The Front Runner

I wish we both had children."
    "I've been thinking about that," said Billy. "I'm not laughing."
    "Having kids was the least unpleasant part of being married," I said. "Of course they could be a pain in the ass, but it had its rewards too. You come home at night, and they run to you and say Daddy, Daddy."
    We came to a little stream that was rushing, foaming full. It boiled around the rocks past us. We jumped over it, and kept on.
    I always used to think that living in your children was an illusion," said Billy. "But I changed my mind. Like with little Julie. Supposing she was yours. If something happened to you, that would be all I'd have left of you. It'd be something. I wouldn't be alone, I could do things for her. And if she were mine, you could feel that way ... It isn't you that lives on, it's the other person."
    We were both trying to contain ourselves, not looking at each other much. We weren't even holding hands or anything. Billy sauntered along, hands in pockets, kicking at small stones, reaching up to pull leaves from the trees.
    "I don't suppose an adoption agency would give us the time of day," I said.
    "Not a chance. Dad handled two lesbian cases and one case of a gay. All three of them wanted to adopt. The agencies said no and the courts said no. The idea is that you have a right to be brought up straight."
    "Anyway," I said, "it would be better to have our own."
    "Sure," said Billy. "But if there was some little gay kid out there somewhere, abandoned like me, and they would give him to me, I'd take him. And I'd have my own too, if I could."
    "Look, are you serious?" I said.
    "Of course I'm serious," he said. "I have a very positive image about being a father. I really think I'd like it. You and I would both be good fathers."
    "Well, I've been looking into it a little," I said. "That gloomy conversation we had out on Fire Island started me thinking. We can, for instance, buy a child on the black market."
    "Darling, what would we buy him with?" said Billy, grinning. "We'd have to hock all my trophies, and I'd lose my amateur status."
    I smiled too. I had a lump in my throat, so it was hard.
    "Then there's something that some couples do who
    have infertility problems," I said. "Like, say the wife is sterile or something. They find a female donor, and the. husband impregnates her, and then she agrees to turn the child over to them."
    Billy stopped and looked at me. "That's not a bad idea. One catch, though," he said.
    "What?" I said.
    "I'm not getting into bed with any foxes. Not even to have children."
    "Artificial insemination," I said.
    Billy smiled slowly. His hair was iridescent with the fine mist coming down. "Weird," he said. "Sooner or later you end up making deals with women. It's an injustice, really." We walked on. "But . . . what're you going to do?" He kicked another rock. "How do we find one of these brood mares?"
    "How do I know? Run some kind of blind ad in the papers, maybe. Screen the applicants. Pick some broad who is typey and intelligent. Make her sign the papers before she's inseminated, so she can't walk off with the baby."
    "That sounds complicated. Shell want money."
    "Yeah, we'd have to pay all her hospital expenses too."
    Billy ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head. "It sounds like the kind of thing we can't do until after the Olympics. Assuming I get there."
    "Something else too. Supposing we find out, after it's too late, that babies need mothers too?"
    Billy shook his head. We were coming to another little stream, and stepped across on some broad flat rocks. Billy slipped and got one shoe wet. He walked on with his shoe squishing. We were coming toward the fork where the side trail branched off, the one we had taken on that first spring morning a year ago.
    "That doesn't worry me too much," he said. "Dad and I talked a lot about that. His theory is that the important thing is a lot of attention and cuddling and touching. He doesn't think it much matters who does it. When my mother left, he was stuck with looking after me and he said he was afraid even to pick me up. He had a babysitter during the day, but she
    wasn't paying much attention to me. He said that I got kind of funny for a while there. I didn't notice things, and I was like a little retarded. I didn't walk till late." Finally he got over being nervous, and he started paying a lot of attention to me. He'd get up early in the morning, and spend all evening with me if he could. He said finally I snapped