45

The woman was obese and she breathed through her mouth. Her blue floral tank top and matching blue shorts were cheap but they looked clean enough. Her hair was lank and dyed an improbable shade of yellow. On the back of her flabby upper left arm she had a small mountain of cancer. At least, Susie thought as she looked at the woman ahead of her in the grocery store checkout line, it was what cancer was supposed to look like.

It was summer and all the fashion magazines had devoted at least one article to spotting melanoma, in between the ads and fashion spreads with healthily tanned models. Susie remembered melanoma had irregular shape and color.

The fat lady's arm had a misshapen hill on top of a misshapen mountain that were both black and purply-black. The lumps were as irregular as they could get and Susie felt a little nauseous. Did this woman know the lumps were there? She was so fat, maybe she couldn't reach to feel or turn to see them in a mirror. Maybe she had no one else to tell her about them.

Maybe they weren't cancer, but just moles. Yes, just moles, Susie told herself, but still she wondered if it would be considered rude to mention them to the woman. Maybe it was too late already. Susie watched as the lady huffed and puffed her way to the exit, clinging to the grocery cart full of cans and boxes and plastic bottles. Susie vowed to remember sunscreen every day.