This is the writer's voice, New Fiction from the New Yorker.

I'm the Britishman Fiction Editor at the New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice,

we'll hear Syed Sarifizade,

with his story non-disclosure agreement

from the May 9, 2022 issue of the magazine.

Sarifizade is the author of the story collections

brief encounters with the enemy,

which was a finalist

for the Pan Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction in 2014,

and American Estrangement, which was published last year.

Now here's Syed Sarifizade.

Non-disclosure agreement.

There must have been some sort of defective wiring

in the early warning system of my brain,

because by the time the owner put his hand on my thigh,

I was already in way too deep.

Later, I would try to piece it all together,

remembering how, at my one and only interview for the job,

he had offered, without prompting,

to give me more money than I was asking for.

Why don't we just make this simple and double it, he'd said?

...