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 Edwidge Dantuckat read her story without inspection

from the May 14th, 2018 issue of the magazine.

Dantacat is the author of more than a dozen books, including the novels The Do-Braker and Claire of the Sealight.

Her most recent book is the memoir essay, The Art of Death,

which was published last year.

Now here's Edwidge Dantacat.

Without inspection.

It took Arnold six and a half seconds to fall 500 feet.

During that time, an image of his son, Paris, flashed before his eyes.

Paris dressed in his red school uniform shirt and khakis the day of his kindergarten graduation.

That morning, Paris's mother, Darlene, had skipped around the apartment changing dresses, as if she were the one graduating.

Closing his eyes tightly as the hot wind he was plunging through battered his face. Arnold saw

Paris at the classroom ceremony. He saw himself too, standing next to Darlene, who had finally

chosen a billowing, sapphire-colored satin dress. He was in the one black suit he wore to everything,

to weddings, and to funerals. One reason not to own too many things was their crammed two-bedroom

apartment, but the other, at least for him, had to do with never wanting to feel bound. To be attached to a few people was

fine, to Paris and to Darlene, who were as much a part of him as his blood was, but he never wanted

to be tied to things, to clothes and shoes, gathering dust and packed closets, to a fancy car that

required hefty payments every month.

No, it was simpler to be free, as free as this fall, which he had neither intended nor chosen,

...