This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah

Feisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker. On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Brian Washington read his story

Airlooms from the August 3rd and 10th 2020 issue of the magazine.

Washington's first story collection, Lott, was published in 2019, and his first novel, Memorial

from which this story was adapted will come out in October.

Now here's Brian Washington. Airlooms.

It's still dark when I wake up the morning after Mike leaves, but Mitsuko's mincing shrimp.

She's hunched over the cutting board beside eggs, flour, and honey.

Do you eat? She asks. I tell her I do. We don't say shit while she's working.

Matuco Blitzes everything in the food processor.

Drops the mixture in a skillet, dabbing everything with soy sauce, folding the batter gradually.

I take my meds, watching her do all this, and she ignores me the entire time, working at

our own pace. When I sit on the sofa and Tzuka stops rolling. I stand to set

the table and she starts rolling again. Once she's finished she fills a bowl with some pickled cucumbers and puts an omelet on a plate,

leaving another one out for me.

We eat hunched over the counter hip to hip.

So, Miss Zuka says,

How long have you been sleeping with my son?

Or is it casual?

Not really, I say.

I don't know how it works, what's it says.

I think it's the same for everyone.

...