Free The Crooked Maid by Dan Vyleta

fabric.
    “Better leave it where it is, Eva. I’m not sure I can wrap it up as nice.”
    At the mention of her name she flinched, cast off the tenderness. Her hands grabbed the hat, yanked it out by crown and brim, spilled the wrapping to the ground. She snapped it onto her head as though it were a bathing cap, pulled it low on her brow; stood in front of him, planting her hands on those uneven hips, daring him to tell her off.
    “So?” she asked. “How do I look?”
    “You’re not wearing it right.”
    He got up, stepped over to her, reached with outstretched fingers for her head. She recoiled despite herself, then forced her face back into range. He pulled up the hat, set it down again, more lightly and further back upon her head; arranged the brim at some slight angle; reached for a strand of hair that he sought to tuck behind her ear. She slapped away his hand then let him do it, her stare belligerent, flinching every time he touched her skin. Another tuck and she pushed him away, stood scowling, waiting for his verdict.
    He struggled for a phrase. “Not bad,” he said at last. “It’s just that it’s not your colour. It asks for darker hair.” And then, moved by a sudden recollection: “There was a woman on the train who could have worn it. Thick auburn curls.” He caught himself smiling, bit his lip. “Do you think Mama will like it?”
    “She’s too old for it.”
    “We better put it back.”
    Eva took off the hat and seemed prepared to surrender it, then replaced it on her head, trying to imitate the adjustments he had taught her. He opened his mouth to protest, but a noise cut him short. It was the front door bell. The ringing was continuous and shrill.
    “That’ll be the taxi,” said the girl. “You better go down.”
    “A taxi going where?”
    “The clinic. It’s gone four. Visiting hours will be over by five. I thought you would like to see your father.” There was something nasty to her smile.
    “Gone four? I slept through the whole day!” Robert’s stomach grumbled. “And I haven’t even had lunch.”
    He cast around, collected his waistcoat, his jacket, his socks and shoes. It did not even occur to him to resist her will and refuse the taxi. All he wanted to know was: “What time is dinner?”
    “Do you think I will cook it for you? You think your mama will?”
    Robert looked over to her, standing at the centre of his room, with her arms locked wrist to elbow, wringing cleavage from her lean and narrow chest; the toy plane gunning for the crimson crown of captured hat. Robert found it easy to forgive her manners; he had never learned to hold a grudge.
    “You’re angry,” he said. “Life’s been—”
    “Fuck you,” she cut him short, and slammed the door on her way out.
    2.
    Her name was Dorfer. The boy walked into the clinic a little after four and asked her if she could lend him the money for his taxi. He asked her shyly, explaining it all with a good deal of detail, how his mother had taken his wallet and how “Eva” had called the taxi, and in any case the fare was not much.
    “Please,” he said. “I’ll come by tomorrow and pay you back.”
    What struck her most was the pale, freckled agitation of his face: he did not want to be thought a cheat. When he wrote down his address and named the paltry sum, she acquiesced at last, went outside and paid the surly driver. She did not tip and watched the man drive off: shallow puddles standing in the cobbled courtyard, the smell of pine trees blowing in the wind.
    Back inside, the boy had peeled out of his coat and stood rubbing his wet footprints into the hallway rug. He stopped at once when she approached him and made a beeline for her chair. It was her thirty-second year of nursing. She was overweight and tired and fifty-one years old.
    “It’s so quiet here,” said the boy, looking past the reception desk, down the corridor that led to the patients’ rooms.
    “We are a private clinic. Eighteen beds. Not like