Only Begotten Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

elders falsely accusing Susanna of lying with a young lover … their treachery unmasked … Daniel demanding they be cut in two.
    A sharp section of wall had struck the black man’s abdomen, bisecting him and simultaneously pinching the wound shut, sealing his torso as if it were a piece of ravioli. “Are you a donor?” Billy asked. What terrible things God’s servants were called upon to behold. “‘For even now the angel hath received the sentence of God to cut thee in two,’” Billy quoted somberly. People were wrong about angels. Angels were not androgynous choirmasters with lutes and wings. Angels spread judgment and doom.
    “Gahhh …” The man’s jaw flapped up and down like a grouper’s. A strained articulation, but it definitely sounded like yes.
    “Were you contributing, brother?” The smoke sucked tears from Billy’s good eye. The fire bellowed like the Red Dragon of the Revelation.
    “Urggg …” The sinner surveyed his divided self with a combination of horror and incredulity. He was losing only a little blood: a surprisingly neat mutilation. He nodded.
    “A harsh lesson.”
    “Never … happened … before …” Tears rolled down his dark cheeks.
    “The Savior awaits your acceptance, brother.”
    The donor was opening up now. Relief blossomed on his face as the heavy bleeding started. Sinful flesh on the outside, and now his sinful colon spilled forth, now his sinful liver. Had he found Jesus? It seemed so—Billy could feel it: the donor had lost his seed and gained his soul.
    A foulness clawed the air as the saved man’s bowels gave up their contents, and suddenly he was dead.
    Marcus Bass was right, Murray decided as he piloted his Saab down Ventnor Avenue—you didn’t know you wanted certain things until they became yours. His cell cluster slept beside him, her ectogenesis machine constrained by a seat belt. He whistled a Fiddler on the Roof medley. Matchmaker, matchmaker. If I were a rich man. He slapped his palm joyfully against the steering wheel. Inverse parthenogenesis did wonderful things for you; it hit you like music, like an idea, like a kiss from God.
    Rain spritzed out of the sky. Murray turned on the wipers. The blades sketched ugly muddy streaks on the windshield. He didn’t care. The glorious day kept rushing at him, bright memories refracted through the bell jar of his newfound fatherhood. Regular infant formula, is that what Dr. Bass had said? Yes, yes, all it could eat, a hundred meals a day for a ravenous placenta.
    As he entered Margate, an explosion shattered the dusk. He pulled over, stopping by a boarded-up drugstore. Had his cell cluster heard the blast? Was she frightened? He got out. A red glow filled the seaward sky like a misplaced sunset. Undoubtedly this disaster mattered to someone, to lots of people, but not to him, not to a man with an embryo.
    Driving away, Murray patted the jar. The glass vibrated with the comforting thumps of the oxygenation process. Hush, little girl. Don’t be afraid. Pop’s here.
    He maneuvered through the bleak urban battlefield called Atlantic City, then headed over the bridge. Across the inlet lay the northern arm of the famous Boardwalk, at one time a prestigious site for vacations, but then had come jet travel and cosmopolitanism, and the wealthy had begun summering on the Riviera. There was talk now of resurrecting the place through Las Vegas-style casinos. Legalized gambling, people said, would save Atlantic City.
    Lured by the full moon, waves grabbed at the rocks along Brigantine Point, as if trying to gain purchase. Harsh winds wrapped around Murray’s lighthouse, peeling a shingle from the cottage roof, hurling it across the bay. Hunching over his embryo to shield her from the rain, he ran into the cottage and set the womb beside his propane-gas heater.
    Fatherhood changes you for the better, Murray realized. In the old days, he’d always climbed the tower at a measured pace, but now he took the steps two at a