“So Late in the Day” by Claire Keegan

Beautifully done, but “yikes”.

This was published in French under the title “Misogynic.”

Fits.

It’s one of those “creeps up on you, you know it is going to end very very badly and then it does and you’re not surprised or deflated but simply deeply unsettled” stories. Terrifying but in an extremely understated and careful (I almost said “clever,” but that is too freighted) way.

The plot? A man leaves work and goes home. The past, the present and a future of sorts bleed into each other. There is food and feeding. There is waiting and weighting, of words, of kindness and the opposite of kindness (not cruelty, but obliviousness). And also an astonishing act of cruelty.

So, yeah, “go men.”

Originally published in The New Yorker.