Pitted and yellow facial skin, almost glassy eyes, and no natural shadow at all.
She was ordering a Pepsi Coke, and for some reason I had the impression that everyone in the coffee house was thinking the very same thing I was thinking. (“What is wrong with this person ?”)
I know enough about medical science that the jaundiced look probably pointed towards a problem with this woman’s liver, but it didn’t explain the pitted skin. But then I realized — one or two seconds later — through the way she moved and the clothes she wore, that I had known this woman in a former life. And this meant I could solve the equation — the liver thing:
[I had heard through common friends that she had breast cancer, but no one ever told me how bad it really was. (And why would they ? — our paths divided a long time ago, and although we lived in the same town, we could not be further apart.)]
So the cancer had metastasized to the liver — and this meant her road was about to end. The glassy eyes told me the entire story: despair, because the shadows were getting very close.
Not selling the drama, but incapacitated to hide it.
I noticed in the course of the next hour or so that for a fighting person she had given up. She kept staring into empty space, as if she was waiting for something only she could feel approaching. She was becoming a painting — a still life, turned 2-dimensional and unable to move — and I was the only one in the room who could see it.
Having been married to someone does that to you —
Even if that someone is about to leave.