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

I'm Deborah Triesman, Fiction Editor at the New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Ben Lerner read his story, Café Lou,

which appeared in the September 5, 2022 issue of the magazine.

Lerner is the author of the novels, leaving the atochistation, 1004, and the Topeka School,

which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2020.

He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015.

Now here's Ben Lerner.

Café Lou.

When I became a father, I began to worry not only that I would die

and not be able to care for my daughter, but that I would die in an embarrassing way

that my death would be an abiding embarrassment for Astra

that in some future world, assuming there is a future,

she will be on a date with someone hard as that is for me to imagine

and her date will ask, what does your father do?

And she will say he died when I was little

and her date will respond, I'm sorry, hesitate, and then ask

and abid for intimacy how I died.

And Astra will feel ashamed, will look down into her blue wine,

there will be blue wine in the future and say,

he had an aneurysm on the toilet, which is one of the ways I often fear that I might die.

I'm sure she'd withhold the toilet part at least on a first date,

...