“As he played it off to Nat, Archy knew – felt, like the baby-shaped ache in his left arm – that neither his ability nor his willingness to care for Rolando English for an hour, a day, a week, had anything whatsoever to do with his willingness or ability to be a father to the forthcoming child now putting the finishing touches on its respiratory and endocrine systems in the dark laboratory of his wife’s womb. Wiping.”
