This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

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

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Brian Washington read his story, visitor,

from the January 20th, 2020 issue of the magazine.

Washington is a National Book Award 535 honoree.

His first story collection, Lott, was published last year. Now here's Brian Washington.

Visitor. He knocked on my door about a month after the funeral.

I almost didn't answer since I wasn't expecting my fuck buddy.

It was entirely too late for anyone to be visiting,

but the man in front of me said he'd been a friend of my father's,

and I slipped on the face I wore for those people.

It was three or four in the morning.

He'd caught a late flight from Kingston to Houston.

Then the man said something else in a heavy patois.

I asked him to repeat it.

His lover, this guy said, rubbing both of his elbows.

I made a new kind of face, except it couldn't have made a new kind of face,

except it couldn't have been a new kind of face.

We only get so many.

What?

I said.

It's true, he said.

...