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 Emma Klein read her story, The Ice Man,

from the August 23rd, 2021 issue of the magazine.

Klein's first novel, The Girls, a winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, came out in 2016,

and her story collection, Daddy, was published last year.

Now here's Emma Klein.

The Ice Man. The Ice Man First he readied the king and the queen.

A quick pass with a Lysol wipe around their molded plastic surfaces

before returning the pieces to their proper place on the oversized chess board.

Each piece came up to his knee.

Sam had never seen a hotel guest actually play chess on this huge board.

He had seen guests pose for photos, though,

cradling the pieces in their arms or pretending to be mid-move,

faces frozen in faux contemplation.

Once Valeria politely chased after a bachelor party that had absconded with a pawn,

she found it in the hallway of the north building, abandoned among all the stinking room service trays.

Sam's own brief stint working room service had been a queasy experiment in holding his breath,

collecting the tiny miserable autopsies, the fatty congealed steaks,

and the pictures of unused cream and the bald saran wrap wet with condensation. He'd been a vegan almost two years now. Each slab of uneaten hamburger he'd cleaned up reinforced his resolve. The cold,

crumbly flesh sacrificed for what? Absolutely nothing. Much better to be on pool duty.

People mostly ordered drinks.

...