This time, someone emails to subpoena records of my supposed coworker. Last time, it was a credit card company calling about unpaid bills. The time before that, a message from a guy about some “business deal.” I’ve been mistakenly contacted for years because another ex-Soviet immigrant, whose American life has clearly been more colorful than mine, has the same first and last name I do. Deleting the email, I tell myself to use this for story material, but really, I’m just grateful for my stable credit. Still, I decide to write something. Doubles are big in Russian literature, after all.
Yelena Furman lives in Los Angeles. Her fiction and book reviews have been published in Narrative, Roi Fainéant Press, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Baffler, and others. lenafurman.wordpress.com Bluesky @yelenafurman.bsky.social