Getting the girls' trip out of the group chat just feels right.

The Fort Myers area delivers the memories, bonding, and let's do this every year energy.

Start planning at visit fort Myers.com.

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

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

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Mary Gateskill read her story,

Something Familiar, from the March 2nd, 2026 issue of the magazine. Gateskill is the author of eight books of fiction, including Veronica, a National Book Award

finalist, and this is pleasure. Her most recent book is the essay collection, Oppositions.

Now here's Mary Gateskill.

Something familiar. Gatesgo.

Something familiar.

She arrived at JFK just past midnight after a four-hour flight delay.

Her mind was blurry, and her heart felt like a deep crater with something lurking at the bottom of it.

It was her first trip to New York in more than a decade. She had come back to attend a memorial for a formerly close friend, Carly, with whom she had shared a life that was now

alien to her. Though the airport was well appointed and maintained, it appeared nonetheless on the

ragged edge. Barely present workers dragged garbage bins, arranged displays of crappy snacks,

and wiped counters with slow, heavy movements. Travelers set slumped staring at phones or snoozed under

their coats.

It took forever for the bags to roll onto the relentlessly choruscating belt.

In large cities, she preferred old-school taxis to apps, and at least the line was short.

The driver energetically swung her bag into the trunk with his large arm and welcomed her to New York.

He was a big man who looked to be about 60, comfortably rooted in his station of muscle and fat.

...