Then I saw her face. It was so ancient it was cadaverous. Her lipstick was all over her chin, her eye shadow was in her eyebrows. It was marked with bruises and scratches, the thin, delicate neck too. Dried flecks of product in her congealed hair, as if she hadn’t bothered to rinse out the shampoo. The cardigan she wore was buttoned up wrong, in a mismatched fashion. Her linen pants had been put on inside out. Without looking at me, she walked straight inside, where she plunked down on the sofa, in front of the blaring television.
