The dog park lay on a bed of sandy dirt. Loam, it was called. There were shoots of green at the top of the park, near the reservoir, but it was the green of a weed called thistle and it wasn’t supposed to be there. The park had a general absence of color, and this, in tandem with how it sprawled, invoked a certain feeling in Kate when she came here, a feeling she did not use to feel when she came with Samuel. When she came here with Samuel, she was focused on him. She made sure he didn’t bite any other dogs. She made sure he was drinking enough water on the hot days. She also made sure he wasn’t humping any other dogs because the look in the eye of the owner of the dog Samuel was humping reminded her of the look in her brother’s eye whenever he came to check on her.

But she wasn’t here with Samuel, and so she wasn’t focused on anything in particular. The bench was warm, even in February. The sun was oppressive and her eyelids ached as she looked around at today’s crowd. This was the big dog park, but she watched a toy poodle scamper around with its standard brother, having made its way out of the more desolate small dog park below. She watched the women leaning, backs against the fence, headphones in and sunglasses on, their pitbulls and shepherds coming over incrementally for validation, for “love”, for that thing which is like love, but isn’t, because not only do we have things for dogs called collars and leashes but we use them. And she watched the dalmatian, sunbathing by the gate, as if waiting to leave. Dogs would come over and try to get a rise out of him, but he didn’t move. He was morbidly still. He wasn’t wearing a collar, but instead a blue bandana that made him look like he’d come from the groomers. But he hadn’t, obviously. His white patches were browning and his black patches were browning, too. Kate often watched him. Sometimes he sunbathed. Sometimes he played. But he was always here.

Kate first noticed the dalmatian because of his blue bandana. Samuel wore a blue bandana. After Samuel, she would come to the dog park to feel normal, again. The blue bandana was normal. Focusing on a dog at the dog park — instead of the loam or thistle — was normal. So she paid attention to the dalmatian, but never encroached upon it. She imagined the dalmatian loved humans more than he loved dogs. She imagined him to be obsessed with fetch, to be the sort of dog who’d pause dinnertime to pick up a tennis ball. She imagined him to be sweet, to love scratches behind the ear and to snore when he slept.

Today, a woman was with the dalmatian. She sat on a bench right next to where he sunbathed, with some sort of ball-throwing apparatus across her lap. She did not have her headphones in or her sunglasses on. She looked down at the dalmatian and sometimes scratched behind his ears; he would twitch when she did this. This gave Kate a terrible feeling.

This must be his owner. This must be who didn’t groom him, who brought him here to the park and ignored him every day (except today). She didn’t look like someone who would choose a dalmatian. She looked like one of the fence-leaning women with the pitbulls and the shepherds.

Kate wanted to talk to this woman. She wanted to know if this woman deserved the dalmatian, if this woman had earned his company, or if the fact that the dog sat at the gate by his lonesome every day was an indication of her capacity as an owner. She decided to assess the situation. It didn’t occur to Kate that it might be obtrusive to approach a stranger sitting near a dog one had never so much as pet to insinuate that their caretaking abilities were subpar. Of course not. She felt she had some bystander responsibility to inquire, and so she did. She stood, crossed the loam, and crouched by the dalmatian. He sniffed her hand.

“Isn’t he cute?” said the woman. Kate looked up. She evaluated the woman from here, from below. Her skin was pale, but warm. Her nails were long and blue and fake. She was very pretty, but only half-way, like she could take off her prettiness like she could take off her leggings, which were baby-pink and very, very tight. She said, “I’m Lauren.”

“Kate,” Kate said, in brief introduction. She scratched the dalmatian behind the ear. “Very cute. He’s here all the time, isn’t he?”

“He seems to like it,” Lauren said, and then, in a higher voice, “Don’t you?” She looked back to Kate. “Do you come here often?”

“I do.”

“Which one is yours?”

Kate hadn’t expected this question. She looked around again at today’s crowd. She looked inward, at herself. She pointed, randomly, to a group of dogs. “The German shepherd over there. Cookie.” There were two German shepherds.

“Adorable,” Lauren said. One of the shepherds ran over to a fence-woman on the fringes. The other continued to tail a mutt. Kate sent it a telepathic message. Cookie. Play along. “I have a shepherd, too. Charlie. Hard to manage, but too damn cute.”

“Oh,” Kate hummed, “two dogs is hard.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Lauren said.

“Sorry?”

Lauren laughed. “When my ex and I were together, I’d walk his dog with mine and it was totally too much. But you do you, you know? Like, I couldn’t handle that. But whatever floats your boat.”

Kate pointed to the dalmatian. “He isn’t yours?”

“No, no. He just seemed lonely over here. Charlie is probably busy eating the grass.”

Thistle. Not grass. Kate didn’t say that. She said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I just have never seen anyone with him.”

“Neither have I, but I’m not here often.” Lauren shrugged. She didn’t seem to care as much as Kate did. “I knew a girl who brought her dog to the park when she went to work because the dog would shit all over the house when it was alone. Maybe it’s like that.”

Kate didn’t like that idea. She would never do that to the dalmatian.

“Anyway,” Lauren said. “I should go.”

“Of course.” Kate gave her a tight-lipped smile, and took her place on the bench. When Lauren was out of earshot, she made a promise. “I’ll stay until someone comes for you.” She said it to the dalmatian, as if he cared, as if he even understood. Maybe he did.

**

Kate waited. She waited for a really long time. She waited until the sun went down, and then some. And she refused to be one of those women with the sunglasses on and the headphones in — the dalmatian deserved better than that — and in turn she had to find something to fill her time.

So she named the dalmatian. She named him Whale. The naming ceremony went like this: When the park was nearing empty, Kate said aloud, “Your new name is Whale.” And he picked his head up a little at the phrase, and he wagged his tail once, almost like he was smacking the ground, and from then on his ear twitched when she said it, “Whale.” And when no one came for him by seven fourteen in the evening, by the time it was Los-Angeles-cold outside, she decided to take him home. She retrieved Samuel’s old leash and she brought him to the car.

When they left the park, Whale resisted. Kate thought this was sad. The poor dog must have been here so long, to think he wanted to stay, to be content with roadkill for dinner, a communal water bowl, and loam to sleep on. All fine things, but no housed dog would like that kind of life.

She pulled the seatbelt around Whale in the front seat and cracked the window for him. She drove home. He looked green — at least his white patches did — driving up and down the Silver Lake hills.

A car was waiting for them in the driveway. It wasn’t a car Kate saw often, but it was one she recognized. It was boxy and orange. It was her mother’s car. But her mother was dead so it couldn’t have been her mother in it. That meant it was her brother.

Okay. Monty would like Whale.

She nursed Whale down from the passenger seat and through the front door. He slid around on the shiny hardwood floors too loudly. Monty came running from the kitchen.

“Kate,” he said, “You got another dog?”

Whale slipped and fell. He stayed lying down, looking up with sorry brown eyes to Monty. “This is Whale,” Kate said.

Monty pulled his neck back, like the name had given him whiplash. He squatted and inched his tiny, frail hand toward Whale’s muzzle. “Since when?”

“Since an hour ago, actually. He was abandoned in the park.” Kate dropped Whale’s leash and went to the kitchen.

Monty stood and followed, but Whale stayed put.

“That sucks for Whale,” Monty said. “Did someone call you?”

Kate took Samuel’s bowl from the cabinet and turned on the tap. “What do you mean?”

“Like, how did you find out about him?”

Oh. “I’ve just been going to the dog park lately. To read, when it’s nice out. He was always there and I just assumed his owners loved the dog park or something but I waited with him today until the sun set and no one came. So I brought him home.”

Monty stopped doing whatever he was doing. Kate knew he’d stopped because everything was very silent when she turned off the tap. “Kate, you can’t just take home a dog like that.”

Kate frowned. Monty was short and unimposing. For him to be scolding her like this felt inappropriate. It felt like something to laugh about, but Monty wasn’t laughing, he was very serious. “But he was all alone there. And he’s very dirty. I want to give him a bath.” She walked back to the foyer, where Whale remained on the floor, and set down the water bowl for him.

Monty caught up to her. “Clearly, someone has been feeding this dog, or taking care of him somehow. He’s probably microchipped — you know, I bet someone is looking for him.”

Kate walked back to the kitchen. She took a can of pureed pumpkin and a can of Alaskan salmon and dumped them in another bowl while Monty followed her in. She let the silence live and grow a little bit. Perhaps Monty would realize how stupid he sounded if he only listened to himself. She broke the silence, eventually, and said, “Whale has been in the dog park alone, for weeks.”

Monty blocked her way through the kitchen archway. “No, Kate. You’ve been in the dog park, alone, for weeks.” Monty took the bowl from Kate. “I’ll take this to the dog. Go run a bath for him.”

This was very silly of Monty. Why did he care so much? While running the bath, she did not think about what he said. A little time passed, and then Monty came into the bathroom with Whale, who was wagging his tail and licking pumpkin puree from his lips. He stepped right into the lukewarm water and sat, looking at the two of them expectantly, like he’d done this before, like it was routine. Okay. Scrub, Whale said with his eyes. What are you waiting for? 

So Kate untied his blue bandana and scrubbed, and she watched the dirt leave his fur and his white patches become white again. It all happened very fast, like there hadn’t been much dirt caked on after all.

“Someone is looking for him,” Monty said.

Kate frowned. She frowned both externally and internally. When the corners of her lips tugged downwards it felt like her heart sank with them. Down, down, down she went. Away from whatever Monty was insinuating. She said, “He is not a lost dog. And if he is, no one is looking very hard for him. He’s been in the same spot all month and no one’s ever come.”

Monty sighed heavily, humidly. “Do you really get to judge a dog owner, after Samuel?”

Kate held her breath. “Samuel was not my fault.”

“Samuel might say otherwise.”

“I tried to fix the fence.”

“Not hard enough. It was Mom who was always catching the dog and bringing him back in and putting chairs in front of the hole in the fence. Not you.”

“I watched Samuel die.”

“And that sucks, Kate. But I bet you someone is looking for this dog. You don’t just get to take it because you—” Monty paused. He shook his head.

“Because I what?”

“You don’t just get to take him without asking.”

Kate started to feel the cotton of her shirt writhing against her skin, as if the fabric did not want to touch her, as if it recoiled. Everything felt hot, or maybe she felt cold. “Who am I supposed to ask?”

“I’m not saying you’re supposed to ask.”

“Then what are you saying?”

Monty unplugged the drain. Whale was clean now. “I’m not saying anything, Katie. Do what you want.” He stood. “I’ll order us some food.” And then he left.

Kate dried Whale off with a towel. He was still too damp to be running around the house like this, so she took him outside for a little walk. Good, she thought, he’ll get a chance to know the neighborhood. It didn’t occur to her that maybe he already did. It didn’t occur to her until Whale peed on a lamppost, that is, and Kate saw it.

LOST DOG. ANSWERS TO SPOT. LAST SEEN ON ROWENA. WEARING A BLUE BANDANA.

Whale whined below her. “Sad,” she said, “isn’t it?”