This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice

we'll hear Garth Greenwell read his story,

Harbor from the September 16th 2019 issue of the magazine.

Greenwell's first novel, What Belongs to You, was published in 2016 and won the British Book Award for debut of the year.

A new Book of Fiction, Cleanness, will be published in January.

Now here's Garth Greenwell.

Harbor.

Even in the dark, I like to look at it, though the sea was never truly dark.

Even now in the off-season it caught the light of the moon, which hung high and almost full, and of the signs of the few restaurants and hotels that

were open in the new town, so that the whole harbour shimmered with points of light. It had been months since I had seen the sea a year and I was hungry for it.

I had stepped to the edge of the terrace to check my phone but found myself staring at the sea instead.

You could lose yourself in it.

That was what I liked.

It was beautiful, but also it was like looking at nothing.

The side of it drowned out thinking, like the sound of it drowned out thinking like the sound of it

drowned out noise and at first I didn't hear the others calling me to join them.

I smiled as I turned though I resented being called back, and saw that they were standing

in a circle beside the tables where they had been smoking and talking their glasses empty.

Come here, one of the American writers said,

we're playing spin the bottle, and I laughed and took my place.

...