'Blueberry Eyes' by Ann Kammerer

When you worked in an office, a woman down the hall told you her husband had blueberry eyes.

“They’re beautiful,” she said as she leaned into your cubicle. “But they don’t shine the way they used to.”

She sipped her coffee and sighed. Tapping her nails on the cup, she remarked that her husband didn’t look at her the same way anymore.

“I wonder if he’s looking at someone else,” she said. Her lips grew tight. “Sometimes he won’t even look me straight in the eye.”

A few weeks later, the woman told you how she had bought a yellow dress and a pair of three-inch spike heels. She said she had curled her hair with her old foam rollers and put on mascara and lipstick. Later, she went to the mall, just to walk up and down the concourse.

“I still have it,” she said as she described how she sat and crossed her legs on a bench near the sporting goods store. “I could tell by the way men looked at me before they went in to buy their hunting rifles.”