is that what happened to the last girl?”
“Not exactly. Gretchen was fired for sleeping.”
“That’s ridiculous. All night auditors nod off occasionally. It’s impossible not to. It’s in the job description.”
“But not every night auditor changes into silky jammies and makes a pallet on the floor.”
“No way.”
Mattie did finally relinquish a guarded smile, but she kept it hidden behind a loose fist. And that’s when Oliver realized he’d been comparing Mattie to the last night auditor, unfairly it seemed. Gretchen was an open book, and very likely the moodiest person Oliver had ever met, including his mother. She was petty, vindictive, and a ruthless small talker, which primarily focused in mind-numbing detail on her boyfriend whom she seemed to despise. Mattie was none of these things. She seemed smart, deceptively witty. But somehow reserved too, like an unposed question.
“Every night about two a.m. Gretchen plugged in her white-noise maker and bedded down with her hypoallergenic pillow, Wonder Woman sleeping bag, and stuffed monkey.”
“And you actually witnessed all this?”
“I was her alarm clock,” Oliver said. “Which is kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“You want to be my alarm clock?”
“What I had in mind was establishing a routine of some sort. Since there’s just the two of us here and all.”
“Along with eight floors full of hotel guests,” she said. “Not to mention the ghost of Old Man Harrington.”
“Which, as you know, you’re not supposed to talk about.”
“Sherman does,” Mattie said “He mentions it every chance he gets.”
“Yeah, but he’s the boss.”
“So was that part of your routine with Gretchen?” Mattie said. “Not talking about ghosts?”
“Well, she was sort of fired for that too.”
“Too?”
“Gretchen was fired a lot. It just took awhile to make it stick. Rumor has it that when Sherman refused to give her a raise, Gretchen threatened to sell her own version of the story to the tabloids. She claimed the gho—um, spirit of Old Man Harrington got her pregnant.”
“You’re not joking now, are you?”
“I wish,” Oliver said. “Anyway, we will need some kind of system covering each other’s posts, you know, for when nature calls—potty breaks, midnight raids on the hotel kitchen, smoke breaks if you need them. Especially after what happened in 218.”
Mattie pursed her lips and squinted. “Did you just say ‘potty breaks’?”
“I guess I did. But that’s Gretchen’s fault. It’s what she always called them.”
Mattie smiled again, less guarded this time.
“Anyway,” he said. “The quickest way to find me if you need me is the walkie-talkie. You don’t even have to talk into it. Just press the send button a couple of times—it makes this awful static—and I’ll come watch the desk for you.”
“Sounds simple enough. Anything else?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“I thought I was.”
Mattie did that smile again, the one that unfolded in stages. “I forgive you, Oliver.”
It took a few seconds for the sound to register, as if Mattie had suddenly started speaking in Chinese. “Oh, right. That’s kind of what I came in here for, to apologize, you know, for the other night.”
“I know.”
Oliver wanted to ask how she could possibly know that. Instead he simply said, “Well, I am sorry if it sounded like I was accusing you.”
“Oh, please. Don’t worry about that. I’m sure it won’t be the last time.”