Laura van den Berg's second collection of short stories

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The day my husband left me, I followed a trio of acrobats around the city of Paris.  The whole time my husband had been talking--telling me, presumably, why he was leaving--I was watching these acrobats do backflips and handstands in synchrony, an open violin case at their feet.  They wore black masks over their eyes and white face paint.  The little gold bells that hung from the sleeves of their red silk jumpsuits jingled like wind chimes.  My husband and I were in the Jardin des Tuileries, sitting on a bench underneath a tree.  We had come to Paris for the weekend, to revive our marriage.  It was what the books and the couples counselor had recommended.  The day he left was our last day there.  We were, in fact, supposed to fly home that evening. 
--From "Acrobat," a short story by Laura van den Berg, first published in American Short Fiction and reprinted in her collection The Isle of Youth (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), pp. 93-116.