"James Morrow - Auspicious Eggs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrow James)

"Stop!" cries Connie.
"Angela!" shouts Lorna.
"No!" yells the altar boy.
For someone who has recently given birth to twins, Angela is amazingly
spry, rushing pell-mell past the stupefied congregation and straight through
the narthex.
"Please!" screams Connie.
But already she is out the door, bearing her unsaved daughter into the
teeming streets of Boston Isle.
****
At 8:17 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, Stephen O'Rourke's fertility
reaches its weekly peak. The dial on his wrist tells him so, buzzing like a
tortured hornet as he scrubs his teeth with baking soda. _Skreee,_ says the
sperm counter, reminding Stephen of his ineluctable duty. _Skreee, skreee:_ go
find us an egg.
He pauses in the middle of a brush stroke and, without bothering to
rinse his mouth, strides into the bedroom.
Kate lies on the sagging mattress, smoking an unfiltered cigarette as
she balances her nightly dose of iced Arbutus rum on her stomach. Baby Malcolm
cuddles against his mother, gums fastened onto her left nipple. She stares at
the far wall, where the cracked and scabrous plaster frames the video monitor,
its screen displaying the regular Sunday night broadcast of _Keep Those
Kiddies Coming._ Archbishop Xallibos, seated, dominates a TV studio appointed
like a day-care center: stuffed animals, changing table, brightly colored
alphabet letters. Preschoolers crawl across the prelate's Falstaffian body,
sliding down his thighs and swinging from his arms as if he's a piece of
playground equipment.
"Did you know that a single act of onanism kills up to four hundred
million babies in a matter of seconds?" asks Xallibos from the monitor. "As
Jesus remarks in the Gospel According to Saint Andrew, 'Masturbation is
murder.'"
Stephen coughs. "I don't suppose you're..."
His wife thrusts her index finger against her pursed lips. Even when
engaged in shutting him out, she still looks beautiful to Stephen. Her huge
eyes and high cheekbones, her elegant swanlike neck. "Shhh -- "
"Please check," says Stephen, swallowing baking soda.
Kate raises her bony wrist and glances at her ovulation gauge. "Not for
three days. Maybe four."
"Damn."
He loves her so dearly. He wants her so much -- no less now than when
they received the Sacrament of Qualified Monogamy. It's fine to have a
connubial conversation, but when you utterly adore your wife, when you crave
to comprehend her beyond all others, you need to speak in flesh as well.
"Will anyone deny that Hell's hottest quadrant is reserved for those
who violate the rights of the unconceived?" asks Xallibos, playing peek-a-boo
with a cherubic toddler. "Who will dispute that contraception, casual sex, and
nocturnal emissions place their perpetrators on a one-way cruise to
Perdition?"
"Honey, I have to ask you something," says Stephen.
"Shhh -- "