She tried reading magazines, but the faces on the covers made her uncomfortable. They winked suggestively and made kissing motions, and then looked sullen and threatening when she put them aside unopened.
"Does he usually take this long?" she asked the receptionist. "I don't remember it taking this long before. The last time." Her lacquered nails flew to her lips. "You don't suppose — you don't suppose he found something wrong, do you?"
The receptionist rolled his eyes and focused his attention on his own magazine, in which the faces were all comfortingly sarcastic. They sympathized with him.
"It was out of sorts all last week — tired, you know, and getting wrinkled from all the . . . all the use. But that's normal, isn't it? I just thought, it's about time for a check-up, a regular check-up. It didn't occur to me . . ."
A magazine bared its teeth at her; she put her purse on top of it.
"Oh, goodness, what if it's been torn? He can fix that sort of thing, can't he? I mean, can't he? Will our insurance cover it?"
"Here we are," said the doctor, striding into the waiting room.
The woman stood. "Oh — you're done!"
"We're done."
"How is it?"
"It's just fine," he said. "A bit creased, is all. Nothing a good scrubbing couldn't take care of." He held out the square of thin white fabric, still slightly damp, pinching it delicately at the corners.
The woman spread her hands beneath it and lifted it slightly. She could just make out its face — old, worn, faded — shadowy in the cloth's folds. Her fingers were clearly visible through the shroud.
"Oh, you poor thing," she cooed. The cloth blinked.
"It's got a lot of mileage left yet," said the doctor.
She folded it carefully, lovingly, and slipped it into an inside pocket of her coat. "What a relief," she sighed. "Thank you ever so much. And here —" she opened her purse and dug through a jumbled assortment of miniature clocks, eventually selecting a Morbier, a Dutch Friesen, three cuckoos, one sculpted art nouveau piece, and a somewhat leaky clepsydra. She dropped them into the doctor's upturned palm. He started to poke through them with his index finger, but she pressed them into his hand.
"Please," she said, "keep the change."
The doctor smiled and pocketed the clocks. Then he waved as she left the office.
"Nice lady," he remarked to his receptionist, who ignored him.
Outside, the woman carefully affixed her mask, smoothing the corners back over her temples. Inside her coat, she could feel the cloth's faint breath against her breast, silky and warm, and it was a comfort to her as she made her way out into the labyrinth.
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