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

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

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Sayet Sayre Fizzade read his story

Civil Disturbance from the June 19th, 2023 issue of the magazine.

Sayre Fizzade is the author of the story collections Brief Encounters with the Enemy, which was

a finalist for the Pan Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction in 2014, and American

Astrangement, which was published in 2021.

Now here's Sayet Sayre Fizzade.

Civil Disturbance.

We're sitting underneath the overpass, Molly and I, lights off, motor on, staring through

the windshield at the row of houses up the hill.

And Molly's lap, propped against the steering wheel, is the clipboard with the street addresses,

about 50 of them listed alongside the pertinent info, name, age, etc., cold from the internet

and written in her perfect handwriting, evidence that she had gone to a good school in the suburbs.

It's getting dark and it's getting cold, and neither one of us has said more than a few

pass of aggressive sentences to the other, like when I thanked her for putting her window

up as if she'd done me a big favor.

You're welcome, she said, but she only closed it halfway.

The bickering had started after we both got home from work.

First we were arguing, and then we were shouting, and then she disappeared into the bedroom

and slammed the door hard, emerging 15 minutes later, composed, dressed, and ready to go.

Today's particular conflict had been set in motion by the banal, who'd left a cereal

...