The suite had two bathrooms and a piano nobody in the family could play. They sent up a fruit basket the size of a dog, a bathrobe with his initials, and a note handwritten in blue ink with his name spelled right. Fifty-five years old, three trucks and a gravel yard out on Route 9, and a host who now called his cell directly.

The sale on the house closed that Thursday. His wife handled the signing from her sister's kitchen while he was upstairs in the robe, waiting on a callback. Danielle the host remembered his knee surgery and asked after it by name, twice. Nothing in the suite could be paid for, so he tipped the butler two hundred dollars, because that part was still his to decide.