Currency

Inequality. Influence. Fraud. Sabotage. These are the themes of great fiction and our modern economy. In this collection of short stories by some of today’s most scintillating writers, the rich get poorer and the poor get richer. Yeah, right! From the heartbreaking to the hilarious, here are eight instantly classic battles over currency, class, privilege - and social distance.

Yumi Parr is the new project coordinator of a Manhattan design agency. Set apart from her coworkers by their race, salaries, alma maters, perfect teeth, and waistbands, Yumi bears their grunt work. After one microaggression too many, she decides to implement a change. Either senior white employees with their mouthfuls of wokespeak will comply or Yumi will learn a difficult lesson about the realities of modern business culture.

With the pandemic looming, a listless social media editor accepts a job working for her former college friend Seraphina. A popular Instagram influencer, the subject of obsessive message-board surveillance, and a newly minted Karen of the Day, Seraphina is living out 2020 in the luxury of her “ultimate self-quarantine.” As the year escalates into upheaval and chaos, both women try, in increasingly secretive and complicated ways, to maintain the upper hand.

Keri and Paula are strangers with something rotten in common: the annoying Devlin brothers. Keri is an investor whose expertise is dismissed on the entrepreneurial reality show that shot the boys to fame. Paula is the boys’ accommodating neighbor who has suffered their ingratitude for years. The world is wide open for the Devlins after their overnight success. But for Keri and Paula? For all it’s worth, they’re coming face-to-face with the maddening business of being a woman.

A promising illustrator moves into adulthood contemplating all that he’s had to do for money - from the mundane to the grueling to the sexual. He also reflects on everything that has slipped away, including a boyfriend, close acquaintances, success, and allure. But sketch by sketch, he sometimes feels the enormity of all that is possible.

Andy Wofford, middle-aged father and English teacher at a third-tier private school, receives a surprising invitation for a drink from an old college classmate. Once awkward and forgettable, Michael Kinnick has become a famous, wealthy, and absurdly confident lifestyle guru. Of all the people who’d want to catch up, why Michael? After thirty divergent years, why now? Mildly apprehensive, Andy is also very curious.

Lonely, thanklessly courteous, and without the benefit of status, Gordon Schulmeister is only tolerated in his younger, hip, and gentrified Oakland neighborhood. Now, amid the tensions of a pandemic, the cantankerousness of his landlord, and dog sitting an intimidating pit bull, Gordon has never felt the target on his back so acutely. To keep his neighbors off his heels, with some hope and a sigh, Gordon might have to finally speak up.

Henry “Digger” Diller has never been anyone’s MVP - he’s the guy who gets called up from jayvee soccer when the star player gets hurt and who volunteers to take his crush’s best friend to the prom. But Digger is pretty happy with life in the middle of Warfield High’s pecking order. Then, he strikes up a friendship with Carlos, a new student from Honduras, who faces his own set of difficulties beyond the drama of adolescent life.

Alberto has been alone for the majority of his life, making his way as a restaurant worker and at the beck and call of wealthy and entitled Don Antonio. This time for hire, Alberto arrives at Antonio’s summer house prepared to attend to its regular maintenance. Instead he finds only Antonio’s heartbroken wife, Lola, and a task that could alter his loyalty to his employer forever.