Kelly Link - White Cat, Black Dog: Stories

White Cat, Black Dog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2023 by Kelly Link

Illustrations copyright 2023 by Shaun Tan

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

The following stories are previously published:

The White Road ( A Public Space, January 2020); The Lady and the Fox (in My True Love Gave to Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins [New York: St. Martins Press, 2014]); The Game of Smash and Recovery ( Strange Horizons, October 2015); The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear ( Tin House, June 2019); Skinders Veil (in When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson, edited by Ellen Datlow [London: Titan Books, 2021]); The White Cats Divorce (Weatherspoon Art Museum, August 2018)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Link, Kelly, author.

Title: White cat, black dog : stories / Kelly Link.

Description: New York : Random House, [2023]

Identifiers: LCCN 2022010395 (print) | LCCN 2022010396 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593449950 (hardcover ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780593449967 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Short stories.

Classification: LCC PS3612.I553 W48 2023 (print) | LCC PS3612.I553 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6dc23/eng/20220614

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010395

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010396

Ebook ISBN9780593449967

randomhousebooks.com

Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook

Cover design and illustration: Owen Gent

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Contents

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The White Cats Divorce

(The White Cat)

A ll stories about divorce must begin some other place, and so let us begin with a man so very rich, he might reach out and have almost any thing he desired, as well as many things that he did not. He had so many houses even his accountants could not keep track of them all. He had private planes and newspapers and politicians who saw to it that his wishes became laws. He had orchards, islands, baseball teams, and even a team of entomologists whose mandate was to find new species of beetles to be given variations on the rich mans name. (For if it was true that God loved beetles, was it not true He loved the rich man even more? Was his good fortune not the proof of this?)

The rich man had all of this and more than I have space to write. Anything you have ever possessed, know that he had this, too. And if he did not, he could have paid you whatever your price was in order to obtain it.

All men desire to be rich; no man desires to grow old. To stave off old age, the rich man paid for personal trainers and knee replacements and cosmetic procedures that meant he always had a somewhat wide-eyed look, as if he were not a man in his seventies at all but rather still an infant who found his life a cascade of marvelous and surprising events. The rich man had follicular unit transplantation and special creams to bleach age spots. For dinner, his personal chefs served him fish and berries and walnuts as if he were a bear and not a rich man at all. Every morning, he swam two miles in a lake that was kept by an ingenious mechanism at a comfortable temperature for him throughout the year. In the afternoons, he had blood transfusions from adolescent donors, these transfusions being a condition of the scholarships to various universities that the rich man funded. In the evenings, he threw lavish parties, surrounding himself with people who were young and beautiful. As he grew older, his wives grew younger, and in this way, for a time, the rich man was able to persuade himself that he, too, was still young and might remain so forever.

But although a man may acquire younger and ever more beautiful wives who will maintain the pretense that he, too, is still untouched by age, this rich man had, a long time ago, been married to a first wife, and this first wife had had three sons. The three sons, having been raised with every advantage by caregivers and tutors and therapists and life coaches paid to adhere to the best principles of child-rearing, were attractive, personable, and in every way the kind of children that a father could have regarded with satisfaction. And yet the rich man did not regard them with satisfaction. Instead, when he looked at his three sons, the youngest of whom was now nineteen, he saw only the proof of his own mortality. It is difficult to remain young when ones children selfishly insist upon growing older.

To make matters worse, his sons were all in residence at the house where the rich man was spending the winter. The eldest was in the middle of an acrimonious divorce (his first) and the second was hiding out from the media, while the third had no good reason at all, except that he truly loved his father and wished for his approval. (Also, he had flunked out of university.) Everywhere the rich man turned, a son was underfoot.

At night, he began to be visited by a certain dream. In this dream, the rich man was troubled first by the notion that he had a fourth child. And in the dream, no sooner had he had this notion than he became aware that this fourth child, too, was a guest in the house, and although in the morning the rich man found he could never remember what this child looked likeWas it small or tall? Was it long and slender or so enormous it blotted out its surroundings? What was the sound of its voice?he knew this last child was Death. In the dream, the rich man offered his child Death all he had in return for more life, but nothing the rich man had to offer was of interest to Death. The only thing Death desired was the company of its father.

Sometimes the rich man had this dream three or four times in one night. By day, he began to detest the sight of his sons.

At last, in perplexity, the rich man turned to consultants to assist him with the problem of his sons, and by the end of the week, a most elegant plan had been put in place. The rich man, in accordance, summoned his three sons to his side. Once he had embraced them lovingly and they had discussed the news of the day and the foundations and boards of which his sons were nominally the heads, he said, My sons: although it is true that I am in my prime, and although I know it pains you to contemplate, a day must come when I retire into private life and take up a hobby like growing orchids or hunting the most dangerous game or sending unmanned vessels into the sun to see what happens, and, although it is farther off still, yet it is ever drawing nearer, a day in which an expert team will cryogenically freeze my body as well as the body of my current wife until such a time when medical advances can resurrect me into some unknown hellish future in a body that can satisfy more than three women at a time while also battling apocalyptic mutant lizards and conquering whatever remains of the New York Stock Exchange.

His sons exchanged looks with each other, and the youngest said, Dear Father, it seems impossible to us that you will ever be any less vital than you are at this moment.

The rich man said, Nevertheless, a time must come when all things change. And when I think of the future, there are two things I desire above all else. One is to name my heir. My second desire is for a companion to be a comfort to me in the years of my decline.

The oldest son said, Pardon me, Father, but are you telling us that you are to marry again?

The rich man said, No, no! Alyssa and I are quite happy. What I wish for is, simply, a dog. The smallest, silkiest, most obedient and amiable dog a man has ever possessed. I have decided to task you, my sons, with this errand. You will have a year and a day to scour the earth for such a dog, and at the end of that span, whichever of you procures it, I shall leave you everything that I own.