Bible Stories for Adults by James Morrow Page B

Think of what you’re saying. Think of Kristin.”
    â€œWe need a formal meeting,” I offered, trying to sound neutral but inwardly sharing Billy’s horror. “All eight of us. Together.”
    Wesley licked sweat from his upper lip. “Tonight? After dinner?”
    â€œTonight,” moaned Billy. “After dinner,” he wailed.
    Â 
    New York City, they say, is the place on our planet where you’re most likely to run into someone you know. When I first ran into Kendra Kelty, of course, I didn’t know that I knew her, nor did she know that she knew me.
    We were waiting to purchase tickets in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. I was bound for Boston, having recently endured a math teachers’ conference on “Einstein, General Relativity, and the Fifth Grade.” Kendra was returning to Philadelphia. She played in the orchestra: a flautist. All around us, itinerant peddlers hawked worthless wristwatches and dubious ashtrays. Derelicts hugged the tiled walls, talking to people who weren’t there.
    I was drawn to Kendra from the moment I saw her. Fleshly sparks united us. It was not a sexual attraction—not in its essence—though surely that was part of it: her mouth was so erotic it should have been clothed. We abandoned our respective lines spontaneously and in perfect synchronization. Feigning hunger, we wandered toward a vending machine. Kendra inserted a fistful of quarters, pushed a button, and obtained a watercress sandwich she did not want to eat and a cup of coffee she did not want to drink. She was at once svelte and earthy, qualities I had previously regarded as mutually exclusive.
    When my turn came, the mechanized cornucopia gave me a candy bar, a fig stick, and some carbonated ice tea.
    â€œYour hands don’t match,” was the first thing Kendra Kelty ever said to me.
    â€œVery observant,” I replied. “This is the hand I was born with,” I continued, touching her shoulder tentatively with my right index finger. “And this one”—I removed the microcomputer that concealed the scar encircling my left wrist—“comes from an organ bank.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œShark.”
    â€œA shark attacked you?”
    â€œNo. In truth, a boring dog bite followed by a mundane infection followed by a routine transplant.”
    An irrefutable fact hung in the air: neither of us would be going to our respective home cities that night.
    â€œI’m not all myself either,” Kendra confessed. “Look into my eyes.”
    â€œI’ve done that.”
    â€œLook closer.”
    I did. Kendra’s left eye was the color of jade. Her right was the color of pea soup.
    â€œGlider crash,” she said, touching her left tear duct. “A sliver of glass. The whole shebang had to come out, retina included, plus nerves and a gob of visual cortex. It took them two months to find a match this good.”
    We ventured into the nocturnal city. Forty-second Street was a loud and ghoulish bazaar. Flashing lights; flesh for sale; pay as you come. We talked, testing our rapport. When a scream issued from the nearest sex boutique, I put my arm around Kendra. The sparks oscillating between us grew hotter.
    That same night, Wesley Ransom joined our company. Kendra and I had alighted in a twenty-four-hour café, the Holistic Donut. The waitress was rude. Wesley entered on the run. He rushed toward us like a nail encountering a magnet.
    â€œI was down in the Village,” Wesley panted. “The Fawnshaven
Lear
opens tonight,” he shouted, displaying his ticket, “and suddenly I find myself leaving the line”—his voice built to a shriek—“and
sprinting
uptown! I hate
sprinting!
”
    â€œLet me make a wild guess,” I said. “Part of you is not you.”
    â€œCorrect.”
    â€œWhich part?”
    â€œHeart.”
    The truth took hold of me, scary and exhilarating as the