Sable looked torn to the point of breaking. Elaine put a hand on her arm. “Please. This is as much for me as it is for you.” She gestured outside. “Look, your cab’s here.” Seizing the doorman’s accessories, she pushed and bullied Sable out through the cold night and into the waiting taxi. Then she prepaid the driver and stood on the sidewalk, watching the yellow car pull away. Sable turned and waved through the rear window until the snowy night swallowed her up. The woman’s smile was the last thing Elaine saw, like the grin of the Cheshire cat before he disappeared.

As she returned to the lobby, Elaine felt the satisfying weight of her mission. Maybe Christmas was a disaster for her, but that was no reason for anyone else to give up on it. Christmas really meant something to women like Sable, who worked hard all year and deserved to spend time making their kids happy.

With a dramatic flourish, Elaine flung on the crimson and dove-gray cloak, fastening the ornate frog closures down the front. Turning to the gilt-framed lobby mirror, she donned a matching flat cap, angling the patent leather bill jauntily down over her eye. She looked ridiculous. An overgrown organ grinder’s monkey. What were the building managers thinking, making the doorman work in this getup?

They were thinking residents like the St. Jameses wanted it that way.

A movement outside caught her eye. A party of well-dressed couples emerged from a Town Car at the curb. Clients! She hurried to let them in, holding the brass-and-glass door wide for three couples. It was on the tip of her tongue to greet the Wyndhams, the Blantons and the McQuiggs, old friends of her parents. Over the years, she had attended school and summer camp with some of their kids.

They swept past her in a laughing, babbling mass. No one looked at Elaine. No one greeted her. She didn’t feel hurt, but mystified. Was it just this group of guests or did everyone treat the doorman this way? Everyone, she thought, answering her own question. In her world, the help was invisible, and friends were chosen for their social value as much as for their personal qualities.

After the next group swept through, she realized it was no fluke. They ignored her, too, even though she’d sent one couple a Tiffany bowl as a wedding present not so long ago. Then a man she recognized, a famous orchestra conductor who had come to dinner several times while she was growing up, alighted from a taxi. Certain he would be delighted to see her, she arranged her face in a smile. But his eyes barely flickered in her direction as he gave a curt, dismissive nod and headed for the elevator. These people, Elaine realized, treated the doorman with no more regard than a potted fern.