Paloma Laid Her Receipts Beside The Eye I Never Finished

"Let me get you another coffee," I said.

"You need to read the back first."

Paloma turned the last receipt over. There was a note in her neat writing: Asked for return date. Q said call after July 9.

"You wrote that at the desk?"

"In the parking lot. I didn't like leaving without a date."

I read the payment notice again. Delivered June 18. Custom fabrication complete. My name appeared as the maker.

"I need to check my records," I said.

"Will he let you?"

"I still work there. I still have duties to you."

She tapped her envelope three times.

"Then we begin carefully."

We made copies at her house. She kept the originals in a flat metal box where she stored old theater contracts. She signed a short request for her full clinic record, including bills, delivery slips, and notes about her device.

She also gave written permission for the clinic to discuss her fitting with me.

Before I left, she showed me the small pad where she had tracked each visit. One line included the $18 she had spent on a cab when Quentin changed her appointment. None of it looked like a case yet. It looked like a woman trying to plan her week around promises that kept moving.

"I can make my own request," she said. "I don't need you sneaking through drawers."

That mattered. Quentin would use any broken rule he could find.

On Monday, I placed her request in the clerk's tray and asked for a dated copy. Our clerk, Ellen, stamped it without looking up.

"He said no more of your custom appointments," she whispered.

"This is a record request."

"I know. I'm just telling you what he said."

I worked through six stock pieces. They came in fixed shapes and sizes, meant to be selected and adjusted. Stock eyes had honest uses. Calling one a custom eye did not make it fit a face it had never been shaped for.

At eleven, Paloma arrived for a check with Quentin. He swept into the hall with both arms spread.

"My leading lady!"

"I was the stage manager," she said. "We discussed that."

He laughed too loudly.

She asked me to join the visit. He could hardly refuse in front of Ellen.

"Tell us what you received," I said.

"A temporary piece from that tray. He said the custom one needed more work."

Quentin rolled his stool close to hers.

"Temporary is a loose word. Sometimes we modify a base extensively."

"Did you modify mine?"

"Of course."

"Then show me where I approved the wax fit."

His hands stopped moving.

I asked if she wanted me to compare her technical master with the current piece. She said yes. Ellen noted that permission in the chart.

I unlocked my cabinet and found box 241.

Its blue thread lay flat and clean. The band read May 22, wax trial, return for lid adjustment. My initials crossed the edge of the band onto the box.

Inside lay the unfinished pattern. A small ridge waited near the upper edge, where I had planned to lower it after our next trial. A white paper tab read NOT FOR PROCESSING.

"This is where we stopped," I said.

"I remember," Paloma said. "You said my upper lid needed more room."

Quentin reached toward the box.

I closed it.

"We should document the comparison first."

He stood up.

"A wax scrap proves nothing. I could have used a later pattern."

"Then the later pattern will have a number. And a processing entry."

I kept those logs in bound books. A permanent acrylic piece went through several steps after the wax trial. Someone had to invest the pattern, cure the acrylic, paint the iris, finish it, and record delivery.

No single missing note proved fraud. A wax trial could be redone. A stock piece could be altered. I knew that.

But Paloma's box showed that my work had stopped. Her receipt said the custom eye was pending. The bill said I had finished and delivered it.

Those three things could not all be true.

Paloma asked for a written answer within ten business days.

"You came to pick a fight," Quentin said.

"I came for the eye I paid for."

After she left, he shut the lab door.

"You're upsetting patients to cover your decline."

"Let me read the complaints."

"Those are management records."

"Then put your answer to her request in writing."

He stared at the cabinet key in my hand.

That evening, I opened the envelope holding my employment papers at home. The archive rider was there, with Quentin's large signature and the seller's initials on every page.

I had just laid it beside Paloma's copied receipt when an email from Quentin reached my phone.

The subject was Archive Disposal, and the deadline was Friday.