The keeper was taking the sheet off the bed when he arrived. He had imagined the room waiting with nothing happening in it.
She stopped. He showed her the message. Eleven years, paid in full and current. The key was still in his hand.
“Of course,” she said. “You've come.”
She had been younger when he left. He could not remember how much younger. There was a little stool by the window which he did not recognize.
“I bring that,” she said. “My knees.”
The sixth stair still creaked. The coat for another climate still faced the wardrobe wall. He had brought a bag to take it away. After that, he thought, the rest might follow.
She offered to leave him alone. Instead he asked whether she had found any moths.
“One. Years ago.”
She showed him where she had sewn the lining. He could not find the repair until she put his finger on it.
Outside, across the narrow street, another woman was leaning out to unhook a sheet. Other windows were opening. Bedding appeared. The street looked inhabited.
The surveyor's latest notice said the windows were to stay shut pending inspection. Meral, care liaison, had called to say the room still needed airing.
“Which one do you follow?”
The keeper pushed the window wider.
“Meral asked me not to put her call on the form.”
“And did you?”
“Yes.”
The keeper had been airing his bed monthly at first. Then quarterly. Her husband had died in the interval. She said it while folding the sheet, as people mention a shop that has closed.
“Do you have him at home?”
“Until the ninth.”
He knew how to answer this. He asked whether the service was good.
“Very.”
They went on folding. Each held two corners. When they came together she put her fingers inside his to take the other edge.
“My son wants me to stop,” she said. “He says I have a perfectly good bed.”
On the stool was a book. Her son had marked pages for her.
“I told him I've read it,” she said. “He says to read it again.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“In the kitchen. I can't leave him sitting there while I'm in bed.”
She smoothed the fold along her forearm.
“He tells me to go. Very kindly. All night.”
The man looked at the stool again. On its seat was a flattened cushion in a flowered cover. The light reached it through the measured curtain gap.
“You could lie down when you come here.”
She held the clean sheet against herself.
“On this?”
He had meant an hour. A rest. Now he saw her taking off her shoes, closing the curtains differently. A cup beside the bed. The room would have afternoons he knew nothing about.
“Yes,” he said.
She did not thank him. She set the sheet down and began undoing one shoe. He turned to the wardrobe to give her time.
The coat was heavier than he remembered. He took it off its hanger and held it against himself. In the mirror he could see the keeper sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing the marks her stockings had left.
“When you get up,” he said, “would you make it as it was?”
“Of course.”
She reached for her shoe.
“Not now.”
She left the shoe on the floor. He put the coat in his bag.
In the file by the door, the expected date was still a Thursday in the second year. Inside the cover, the stamp: A PLACE IS HELD.
He asked her to renew the strips in spring. She said she always did.
He went downstairs with the coat. The sixth stair spoke. He stopped on the next one until he heard the bed settle.