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 Garth Greenwell read his story, an evening out, from the August 21st, 2017 issue of the magazine. Greenwell's first novel,

What Belongs to You, was published last year. It won the British Book Award for

debut of the year and was a finalist for several other prizes, including the Penn Faulkner.

Now here's Garth Greenwell.

An Evening Out. Zee had emptied half the carton of June. An evening out.

Zee had emptied half the carton of juice, and now I was holding it as he poured the vodka into the plastic funnel at the top. We had laughed at the way he threw his head back and drank,

sucking the juice down even as he grimaced at the taste, which was sickly sweet. He refused to

dump it in the gutter. My grandfather is Russian, he said, we never waste anything. And that too

had made us laugh, though he was serious now as he poured, tilting the plastic flask so that

the barest ribbon of liquid threaded perfectly into the carton.

He didn't want to waste that either, and I was so absorbed in holding the carton still,

and absorbed in Z, too, who stood close to me, our shoulders almost touching,

that I had nearly forgotten about N when I heard the click of his phone as it took a picture of us.

"'What are you doing?' I said.

And I'm sure there was a note in my voice of real concern that the thought of the image shared

with others in anticipation of shame. But we had already drunk enough that the concern was

distant and N laughed it off.

"'I'm sorry,' he said. "' it's just too epic. We've been waiting

for this for so long. He laughed again when I warned him not to post it on Facebook. I'll hunt you down,

I said, one of the phrases I had used often in my seven years as a teacher, four of them here in

...