The Lost Order
By Rivka Galchen, first published in The New Yorker
An unemployed woman in a contemporary urban setting passes a slow day at home, where mundanities consume her and reality seems far away.
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Plot Summary
A recently unemployed woman spends a day at home. She debates what food to eat while trying to rein in her desires so that she can lose weight. She talks to her husband, Boo, on the phone, and he asks her to look in the courtyard of their urban apartment complex for his recently-missing wedding ring. She refuses to do so but ends up trying to look for it anyway. She receives several calls from an angry stranger who believes he’s talking to a restaurant; he orders food, and she neglects to tell him that he’s got the wrong number, so he calls back, demanding to know where his meal is. She sees some UPS women delivering iPhones because the new one just came out. Even when her husband yells at her about how she lied about getting fired rather than having quit her environment law job, she doesn’t have it in her to respond. She wanders, and thinks, and is detached from everything.
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