Fifty Yuan for a Wife

In a city that prices everything, a married woman has been written onto a receipt for fifty yuan. The sum would not pay for the taxi home. She already has a husband, and the man counting the notes knows that the marriage is why the figure is so small. / The bargain is the story. What she thinks she is settling, what her husband refuses to see, and what the buyer expects once the notes leave his hand are three different promises on one scrap of paper. The money is still on the table.