This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker. I'm Debra Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Syed Syre Fizzade read his story ASDF from the May 31st, 2021 issue of the magazine.

Syre Fizzade is the author of the story collection Brief Encounters with the Enemy, which was a finalist for the Penn Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction in 2014.

A new story collection, American Estrangement, will be published in August.

Now here's Syed Syre Fizzade.

ASDF

By the time 6 o'clock is about to roll around, I'm beginning to wonder if working in an art gallery is taking some sort of toll on my psyche.

One part of the problem is that I haven't done anything all day since there hasn't been anything to do, and the other part of the problem is something I can't quite name yet.

This is the moment when the owner emerges from his back office, three minutes before 6, holding a two-page handwritten letter that he needs me to type right now, because there's a collector on the West Coast who might be interested in Untitled X.

One more thing before you go, he says, as if the list of today's tasks has been long.

I'd be happy to, I tell him, I'm full of good cheer and work ethic.

I was hired a month ago and I want the owner to think of me as a team player, but the truth is I don't get paid for overtime.

The truth is I've spent today the way I spend most days sitting behind the front desk for nine hours, less one hour for lunch,

engulfed in a sea of silence and serenity waiting for something to happen while I gaze into the middle distance of white walls hung with abstract expressionism.

This is the art of 70 years ago. The art of art, the art of ideas, the art of rorschach, lines, shapes, splashes, repudiating verisimilitude and easy answers, 60 by 60, and selling for five figures if the owner's lucky.

No, we don't have pollex or decunings. We have the ones no one's heard of, the ones that don't go for seven figures and that don't hang in the Denver Art Museum where I worked in the cafe before getting my act together to send out art related resumes across the state of Colorado.

Executed optimal operations during peak hours, I wrote in my cover letter. Business speak poached from the internet, but accurate nonetheless.

Today, the only visitor was the mailman at noon who put his big blue bag on my fromica front desk and spent a few minutes making small talk about sports and the weather, which was cloudless and cool because an aspen is always cloudless and cool.

A month ago, I was living in Denver where it was also cloudless and cool. The mailman spoke too loudly for an upscale art gallery with a library like atmosphere, cloudless and cool, but no one was here to hear him.

Before he left, I tried to get him to stay longer, saying plaintively, I can give you a personal tour if you like, but he thought I was talking about aspen. I've lived here my whole life, he said.

Now it's six hours later, 12 past six to be exact, and I'm doing my best to type out two pages of handwritten letter.

When I'm actually engaged in as a white collar, high wire act without a safety net, where each typo means I have to start over with fresh stationary.

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