Only Begotten Daughter Read Free Page B

daughter: why the provocative low angle? A stock broker photographs his house: why does he stand so far away, why this hunger for context? Snapshots were an undeciphered language, and Murray was determined to crack the code; his book would be the Rosetta stone of home photography, the Talmud of the Instamatic. “It’s about my experiences serving Photorama customers.”
    “Oh, yeah—I’ve seen that place,” said the lesbian. “Tell me, is it true people are always shooting each other screwing?”
    “A few of our clients do that, yes.”
    “That confirms my suspicions.”
    “It gets even stranger. We have this real estate agent who does nothing but animals who’ve been … well, squashed.”
    “Gross.”
    “Squirrels, skunks, groundhogs, cats. Roll after roll.”
    “So you can really get into human nature by seeing what everyone brings to Photorama? I’d never thought of that. Heavy.”
    Murray smiled. His book might have a readership after all. “I also run that lighthouse on Brigantine Point.”
    “Lighthouse? You really run a lighthouse?”
    “Uh-huh. We don’t light it much anymore.”
    “Could I let the baby see it sometime? Sounds educational.”
    “Sure. I’m Murray Katz.” He extended his hand.
    “Georgina Sparks.” She gave him a jaunty handshake. “Tell me honestly, do I strike you as insane? It’s insane to try raising a kid alone, everybody says, especially if you’re a dyke. I was living with my lover and, matter of fact, we split up over the whole idea. I’m real big on babies. Laurie thinks they’re grotesque.”
    “You’re not insane.” She was insane, he thought. “Isn’t ‘dyke’ an offensive word?”
    “If you said it, Murray Katz”—Georgina grinned slyly—“I’d kick your teeth in.”
    A rhythmic clacking intruded, Mrs. Kriebel’s heels striking marble. She held out an insulated test tube with the numerals 247 etched on its shaft.
    “Oh, wow!” Georgina seized the tube, pressing it against her chest. “Know what this is, Mur? It’s my baby! ”
    “Neat.”
    Mrs. Kriebel smiled. “Congratulations.”
    “Maybe I should’ve held out for a mathematician.” Georgina eyed the tube with mock suspicion. “Little Pisces mathematician tooling around the apartment, chewing on her calculator? Cute, huh?”
    The elevator door opened to reveal a pudgy man in a lab coat. He motioned Murray over with quick, urgent gestures, as if he’d just found a pair of desirable seats at the movies. “You made the right choice,” Murray told Georgina as he started away.
    “You really think so?”
    “Marine biology’s a fine career,” he called after the mother-to-be and stepped into the elevator.
    “I’ll bring the baby around,” she called back.
    The door thumped closed. The elevator ascended, gravity grabbing at the Big Mac in Murray’s stomach.
    “What we’ve essentially got here,” said Gabriel Frostig, medical director of the Preservation Institute, “is an egg identification problem.”
    “Chicken egg?” said Murray. A bell rang. Second floor.
    “Human egg. Ovum.” Dr. Frostig guided Murray into a cramped and dingy lab packed with technological bric-a-brac. “We’re hoping you’ll tell us where it came from.”
    Dominating the dissection table, chortling merrily like a machine for making some particularly loose and messy variety of candy, was the most peculiar contraption Murray had ever seen. At its heart lay a bell jar, the glass so pure and gleaming that tapping it would, Murray imagined, produce not a simple bong but a fugue. A battery-powered pump, a rubber bellows, and three glass bottles sat on a wooden platform, encircling the jar like gifts spread around some gentile’s Christmas tree. “What’s that? ”
    “Your most recent donation.”
    One bottle was empty, the second contained what looked like blood, the third a fluid suggesting milk. “And you’re keeping it in a, er …?”
    “An ectogenesis machine.”
    Murray peered through the