Confession dictated in Wenzhounese and translated by us. The author does not read French.
My stall is twenty-two square meters, aisle C, second level, at the Cifa in Aubervilliers. Hers was twenty-six, directly across, and it got the morning light.
We sell the same thing, she and I: women's ready-to-wear, five pieces minimum per model per size, to the retailers who turn up at eight with rolling suitcases and leave by noon. Men from Marseille, Spaniards, a few Neapolitans, Romanians for the last three years. They pay cash, they sign nothing, they never come back if an order arrives late. A whole season is decided in six weeks of November and six weeks of May. You can make the year on four customers and lose it on one.
On November 14th, a customer from Marseille asked me, counting out his bills on my counter, whether it was true, what people were saying, about her. I took four seconds to answer. I'm still counting them.