Publisher’s NoteTo Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)Introduction Laura Furman, Series EditorYour Duck Is My Duck Deborah Eisenberg, FenceSugarcane Derek Palacio, The Kenyon ReviewThe Summer People Kelly Link, Tin HouseLeaving Maverley Alice Munro, The New YorkerWhite Carnations Polly Rosenwaike, Prairie SchoonerSail Tash Aw, A Public SpaceAnecdotes Ann Beattie, GrantaLay My Head L. Annette Binder, Fairy Tale ReviewHe Knew Donald Antrim, The New YorkerThe Visitor Asako Serizawa, The Antioch ReviewWhere Do You Go? Samar Farah Fitzgerald, New England ReviewAphrodisiac Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, The New YorkerTwo Opinions Joan Silber, EpochThey Find the Drowned Melinda Moustakis, Hobart: another literary journalThe Mexican George McCormick, EpochTiger Nalini Jones, One StoryPerou Lily Tuck, EpochSinkhole Jamie Quatro, PloughsharesThe History of Girls Ayse Papatya Bucak, WitnessThe Particles Andrea Barrett, Tin HouseReading The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013 The Jurors on Their Favorites Lauren Groff Edith Pearlman Jim ShepardWriting The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013 The Writers on Their Work

Deborah Eisenberg
Your Duck Is My Duck

WAY BACK—OH, NOT ALL that long ago, actually, just a couple of years, but back before I’d gotten a glimpse of the gears and levers and pulleys that dredge the future up from the earth’s core to its surface—I was going to a lot of parties.
And at one of these parties there was a couple, Ray and Christa, who hung out with various people I sort of knew, or, anyhow, whose names I knew. We’d never had much of a conversation, just hey there, kind of thing, but I’d seen them at parties over the years and at that particular party they seemed to forget that we weren’t actually friends ourselves.
Ray and Christa had a lot of money, a serious quantity, and they were also both very good-looking, so they could live the way they felt like living. Sometimes they split up, and one of them, usually Ray, was with someone else for a while, always a splashy, public business that made their entourage scatter like flummoxed chickens, but inevitably they got back together, and afterwards, you couldn’t detect a scar.