Archie leaned into the steaming water, letting it run over his head and down his back, rinsing the blood out of his hair. The shower was the size of his entire kitchen, with slick black granite walls, and a built-in granite bench on one side. Archie didn’t know what the bench was for—maybe some people got tired while they took showers and had to sit down. There were three polished nickel spigots. A large one, about the size of a hubcap, over the center of the shower, a hand spigot on a metal hose looped on the wall, and another spigot installed into the granite at knee level, that Archie could only imagine was for washing feet, although why someone would get into a shower just to wash their feet escaped him.

There was no shower curtain or glass divider—the shower had granite slabs on three sides and was entirely open to the rest of the room on the fourth. Rich people liked to let it all hang out, apparently. Somehow this seemed to work. So far, as far as Archie could see, no water had splashed beyond the imaginary shower border onto the marble bathroom floor.

Archie studied the expensive-looking products arrayed on the granite shelf at elbow level: shampoos and conditioners in fancy bottles, body washes, soap in a wrapper with French writing on it, and two black washcloths rolled up like burritos.

If this was the guest bathroom, Archie couldn’t help but wonder what the master bathrooms were like. Solid gold fixtures? The hardware alone looked like it cost more than what he made in a year. The Tudor theme of the rest of the house ended at the threshold—this bathroom was entirely twenty-first century, with automatic faucets, recessed lights, a marble floor, and a gas fireplace. It had taken Archie ten minutes to figure out how to operate the Japanese toilet seat.