It was just another Sunday night for Roberto Rivera-like all the countless other Sundays he checked into work, thermos under his arm, to work his way through the Midtown office building to clean up the detritus of the past week before everyone arrived back at work Monday morning. It wasn't a bad job-union pay plus benefits, and he could turn his mind off while he worked, dreaming of his native Guatemala, of the fishing boat he was going to buy in a couple of years. He imagined Carlita's face when he showed her all the money he earned in New York-nothing like this kind of job existed in his country. He did odd jobs around the building, too, and they sometimes paid him under the table for those-he was handy with mechanical things, and proud of his ability to learn to fix almost anything with a motor.
He plugged his earphones into his iPod-a Christmas gift from his eldest son, who was doing very well working at a fancy Upper East Side restaurant-slung his mop and cleaning utensils into the metal bucket on wheels, and took the elevator to the second floor. He liked to work his way up the building, starting on the lower floors and finishing in the office suites in the sky, where he would pause to look at the lights of the city below. It was sweet: his work finished, he would sit in one of the fancy chairs in the big corner office, and lean back with his feet up on the desk. Carefully he would unscrew the lid of his thermos and pour himself a steaming cup of cafe con leche, sweet and dark and hot, and sip it dreaming of the green forests and sandy white beaches of Guatemala.
He always started with the men's room in the back of the second floor, and he flipped through the songs on his iPod trying to find the right one to get him in the mood. He pushed open the door, pulled the bucket in after him, and stood, head down, fiddling with the dials.
Then he looked up. He could see a pair of legs protruding from one of the stalls-it looked as though someone was praying in front of the commode. His first thought was that it was a man being sick in one of the toilets.
"Hey, mister, you okay?" he called out, removing the earplugs from his ears.
His voice echoed through the tiled chamber and came back to him, and then there was nothing-nothing but utter stillness, complete silence.
The quality of the silence told Roberto something was very wrong. As he turned to go get help, his eye was caught by something on the bathroom mirror. Trembling now, he took a step into the room for a closer look. What he saw made him drop the mop handle. Leaving the bucket where it stood, he backed out of the doorway, his legs carrying him out of the room and down the hall as if they had a will of their own. Later, he had trouble even remembering making the phone call to 911 from the security desk in the lobby.