The Grand Ballast (20 page)

Bode froze, his finger still in the key ring. His
chest felt tight. “I didn’t see it,” he said quietly.

“
You didn’t?” A childlike softness
to Kilroy’s voice. Wonder in it.

Bode closed his eyes and let himself slip, for just
a moment, into the past. “I thought you were…incredible.”

“
And now?”

Bode didn’t answer. He leaned over the desk, under
the pretext of smoothing the folded clothes. Pulled the keys out
completely and gripped them to keep them from jingling. Guided them
to his own pocket, certain Kilroy was watching. But Kilroy didn’t
say anything, and when Bode turned around again, Kilroy was staring
at the ceiling.

Kilroy cleared his throat. “You know what doesn’t
open on its own? The heart.”

“
Kilroy…”

“
No, no; it’s all roped up in
veins.”

Bode took a step toward the door, keeping a hand in
his pocket to hold the keys still.

Kilroy coughed. “I can still talk a good game, even
blasted out of my skull.”

Bode took another step. The keys clinked. A slight
sound, but Kilroy’s head snapped round. His expression looked too
sharp for drunkenness. He didn’t speak for a long moment. “Bode?
I’m going to need my keys.”

Bode didn’t move.

“
Now, please.” Kilroy’s mouth hung
slack. He looked more confused than angry. “Or I’ll call for
Lein.”

There was a buzzing at the very base of Bode’s
skull, and his heart seemed to be squeezing blood out with a
terrible effort. The keys wouldn’t do him a bit of good if Lein
interrupted him in the process of freeing Valen and LJ.

He only had one choice. He ought to have done it the
moment he’d stepped into this car.

He walked to the desk. Opened the drawer where
Kilroy kept the pistol. “They’re in my jacket pocket,” Kilroy said.
But Bode kept searching the drawer.

“
Noooo! Bode.” Kilroy sat up,
looking comically astounded. He began to laugh. “What are you
looking for?”

Bode ransacked the drawer but saw no sign of the
gun. He yanked the drawer out and emptied it onto the floor.

“
This?” Kilroy asked from the
bed.

Bode looked up. Kilroy was holding the pistol,
waving it limply.

Anger cut through Bode like a blade, eclipsing his
fear. He clutched the edge of the desk. Kilroy was laughing again.
He rolled his head back and made a soft sound behind his closed
lips. “You’re such a charming traitor. What did you think you’d do?
Shoot me?”

Bode didn’t answer.

Kilroy sighed and pointed the gun
at Bode. “Now I suppose I have to decide whether to shoot
you
.”

So maybe this is how it
ends.
Bode thought of Valen sinking
peacefully into the water, ready to die.

Deep breath. Revel in the parts of the dance that
you fear.

Valen’s eyes flashing open, the jet of bubbles, the
terrified thrashing.

If I die, he stays a prisoner.

“
Pow. Pow.” Kilroy lowered the
weapon. Bode didn’t dare breathe. “Come here.” Kilroy gestured with
the gun. “Come here. I want to tell you something.”

Bode glanced at the door.

“
I
said
come here.”

Bode walked slowly over to
him.
Deep breath. You know this dance. You
just don’t know how it ends.

“
It’s about art,” Kilroy
said.

“
What about art?” Bode felt like he
was breaking from the bones outward.

Kilroy settled back. “I used to think ambition was
what made the world. I thought it was admirable, a sort of magic,
the worst of all the things we lost. But it feeds on itself. You
cannot achieve, own, or love one thing without wanting more.”

“
I guess.”

“
I keep remembering,” Kilroy went
on, “that night you told me about your new show. How you wanted to
make people
feel
,
wanted to give them something that challenged them.”

Bode remembered that night too clearly.

“
I told you that making
people happy could be just as noble a pursuit as making them hurt.”
Kilroy clutched at the sheet. “But I never really believed that.
When I look back at the old, old paintings or stories or dances …
Art wasn’t short bursts of entertainment—morsels that satisfied the
immediate hunger without touching the larger ache. It got under
people’s skins, wove itself through their history and souls. It dug
for the smaller truths—truths that go beyond hero and villain,
beyond beauty and isolation. It used to point a finger at all that
we are—good, bad, and everything in between.”

Bode closed his
eyes.
Please stop. I don’t want to think
about this now.

“
It didn’t sh—shhhh…”
Kilroy chuckled. “Shhhhelter us from reality. It devastated us with
its—its simple truths, and then, when we were on our knees from
something as ruthless as an impeccably accurate grape in a still
life, or a casual, familiar evil buried in the heart of a lead
character—only then would it comfort us. Offer some small hope. But
it was never meant to tuck us in and kiss our foreheads and lie to
us about the goodness of the world and in ourselves and the ones we
love. It would torture us until we pushed it aside, but we kept
coming back for more—peering between our fingers like children.” He
glanced at Bode, a woundedness in his expression. “Why did we stop
making things like
that
?”

“
Maybe…” Bode kept his gaze on the
gun. It didn’t look so threatening. It could have been a toy.
“Maybe you were right, and there is some value to changing the way
people see, just for a moment. Rather than forever.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. Kilroy didn’t raise
the gun.

“
Do you remember when we went
to
Mortuarium
?”
Bode continued. “I didn’t think it was beautiful. I didn’t
enjoy
it, but I felt
something…sickness and fascination. Maybe people aren’t after the
experience itself. Maybe they want the moment they get to step back
into reality. Their boredom is familiar. They feel safe
there.”
They are happy at home.
“You told me it took as much talent to convey joy
as pain. And then…” He shook his head and smiled, even as something
perilously close to a sob broke from him. “Then it was like you
stopped being interested in—in truth, or in connection. The people
who watch your show—what do you show them besides
cruelty?

“
I don’t show them cruelty.” Kilroy
stretched, rapping the wall gently with the barrel of the gun. “I
show
you
cruelty.
What I show them is exactly what they want to see: two bodies
jammed together.”

“
But—”

“
That’s all it is,” Kilroy
interrupted calmly. He folded his hands on his chest, the gun
underneath them, and looked upward. “They watch Sibyata and
Roulette, waiting to see death defying feats. And then I make them
laugh by turning it into fucking. By jamming two bodies together
and saying that’s all it ever was. They watch you dance; they’re
mesmerized. They know true talent when they see it, even if they
are dull, brick-faced nothings. Then I stick my cock down your
throat, or LJ does. I’m not showing them something that will last.
I’m showing them the only thing that
has
lasted. Two bodies—” He stuffed
the gun under the pillow and mimed squashing and kneading something
between his palms. “—jammed together.”

“
That isn’t always what you
thought.”

“
No?” Kilroy shut his eyes. “What
did I think?”

Bode stared down at Kilroy’s slack face and thought
about wrapping his hands around the pale throat. About covering
that face with a pillow and throwing all of his weight onto it and
not getting up until Kilroy stopped moving. About struggling to get
the gun from under the pillow and shooting until the mattress was
full of holes and coated in blood.

I can’t be responsible for another death. I
can’t.

“
Do you love me?” Kilroy
asked softly, cracking one eye open.

Bode shook his head. “I could never love
anyone who treats me the way you do.”

Small lines appeared between Kilroy’s closed
eyes. He took a deep breath, huddled against the pillows. “But you
understand me. Don’t you?”

Bode nodded slowly. “Maybe a little.”

“
Better than
anyone?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Perhaps,” Kilroy murmured,
turning onto his side, away from Bode, “I don’t care what they
see.”

WHAT A GIFT

Then.

“
Look at this.” Kilroy slid
the pamphlet across the table as Bode sat down with a bowl of
cereal.

Bode had been on edge all morning. Outside
the rain spun down in gleaming threads; he couldn’t even take a
walk to ease the tension building inside him. He didn’t look at the
pamphlet at first, just shoved a bite of cereal into his mouth.
Finally he reached out and pulled it closer to him.

Come visit beautiful Belvedere Farm!

Bode’s chewing slowed.

The nation’s most INTERACTIVE X-show.

On the front cover was a rolling farmscape
under a bright blue sky, and a grinning couple with their two happy
children. Bode opened the pamphlet.

There was an image of a
long line of naked humans on all fours. They wore black and
white-spotted hoods and had tails swinging from plugs in their
asses. They were hooked up to a milking machine.
Learn to milk a cow!
read
the caption. Another image showed a family in a hay wagon being
pulled by a team of eight human horses in leather hoods and boots
shaped like hooves.
Go for a
hayride!

He lingered on a picture of
a “henhouse”—people with feathers covering their skin, sitting on
nests with their eyes closed.
Gather
eggs!

A pen full of men and women
with curly rubber tails, covered in mud and eating from a
trough.
Meet our prize hogs.

Bode forced himself to laugh. “What are you
doing with this?” He slid the pamphlet back to Kilroy. “It’s
disgusting.”

“
I think I might like to
visit.”

Bode picked up his spoon. “You can’t be
serious.”

“
Why not?”

“
Because the X-shows are,
first of all, the trashiest things that exist in the world. And
this one in particular looks…perverted.”

Kilroy chuckled. “Well, I think the
perversion is the point.”

“
I had no idea you’d be
into stuff like that. Gross.”

He’d been in a lousy mood
lately. The show at the Little Comet was still going fairly well,
but audience numbers had been dropping, and Bode found it difficult
to concentrate on his performance each night. Kilroy was gone
often—with Driscoll—and it drove Bode crazy. J
ealousy was horrible—a clingy, needy thing that grew worse
with every night Kilroy came home late, smelling like sickness and
scented candles. Every phone call Kilroy took to another
room.

Bode refused to be this
pathetic. If Kilroy was in love with someone else, Bode wasn’t
going to clutch at his sleeve and weep and beg him to
stay.

But it rankled because he
was
better
for
Kilroy than Driscoll. He offered Kilroy more. Driscoll was flimsy.
Bode imagined whatever art the man made was flaccid,
easy
.

Bode ought to give Kilroy
an ultimatum, but his burrowed-in fear of losing Kilroy stopped
him. What if he’d overestimated his own influence?

“
I find it beautiful.”
Kilroy tipped his chair back. “It’s simply the human body as shared
property. How is it so different from what you do?”

“
Excuse
me?” Bode hovered his spoon a few inches from his
lips, too shocked for a second to be angry. “Care to
explain?”

“
You use your body as a way
to connect with others. To speak to them. In that way, your body
becomes a gift everyone shares.” Kilroy flicked the brochure across
the table and spread his arms over the back of his chair. “The
world suffers now because people hold onto their bodies and their
souls instead of giving them freely. Performers in the X-shows
offer themselves completely. That
awakens
people.”

“
I would never want to
awaken anyone that way.” Bode let his spoon clatter to the table.
Picked up the brochure, and crumpled it in his fist. “Honestly,
don’t talk like that. It makes me worry about you.”

Kilroy reached across the table and caught
his wrist. Bode dropped the crumpled brochure as Kilroy gazed at
him. “You don’t think your body is a gift?”

Bode swallowed. Heat crept from where Kilroy
touched him up through his arm. He felt his brain lassoed and
hauled through the dirt. He had a vision he wasn’t even sure was
his own—might have been Kilroy’s seeping into his mind: He was on
all fours and Kilroy was behind him, cracking a palm against his
ass, bruising him. And then Kilroy’s cock was inside him, and Bode
was being ridden hard, whipped like the lazy little piece of meat
he was. Panting and drooling onto the floor while Kilroy fucked and
slapped him.