This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

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

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Catherine Lacey read her story, Coconut Flan,

from the October 13th, 2025 issue of the magazine.

Lacey is the author of five books of fiction, including the novels Pew and Biography of X,

which was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2024.

A memoir and novella, the Mobius book, was published earlier this year. Now here's Catherine Lacey. Coconut Flan Somehow, after the plane landed, though before Andreas and Darya reached the taxi stand,

Darya's wallet went missing.

Upon realizing that it was gone, Darya felt an impulse to dump the contents of her bag onto the ground

and search for it, as it seemed to her that lost things might magically reappear

if she indulged in some childish impulse that she, a grown woman, was often trying to refrain

from indulging. The wallet wasn't quite a wallet, actually, but rather a black leather pouch,

large enough to comfortably hold her passport, Residencia card, credit card,

debit cards, Metro Bus card, house keys, as well as a small Polaroid of Andreas, two pens,

and 7,000 pesos in cash. This was the litany that she, in her faltering Spanish, and he and his native Spanish,

repeated at the airline counter, the airport information desk, in the security department,

the luggage department, and then to various voices on the phone.

They described the thing that had been lost, and all the things inside the thing that had been lost,

recited this list like a prayer or a spell.

Walkie-talkies were spoken into.

There were silences, longer silences.

No news yet's, then definitively, no news at all.

...