This is The Author's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Author's Voice, we'll hear Joshua Ferris read his story, The Abandonment,

from the August 1st, 2016 issue of the magazine.

Joshua Ferris is the author of three novels, including The Unnamed and to Rise Again at a Decent Hour.

He has been publishing stories in The New Yorker since 2008. Now here's Joshua Ferris.

The Abandonment When he returned to the bagel place, there was the usual line,

but his hope dwindled with every face that wasn't hers.

He went around the block for the dozenth time.

After that, he came untethered and wandered south. Heedless at the corners,

he was nearly hit by a cab. He turned right for no reason, and on that block, as he walked,

some invisible industrial fan seemed to whirr violently, sending up trash. Suddenly, before his eyes, there was an aircraft carrier.

There was motion and transition everywhere, the urgent, churning city, the cry of a siren

fading around the block. At the Empire State Building, they tried to get him to take a tour.

He and his wife had married in Cuba by way of Nicaragua four years earlier, long before

the embargo was lifted. They had thrilled to the risk, the style of kicking off their days

under stay-at-old matrimony in such

rebel fashion.

There was a priest and a Punto band and the beach and the stars and the northern wind, and

everything about that night was emblematic of how they hoped to shape the years.

Now they would divorce. Well, so what? Sooner or later, everyone got divorced.

Knowing it was useless, she was gone, gone. He threw his cell phone into a trash can. When he came

...