This is The Writers Voice, New Fiction from the New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Reisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writers Voice, we'll hear Han Aung read his story, Futures, from the March 30th, 2020 issue of the magazine.

Ong, the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in the Berlin Prize, is the author of more than a dozen plays and two novels, Fixer Chow and The Disinherited.

Now here is Hanong.

futures. Did you check his phone?

I told you I'm not going to do that but it's so easy.

They are not talking about Martine.

Toby pronounces it Martine because that's how Martine himself pronounced it,

being from Chile.

It was only last year that Martin stayed with them,

and Toby's father was crazy about the young tennis player.

Since then, disillusionment has spoiled his father's gaze, and every tennis player after

Martine can only be a reminder of him and an object of suspicion. I don't think I could live through that again,

Toby's father says,

and switches back to the subject of the new guy.

How difficult could it be?

Just ask to borrow his phone.

Say you want to play a game.

Say I don't allow you to on your own phone.

Then take a look at his messages for anything iffy.

Head things off at the pass.

...