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 Otesa Mosheg read her story,

An Honest Woman, from the October 24th, 2016 issue of the magazine.

Mosheg is the author of two novels, McLew and Eileen.

This is her second story in the magazine.

Now here's Otessa Mosheg.

Music An honest woman. They met one summer day through the high chain-link fence between their

backyards. His yard was just plain brown dirt.

Hers was full of dusty bags of fertilizer and tools, haphazardly scattered where she'd started

planting flowers in the tough soil. The man had seen neighbors come and go over the many

years he'd lived there in the dark corner

of the cul-de-sac.

Through seven presidents, he told the girl, laughing nervously and swatting his neck as if

to catch mosquitoes. He was only 60, but looked far older.

Vidaligo had stripped his brittle hair of its color,

made his face seem riddled with fat freckles.

Pretty, sturdy, in her early thirties.

She had been living next door to the man for two months already.

He had just been waiting for the proper moment to introduce himself.

I'm Jeb, the man said.

That's a long time, Jeb, the girl said to him, that many presidents.

...