F or twenty years, Gus and Lil Kramer, now in their early seventies, had been the superintendents of a four-story apartment building on West End Avenue that the owner, Derek Olsen, had renovated for student housing. As Olsen explained when he hired them, “Look, college kids, smart or dumb, are basically slobs. They’ll have boxes of pizza piled up in the kitchen. They’ll amass enough empty beer cans to float a battleship. They’ll drop their dirty clothes and wet towels on the floor. We don’t care. They all move out when they graduate.

“My point,” he had continued, “is that I can raise the rent as much as I want, but only as long as the common areas look sharp. I expect you two to keep the lobby and hallways looking like Fifth Avenue digs. I want the heat and the air-conditioning always working, any plumbing problems fixed on the double, the sidewalk swept every day. I want a quick paint job when a space is vacated. When the new arrivals come with their parents to check out the place, I want all of them to be impressed.”

For twenty years the Kramers had faithfully followed Olsen’s instructions, and the building where they worked was known as upscale student housing. All the students who passed through it were fortunate enough to have parents with deep pockets. A number of those parents made separate arrangements for the Kramers to regularly clean the lodgings of their offspring.

The Kramers had celebrated a Mother’s Day brunch at Tavern on the Green with their daughter, Winifred, and her husband, Perry. Unfortunately, the conversation had been almost completely a monologue from Winifred, urging them to quit their jobs and retire to their cottage in Pennsylvania. This was a monologue they’d heard before, one that always ended with the refrain, “Mom and Dad, I hate to think of you two sweeping and mopping and vacuuming after those kids.”

Lil Kramer had long since learned to say, “You may be right, dear. I’ll think about it.”