Gloria waited with her pushcart outside Room 13. She ran through her Hail Mary’s. A click from the other side woke her from her reverie.

The men in the doorway smiled. They looked tired. The bags under their eyes might have made Gloria think them dead.

But she knew better.

Dust—gun-metal grey with that sulfur stench—lay across the comforter shaped like a man. Fingers reaching from hands, limbs spread, as though the dust man had fallen in surprise.

They left her to her work. Gloria put the earbuds in and hit “play.” It was time to clean.