Brave New Worlds

compel us to arrange early immortality for those who cannot secure the rights of the unconceived?'

'The problem is that the infant I immortalized has a twin. ' Connie swallows nervously. 'Her mother stole her away before I could perform the second baptism. '

'Stole her away?'

'She fled in the middle of the sacrament. '

'And the second child is likewise arid?'

'Left ovary, two hundred ninety primordials. Right ovary, three hundred ten. '

'Lord. ' A high whistle issues from the archbishop, like water vapor escaping a tea kettle. 'Does she intend to quit the island?'

'I certainly hope not, Your Grace,' says the priest, wincing at the thought. 'She probably has no immediate plans beyond protecting her baby and trying to—'

Connie cuts himself off, intimidated by the sudden arrival of a roly-poly man in a white hooded robe.

'Friar James Wolfe, M. D.,' says the monk.

'Come forward, Friar Doctor James Wolfe,' says Xallibos.

'It would be well if you validated this posthaste. ' James Wolfe draws a parchment sheet from his robe and lays it on the archbishop's desk. Connie steals a glance at the report, hoping to learn the baby's fertility quotient, but the relevant statistics are too faint. 'the priest in question, he's celebrating Mass in' — sliding a loose sleeve upward, James Wolfe consults his wristwatch—'less than an hour. He's all the way over in Brookline. '

Striding back to his desk, the archbishop yanks a silver fountain pen from its holder and decorates the parchment with his famous spidery signature.

'Dominus vobiscum, Friar Doctor Wolfe,' he says, handing over the document.

As Wolfe rushes out of the office, Xallibos steps so close to Connie that his nostrils fill with the archbishop's lemon-scented aftershave lotion.

'That man never has any fun,' says Xallibos, pointing toward the vanishing friar. 'What fun do you have, Father Monaghan?'

'Fun, Your Grace?'

'Do you eat ice cream? Follow the fortunes of the Celtics?' He pronounces 'Celtics' with the hard C mandated by the Seventh Lateran Council.

Connie inhales a hearty quantity of citrus fumes. 'I bake. '

'Bake? Bake what? Bread?'

'Cookies, your Grace. Brownies, cheesecake, pies. For the Feast of the Nativity, I make gingerbread magi. '

'Wonderful. I like my priests to have fun. Listen, no matter what, the rite must be performed. If Angela Dunfey won't come to you, then you must go to her. '

'She'll simply run away again. '

'Perhaps so, perhaps not. I have great faith in you, Father Cornelius Dennis Monaghan. '

'More than I have in myself,' says the priest, biting his inner cheeks so hard that his eyes fill with tears.

'No,' says Kate for the third time that night.

'Yes,' insists Stephen, savoring the dual satisfactions of Kate's thigh beneath his palm and Arbutus rum washing through his brain.

Pinching her cigarette in one hand, Kate strokes Baby Malcolm's forehead with the other, lulling him to sleep. 'It's wicked,' she protests, placing Malcolm on the rug beside the bed. 'A crime against the future. '

Stephen grabs the Arbutus bottle, pours himself another glass, and, adding a measure of Dr. Pepper, takes a greedy gulp. He sets the bottle back on the nightstand, next to Valerie Gallogher's enigmatic flower.

'Screw the unconceived,' he says, throwing himself atop his wife.

On Friday he'd shown the blossom to Gail Whittington, Dougherty High School's smartest science teacher, but her verdict had proved unenlightening. Epigaea repens, 'trailing arbutus,' a species with at least two claims to fame: it is the state flower of the Massachusetts Archipelago, and it has lent its name to the very brand of alcohol Stephen now consumes.

'No,' says Kate once again. She drops her cigarette on the floor, crushes it with her shoe, and wraps her arms around him. 'I'm not ovulating,' she avers, forcing her stiff and slippery tongue into the depths of his mouth. 'Your sperm aren't. '

'Last night, the Holy Father received a vision,' Xallibos announces from the video monitor. 'Pictures straight from Satan's flaming domain. Hell is a fact, friends. It's as real as a stubbed toe. '

Stephen whips off Kate's chemise with all the dexterity of Father Monaghan removing a christening gown. The rum, of course, has much to do with their mutual willingness (four glasses each, only mildly diluted with Dr. Pepper), but beyond the Arbutus the two of them have truly earned this moment. Neither has ever skipped Mass. Neither has ever missed a Sacrament of Extramarital Intercourse. And while any act of nonconceptual love technically lay beyond the Church's powers of absolution, surely Christ would forgive them a solitary lapse. And so they go at it, this sterile union, this forbidden fruitlessness, this coupling from which no soul can come.

'Hedonists dissolving in vats of molten sulfur,' says Xallibos.

The bedroom door squeals open. One of Kate's middle children, Beatrice, a gaunt six-year-old with flaking skin, enters holding a rude toy boat whittled from a hunk of bark.

'Look what I made in school yesterday!'

'We're busy,' says Kate, pulling the tattered muslin sheet over her nakedness.

'Do you like my boat, Stephen?' asks Beatrice.

He slams a pillow atop his groin. 'Lovely, dear. '

'Go back to bed,' Kate commands her daughter.

'Onanists drowning in lakes of boiling semen,' says Xallibos.

Beatrice fixes Stephen with her receding eyes. 'Can we sail it tomorrow on Parson's Pond?'

'Certainly. Of course. Please go away. '

'Just you and me, right, Stephen? Not Claude or Tommy or Yolanda or anybody. '

'Flaying machines,' says Xallibos, 'peeling the damned like ripe bananas. '

'Do you want a spanking?' seethes Kate. 'that's exactly what you're going to get, young lady, the worst spanking of your whole life!'

The child issues an elaborate shrug and strides off in a huff.

'I love you,' says Stephen, removing the pillow from his privates like a chef lifting the lid from a stew pot.

Again they press together, throwing all they have into it, every limb and gland and orifice, no holds barred, no positions banned.

'Unpardonable,' Kate groans.

'Unpardonable,' Stephen agrees. He's never been so excited. His entire body is an appendage to his loins.

'We'll be damned,' she says.

'Forever,' he echoes.

'Kiss me,' she commands.

'Farewell, friends,' says Xallibos. 'And keep those kiddies coming!'

Wrestling the baptismal font from the trunk of his car, Connie ponders the vessel's resemblance to a birdbath — a place, he muses, for pious sparrows to accomplish their avian ablutions. As he sets the vessel on his shoulder and starts away, its edges digging into his flesh, a different metaphor suggests itself. But if the font is Connie's Cross, and Constitution Road his Via Dolorosa, where does that leave his upcoming mission to Angela Dunfey? Is he about to perform some mysterious act of vicarious atonement?

'Morning, Father. '

He slips the font from his shoulder, standing it up upright beside a fire hydrant. His parishioner Valerie Gallogher weaves amid the mob, dressed in a threadbare woolen parka.

'Far to go?' she asks brightly.

'End of the block. '