Brave New Worlds

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 is 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—"
    "That young woman at Mass this morning, the one who ran away. . . "
    "She went crazy because it was twins. " Kate slurps down her remaining rum. The ice fragments clink against each other. "If it'd been just the one, she probably could've coped. "
    "Well, yes, of course," says Stephen, gesturing toward Baby Malcolm. "But suppose one of your newborns. . . "
    "Heaven is forever, Stephen," says Kate, filling her mouth with ice, "and Hell is just as long. " She chews, her molars grinding the ice. Dribbles of rum-tinted water spill from her lips. "You'd better get to church. "
    "Farewell, friends," says Xallibos as the theme music swells. He dandles a Korean three-year-old on his knee. "And keep those kiddies coming!"
    The path to the front door takes Stephen through the cramped and fetid living room—functionally the nursery. All is quiet, all is well. The fourteen children, one for every other year of Kate's post-pubescence, sleep soundly. Nine-year-old Roger is quite likely his, product of the time Stephen and Kate got their cycles in synch; the boy boasts Stephen's curly blond hair and riveting green eyes. Difficult as it is, Stephen refuses to accord Roger any special treatment—no private trips to the frog pond, no second candy cane at Christmas. A good stepfather didn't indulge in favoritism.
    Stephen pulls on his mended galoshes, fingerless gloves, and torn pea jacket. Ambling out of the apartment, he joins the knot of morose pedestrians as they shuffle along Winthrop Street. A fog descends, a steady rain falls: reverberations from the Deluge. Pushed by expectant mothers, dozens of shabby, black-hooded baby buggies squeak mournfully down the asphalt. The sidewalks belong to adolescent girls, gang after gang, gossiping among themselves and stomping on puddles as they show off their pregnancies like Olympic medals.
    Besmirched by two decades of wind and drizzle, a limestone Madonna stands outside the Church of the Immediate Conception. Her expression lies somewhere between a smile and a smirk. Stephen climbs the steps, enters the narthex, removes his gloves, and, dipping his fingertips into the nearest font, decorates the air with the Sign of the Cross.
    Every city, Stephen teaches his students at Cardinal Dougherty High School, boasts its own personality. Extroverted Rio, pessimistic Prague, paranoid New York. And Boston Isle? What sort of psyche inhabits the