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

fiction at the New Yorker. On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Douglas Stewart read his story

Found Wanting from the January 13th 2020 issue of the magazine.

Stewart, who was born and raised in Glasgow, will publish his first novel, Shogi Bain in February.

Now here's Douglas Stuart.

Found Wanting. I was ashamed of my glasses. They were the cheapest of government

subsidised frames, a type that poor pensioners wore, or middle-class students when they wanted to appear ironic. The lenses were so

thick that my green eyes looked jaundiced and only half the size they actually were.

I never wore them when I should have, so I can't quite picture the solicitor's face, but his

car was black and German.

It glided through the Glasgow Smur like a starling.

I waited for him outside Central Station as his letter had instructed me to.

It was another Drich Day and my stiff denum sucked up the damp from the pavement.

The car was so new that the rain streamed off the coat of polisher's wax.

As I sat in the passenger seat, I had a peripheral sense that the man had an ordinary face,

thin and forgettable.

It was edged by a fresh haircut, short on the sides, feathered on the top.

Without my glasses everything was aura, and his aura was the color of liver paste.

The solicitor had begun writing to me a few weeks earlier.

He was among the first to respond to my lonely heart.

He was more forthright than the others. His letters gave the impression of a man

who cut across the grass could not be bothered with the path. In his first letter he said

...