Blameless in Abaddon by James Morrow Read Free Book Online

Heaven bistro), though naturally it took Godform to finish her cure.
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    â€œDo you believe this crap?” asked Martin. “This business about patronizing every attraction—do you believe it’s true?”
    â€œAs long as we’ve come all the way to Orlando,” said Corinne, cleaning her sunglasses with the edge of her muslin blouse, “we should probably play by the rules.”
    Thus began a long, tedious morning of standing in lines. The wait was twenty-three minutes for the Chariots of Ezekiel ferris wheel, thirty-one for the Whore of Babylon funhouse, twenty-eight for the Stations of the Cross steam train, and seventeen for the Garden of Eden petting zoo. Of these concessions only the last gave the couple any pleasure, Corinne achieving instant rapport with the sheep and goats, Martin taking lascivious delight in the ceramic Eve, her breasts scarcely concealed by her long flaxen hair. Oddly enough, there was no line at the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse carousel. Passing through the gate, Corinne selected one of the seven Famine stallions, all bones and sagging skin, while Martin picked a War mount, its flanks arrayed in spiked armor. They consciously declined to ride the animals intended for Death (not a horse but a horse’s skeleton, carved from cherrywood and painted white) and Pestilence (a roan mare speckled with buboes). As the carousel reached top speed, the steam calliope screeched out “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
    More waiting—a full half hour for the Heaven to Hell roller coaster, an admittedly thrilling experience that lifted you past airborne choirs of android angels, then dropped you into fiery chasms where screaming adulterers writhed in pools of molten sulfur and spitted gluttons roasted over slow fires. The hiatus required for a berth on Noah’s Ark, thirty-six minutes, was also worth it. There you sat, looking through your private porthole at mobs of drowning audio-animatronic sinners while the rain poured down and the restless seas pitched you to and fro.
    At 1:45 P.M. the couple dropped into the Loaves and Fishes café. Martin decided to try the specialty of the house, haddock on sourdough. His wife ordered a Caesar salad. The food arrived promptly. To Martin it looked grotesque. These days most things looked grotesque. The intractable fact of his illness had become a kind of theatrical scrim, imparting a pall to whatever met his gaze. His eyes drifted across the table, moving from the twisted salt cellar to the sinister napkin dispenser to the menacing fillet on his plate.
    â€œWhat would your father have made of the Celestial City?” asked Corinne.
    Martin stared at his malformed mug of coffee. “I think he would’ve hated it. Sure, Dad could be pretty corny at times, having his students make gravestone rubbings and everything, but he was never vulgar. This place is vulgar. What are we doing here?”
    Corinne raised her sunglasses, pushing them into her auburn hair. A wave of romantic longing washed through him, so pure and fierce he imagined it joining forces with the I-125 seeds to cleanse his prostate of cancer. How wise he’d been to delay marriage until the right woman came along; how astute of him to have passed up Robin’s endearing sense of humor and Brittany’s mastery of Chinese cooking and fellatio.
    â€œWe’re here to make you well.”
    â€œFat chance.”
    She bit into a carrot stick. Memories rushed past his mind’s eye like snatches of scenery glimpsed by a man riding the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse carousel. The two of them walking hand-in-hand across a railroad trestle in the Poconos. Reading to each other from the
Kama Sutra.
Playing chess in the nude.
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But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in His mercy lend her grace
,
The Lady of Shalott.”
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    â€œYou have a lovely face.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œI’m