This is the writer's voice, New Fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Debra Treesman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Emma Klein read her story, The Iceman, from the August 23, 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 Iceman.

First, he readied the king and the queen, a quick pass with a lice-all 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 sacrifice for what absolutely nothing.

Much better to be on pool duty, people mostly ordered drinks. He liked that he basically worked outside.

It was a pretty place and the temperature was nice this time of day before the sun came over the mountains.

The grounds were always fairly cool because of the landscaping. The water bill was probably insane, green everywhere you looked.

The same playlist started every day around 10 a.m.

Pipe through speakers behind the aloe plants emanating across the lawn where the wild bunnies often appeared, the lizards jittering in the bushes.

Love, I will be done. A slow pulse under the lyrics, the same rhythm as his heartbeat. Sam had heard this song, what, hundreds of times.

Sam wore white pants and white sneakers and a white sweatshirt that had the recipe for the hotel's signature cocktail on the back, punctuated by graphic lemons and limes.

It's actually easier than he'd imagined having an all-white uniform. You could just bleach it.

Joris showed him. Did it surprise Sam, his 50-year-old roommate, suddenly knowledgeable about household matters?

Joris didn't have a bed frame, but he'd been right. Sam's white Levi's came out blinding.

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