(Fiction) Later, this is the moment Jude will return to again and again, when he stands two customers from the teller in a bank awash with fluorescent light and Thai chatter, looks down at the pair of hundred-dollar bills in his hand, and sees that one of them is darker than the other. He frowns, shifts his shoulder bag, and holds them up to look. On the right, an anaemic Franklin, worn smooth by dozens of thumbs; on the left, a chiaroscuro of wrinkles and jowls. Jude checks the dates: 2001, 2005. Okay then, he thinks, but he can’t stop looking.
The Counterfeit
David Yost | Asia Literary Review | September 13, 2011 | 7,907 words