“The American” by Lara Markstein

A story by alum Lara Markstein (fiction, ’13) appears at AGNI Online:

I.

When I was eighteen, I lived in a small shared flat with an American and a German on an alley off Nguyen Thi Minh Khai in Saigon. That was the year I practiced waiting—for the monsoons to end, my money to run out, the coffee at cafes to muddy the sweetened condensed milk I drank by the glass between English classes I pretended to teach. Kirsten—the American—called herself a Communications Director for a nearby law firm. Her job consisted of poaching articles for the company newsletter and I imagined her boiling paragraphs until the words toughened in white, rubber strips. Hans was involved with elevators—the exact nature of his work was too difficult to understand. He had wanted to fly airplanes once, but after failing to certify four times, had packed a single army duffel and headed east, still weightless, as he would be for the rest of his life.

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