Maria Kovalenko stood on the forty-second floor and cleaned the glass. This was her job. This was what she had been doing for three years, ever since she came to New York from Donetsk with a suitcase full of nothing and a determination that she would not let the city break her.

The building was a tower of steel and glass in Queens, one of those places where the rent cost more than most people made in a year. Maria cleaned the windows for the people who lived there, the people who never looked down, the people who thought the city was beautiful from this height.

Raj Patel worked with her. He was from Mumbai, thirty-two years old, with two children back home and a wife who sent him videos of them every week. Raj talked about his children the way other men talked about sports or the weather—as if they were the most important thing in the world, which they were.

"Little Priya," Raj said to her that morning, showing her a video on his phone. "She is learning to dance. Look—" The phone showed a small girl in a bright sari, moving her arms and feet with the unselfconscious grace of a child who has not yet learned to be embarrassed by joy. "She will be a great dancer."

Maria watched the video. She nodded. "She is good."

"She is seven," Raj said. "In two years she will be performing at the local festival. I have saved the money for a teacher."

The money was the thing. Everything was about the money. Maria understood this the way a fish understands water—because it was everywhere and she had never thought about it until she couldn't escape it.

Viktor Petrov owned the building. He was Russian, forty-eight years old, with the lean, hard face of a man who had spent his life learning how to take things from other people and keep them. Before he came to America, he had worked for an organization that no one talked about, an organization that existed in the spaces between countries and laws and moralities.

He came to them on a Tuesday. It was raining, and the rain made the glass streak with watermarks that Maria had to clean before they became permanent.

"Raj," Viktor said. He spoke English with an accent that was careful, precise, the accent of a man who had learned to control his words the way a pianist controls his fingers. "You have taken something that does not belong to you."

Raj's face went pale. "I—"

"Three thousand dollars," Viktor said. "From my office. In the drawer."

"My mother," Raj said. The words came out in a rush, like a man who had been holding his breath for a long time and could not stop now. "She is sick. In Mumbai. The hospital—"

"Is not my problem," Viktor said. And then, because he was not entirely without mercy: "I have a game. A simple game. Scissors, paper, stone. Three rounds. Winner goes free. Loser—" He paused. "Loser jumps."

Maria was cleaning the window. She did not turn around. She kept cleaning, because cleaning was what she did, because the glass was dirty and dirt had to be removed, because this was the order of things.

"Maria," Raj said. His voice was small. "Maria, please."

Viktor tied Maria to a chair. He was efficient about it—rope around her wrists, rope around the chair legs, a piece of tape over her mouth that smelled of adhesive and something else. She could not speak, but she could see. And what she saw was worse than what she could not see.

The first round: Raj lost. Viktor smiled. "One jump remaining," he said.

Raj stood at the edge of the building. The wind was strong up here, strong enough to make him sway. He looked at Maria, and in his eyes she saw something that she would carry with her for the rest of her life—the look of a man who has made a decision and knows that the decision will destroy him.

"Again," Viktor said. "One more round. If Raj wins, he goes free. If he loses—"

Raj shook his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He showed it to Maria—a video of his wife, sitting in a hospital room, her face thin and grey, her eyes bright with the kind of courage that only exists in people who have nothing left to lose.

"I have to," Raj said. His voice was steady now, the voice of a man who has stopped fighting and started accepting. "I have to try."

The second round: Raj lost again.

Viktor nodded. "One jump," he said. "Final jump."

Raj stood at the edge. The wind was stronger now, or maybe it was just his body shaking. He looked at Maria one more time. And then he did something that Maria would never understand and would spend the rest of her life trying to understand.

He smiled.

It was not a happy smile. It was the smile of a man who has reached the end of something and found that the end was not as terrible as he had imagined.

He jumped.

Maria made a sound against the tape. It was not a scream. It was something worse than a scream—it was the sound of a woman who has watched something happen that she could not prevent and will never be able to forget.

Viktor untied her. He did it with the same efficiency he had used to tie her up, and when he was done, he handed her Raj's phone.

"His last message," he said. "To his wife. He sent it an hour ago."

Maria took the phone. Her hands were shaking. She opened the message and watched the video that Raj had recorded before the game. His wife was in the hospital bed, and she was smiling the way she had smiled in the video from that morning, and behind her, in the corner of the room, Priya was dancing.

"Tell her," Raj said in the video. "Tell her I loved her. Tell her I am sorry. Tell her—" He stopped. He closed his eyes. "Tell her the money is in the account. I put it there yesterday. It is enough for the treatment. It is enough for everything."

Maria turned off the phone. She looked at Viktor. Viktor looked back at her with his cold, careful eyes, and for a moment she thought he might say something—anything—but he did not. He turned and walked away, leaving her standing on the forty-second floor with a phone in her hand and a man's last message burning a hole in her pocket.

The police came. They asked questions. Maria answered them the way you answer questions when you do not want to answer them and do not know how to stop.

They found Raj's body. They called it a suicide. They were probably right.

Three weeks later, Maria was cleaning the windows of another building in Queens, a building that was slightly shorter and slightly less expensive, when she saw a man on the street below. He was wearing the same coat Raj had been wearing, and he had the same walk, the same slight stoop that came from years of carrying other people's burdens.

She dropped her squeegee. It fell from the forty-first floor and shattered on the sidewalk. The man looked up. His face was Raj's face. But when he smiled, it was not Raj's smile.

Maria stood on the ledge and watched him walk away. She did not jump. She had learned that lesson.