Francs

by Edith Pearlman

On an August morning I fetched up at the riverside park near the Place de l'Alma. A couple stood there—the man short and round, the woman tall and bulky. He wore a suit and tie, she a coral knit dress. As they edged closer I noticed that the woman's outfit was the exact color of the false bloom on her cheeks.

"Parlez-vous Français?" she inquired in a husky tone.

3 pages, ebook

First published December 19, 2001

About the author

Edith Pearlman, born in 1936, published her debut collection of stories in 1996, at age 60. Last year, she won The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Binocular Vision. She has published over 250 works of short fiction in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and online publications. Her work has won three O. Henry Prizes, the Drue Heinz Prize for Literature, and a Mary McCarthy Prize, among others. In 2011, Pearlman was the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, which puts her in the ranks of John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, and other luminaries.