THE PLOT: In a bistro in Paris a young woman (A) tells her three girlfriends (B, C, and D) about the affair she had with an American tourist, who returned home promising to write, and hasn't. It's been over two weeks; something must have happened to him. (She has just learned she is carrying his child, but she doesn't tell her friends.) B tells her to call him; C to e-mail him; D to forget all about him. Enter a fat American couple; each of them has a different speech impediment. They order food. The man chokes. A performs the Heimlich maneuver on him, and saves his life.

IN PARIS, TEXAS
Zoe Wight

IN PARIS, Texas, four old-timers were standing quietly outside an outhouse. Three of them were thinking of the old Mexican ladies who had abandoned them long ago, after each of these gentlemen had performed on each of those ladies a widely publicized abortion. The three old-timers had just written a postcard to the three old ladies, who were surely dead by now, in the hopes of rekindling what had been a mutually unexciting acquaintance. All of a sudden the outhouse door swung open and two slim Frenchmen, perfect strangers to each other, came out speaking the most limpid and mellifluous French. The fourth old-timer, the one who had never been abandoned by an old Mexican lady, pulled out his gun and shot them both dead. "Frenchmen," he said, reinserting the gun in its holster, "no fuh-fuh-fuh, no fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh, no fuh-fuh-fucking manners.