fwriction

FiveChapters is an endless well of wonderful short story writing, a truth heightened by the announcement of FC’s move into book publishing: next year, both Emma Straub’s Other People We Married and (today’s SoTD author) Jess Row’s Nobody Ever Gets Lost will be published via FiveChapters Books.This makes me immensely giddy. 

For today, please enjoy this short story from Jess Row, a writer who has continued to dazzle since his The Train to Lo Wu broke onto the scene. “The World In Flames” is sure to stay with you:

“That’ll take days, he said. You shouldn’t have come down here. You don’t know anyone in Bangkok? This isn’t a place to be hanging around with no money.

He looked at her skeptically. Her fancy red-and-black backpack, her Israeli custom-made sandals, her peasant blouse, not nearly as stained and wrinkled as it should have been, but also, she thought, her blond curly hair, falling out of its bun, her smooth legs, relatively unscathed after two months of hard travel, turned the color of dark honey from the sun. Finally he shook his head, as if surrendering, not entirely unhappily, to the inevitable, and said, We have an extra room. My wife’s just gone upcountry. You’re welcome to stay overnight, if you want to.

That’s very kind, she said. Would it be too awkward? I don’t want to intrude.”