To:     Fiction@NewYorker.com
From:  Blemhein@aol.com
Date:   February 4, 2025

Dear Deborah Treisman, 

I attach a short story for your consideration, which I hope you will enjoy. 

A bit about me: I’m a writer and a former tax attorney. In my writing career, before I became a lawyer, I wrote frequently for Our Town and The Chelsea-Clinton News; the latter of which is how I came to interview Mickey Rooney, when he was on the One of the Boys sitcom, although the News did not ultimately publish it. 

My sister, before she died yesterday, said (literally she said this on her deathbed) that she thinks my latest short story, “Arbitrary”, would fit right in at The New Yorker, so I attach it herewith. As per your requirements, I have converted it to PDF format. It is 3247 words. 

My story is about Nayra, a thirtyish Peruvian woman, exact age not revealed, who works in a plant store in the Bronx that is not doing well financially. When she was a little girl, her hatun mama used to grow a little croton lechleri tree in a pot on the windowsill, which is what inspired her to work in a plant store. 

After work one Wednesday, she unexpectedly meets a man on the subway whom she knew briefly in an earlier job; he seems to have prospered in the years since. They exit the subway, and a car lightly clips the man in the crosswalk, but, though shaken, he is unharmed. Nayra walks him back to his apartment; their unexpected and surprising tryst is described graphically and dispassionately yet poetically. Nayra leaves the man’s home while he sleeps; she doesn’t say goodbye or show any particular emotion. 

When she arrives home, she finds that her cat has died of an allergic reaction to a bee sting. She cries long hours into the night. 

While I do not emphasize this in my story (I believe in show, don’t tell), the reader is left to wonder why the same woman who showed no reaction to a passionate tryst can show such grief over the death of a cat. 

I have enclosed an illustration in the style of Roz Chast to give you an idea of the kind of tone of the thing, which I hope you will enjoy. 

With best regards, Blemhein

April 23, 2025

Dear Ms. Treisman, it’s Blemhein, I hope you are enjoying my story, “Arbitrary”. 

I attach my latest endeavor, “Blueprint”, which I think is really very New Yorkerish, so I think you will like it. As you require, it is in PDF format, utilizing the “Adobe” app, which I understand is state of the art in the industry. My story is 3842 words. 

This new story is about Laleh, a thirtyish Iranian woman, age not specifically revealed. When she was very little, her Persian naneh joon used to tell her the tale of the jackal and the pomegranate, which is why she works in a library in Queens. 

While on an afternoon coffee break from work, she receives a text from Y., an old friend from whom she has not heard for six years. Y.’s text is breezy and not especially notable. Laleh begins to respond but then the break is over. While shelving books, she recalls that Y. proposed marriage the last time they saw each other six years ago, and that back then after some contemplation she had decided to accept the proposal. She cannot remember what happened next, and she is moderately perplexed at this gap in her recollection, why she did not ultimately marry him. 

Upon leaving the library three hours later, she receives a text from another friend, who tells her that Y. has just died, an hour ago, from an allergic reaction to a bee sting, which Y. must have received several hours after texting her. 

Laleh returns home just as her cat is clipped by a car; the cat is unharmed. In her apartment, she cradles the cat in her arms and cries long hours into the night. While I do not tell the reader what to think about any of this, I think you will wonder why the same woman who showed no reaction to the death of a lover she once wished to marry can express such traumatic distress over the near-injury of a cat.

I attach a Roz Chast style cartoon that illustrates some of the themes of the story, which I hope you will find helpful and also amusing. I draw these illustrations myself.

Best regards, Blemhein

June 14, 2025

Dear Deborah (if I may), it’s Blemhein again. I haven’t heard from you w/r/t my last couple of stories, and you know what they say: no news is good news. Since you have never rejected any of my work, I am hoping that means you must really love it, so in that spirit, I am sending you another story, which is 4267 words. 

This one, entitled “What’s the Time”, is about Deki, a thirtyish Bhutanese woman, age not specifically revealed, who works as a sous-chef at a struggling restaurant in downtown Manhattan. 

She remembers when she was a little girl, watching her amoo simmer ema datshi over the stove, the way the aroma filled the whole apartment, and then the whole family eating it in her amoo’s wooden dapa bowls; this resonant memory is what inspired her to go to cooking school. 

But now it is the restaurant’s last day; it will close for good at midnight tonight. During her three p.m. coffee break, she smokes pot in the alley; a bee stings her. 

At midnight, she says goodbye to her coworkers rather emotionlessly. When no one else is looking, Juan the busboy kisses her on the lips, not especially passionately; he has never done this before or especially shown any interest in her at all. 

Does she kiss him back? In the street afterwards, leaving the now-closed restaurant, she wonders whether she kissed him back; she doesn’t know. As she thinks about Juan, she notices that she seems to be having some kind of allergic reaction to the bee sting. 

The train arrives at her subway stop. She walks up the subway stairs, and she crosses the street; a cab nicks her in the crosswalk. She is uninjured. 

When she gets back to her apartment, her cat greets her. She thinks how sad she would be if anything ever happened to her cat, and she cries into the cat’s fur. 

In my fiction, I never say “here is what you should make of this,” I leave it unsaid, but I believe the reader will wonder whether Deki’s tears are really about her cat. 

I attach a kind of a Roz Chasty illustration that kind of sums everything up in just a blippety kind of bouncy sort of way, in case you are too busy right now to read the story itself or my summary of the story. 

August 14, 2025

Hey Deborah, it’s Blemhein. I attach my new short story, which is called Blemhein by Blemhein, though I am thinking of changing the title. It is 6893 words. I have now upgraded to Adobe Acrobat Pro for the PDF conversion, which I mention in case that is important to you and improves my prospects for publication. 

Blemhein by Blemhein is about a sixty-five-year-old Brooklyn man, who one day is taking a walk and he almost gets clipped by a car that just speeds by, and this reminds him of a woman he loved a long time ago, who got clipped by a car in a very similar way. She and Blemhein were so relieved that she was unharmed, so they went out to a romantic restaurant to celebrate, and then they returned to Blemhein’s apartment where they spend the night together, which as you can see is depicted very explicitly but also poetically. But then the next day, a bee stung her, and she died of an allergic reaction to the bee sting when Blemhein wasn’t even around. For a couple of weeks, Blemhein thought she was just avoiding him. They were very much in the beginning of their relationship and she had not introduced him to any of her friends or even mentioned him, so for several weeks, Blemhein thought she had just decided to break up with him but could not bring herself to tell him. 

Years later, after the near-miss with the car, Blemhein is thinking about her, and he goes home to his apartment and finds his cat dead. He really loves the cat, and he doesn’t really know how to react. That’s how the story ends, it’s just about how we lose things, maybe it’ll make you think about that when you read it. That’s life, we lose what we love. 

I just want to add that the story is not autobiographical. I never loved a woman who died of a bee sting or was clipped by a car. Many years ago, I met a woman named Marigold, who had golden hair and this kind of interesting smile, and I really thought the kinds of things that sometimes one thinks after a brief quick encounter, and I wondered if something might come of it. It is possible that her name was just “Mari” and I remember her as “Marigold” because of her golden hair, but it is also possible that her name was actually “Marigold,” which would be beautifully appropriate. 

While nothing came of it, I heard later that Marigold was almost hit by a car and then the next day died unexpectedly, and it sounded like the kind of sudden death that comes from an allergic reaction to a bee sting, though I don’t know what she died of, it could have been anything. I think allergic reactions to bee stings are very ironic, very literary, so I like to explore them in my fiction. When I think about it, I always feel like Marigold probably died from a bee sting, though rationally I have no reason to think that. 

Sometimes I wonder if I would be happier now if Marigold and I had fallen in love with each other before she died. 

That is, would I be less unhappy today if I were alone because the woman I loved died of a bee sting, or am I less unhappy today the way I am, just alone, not alone because I lost something, but because I never had anything? I wonder which kind of yawning ache is worse. (Is that the right term? A “yawning” ache?) 

Also, I came home and my cat was dead, so that’s the same, but otherwise the story is principally just fiction. 

I attach a Roz Chast style cartoon depicting Blemhein, to give you a general idea of the style of the story, which I hope you will enjoy.

With best regards, Blemhein  

^^^

This story is by Steven S. Drachman, who is a novelist. Illustrations by the author.