The Grand Ballast (5 page)

Bode remembered hearing
about the Last Operas long ago. They were an artistic protest
popular in the northeast. Opera students underwent years of
traditional training, learning their craft to perfection so one day
they could put on a performance in which they were murdered
onstage. Lensky from
Eugene
Onegin
—actually shot, real blood spilling
across the boards in place of red silk.

Kilroy was right—most
people were bored with death. Any slob could murder someone. Crime
was common but uninteresting. Acts of violence were as sloppy and
simple as finger paintings. Crimes of passion were as close to
nonexistent as passion itself.
Wars still
broke out around the world, but strategy was given low billing.
Conflict escalated seemingly by accident, and when at last it faded
into truce, the result was usually unsatisfying. War yielded a
broken-spined dog sort of peace, nations dragging themselves into
corners to lick their wounds and wait for the end.

“
Well,
any slert with a hole to finger can get ferked onstage,” O’ Fauh
shrugged his big shoulders and went on. “It’s the
combinashern
erv the
two—sex and death—that’s got people buying tickets.

“
Sounds like a cheap
stunt.” Kilroy stuck the cigar in his mouth then pulled it out
again restlessly. “Interesting, nonetheless.”

Bode almost grinned. Kilroy
was jealous—had to be. Angry he hadn’t thought of it first. Maybe
it was too bad for Bode he hadn’t. Maybe it would have been a mercy
for Bode to have been killed years ago in front of a hungry
crowd.

“
Not cheap,” O’ Fauh
replied. “Wern show eh mernth. The star gets paid twenty-five grand
to die.”

“
Twen-ty five grand,”
Kilroy repeated, enunciating each syllable. “What’s he spend it
on—lining for his coffin?”

“
Merney goes to the
families. I can get you tickets, if you’d like to
ehttend.”

More ash fluttered to the
windowsill. Kilroy offered O’ Fauh a tight smile through a cloud of
smoke. “I would like that. Get me two, if you can.”

“
Certainly.” O’ Fauh patted
his knees. “We gotta milk these X-shows for all they’re werth,
’case Harkville gets its way.”

“
Harkville?” Kilroy’s face twitched. “Harkville
has
its fucking way.”
Bode liked Kilroy’s look—fire in the brain and body. He and Kilroy
been savage together, once. They’d seen their colors and wants and
meanness tangle, and they’d drawn hope out of the snarl. “They do
what they want and the government leaves them alone.”

O’ Fauh shifted again, and
his chair made a sound like a tire over a turtle shell. “’Cept now
whert they want is the X-Shows shert down.”

Kilroy stood. Waved his
cigar. “Harkville—
Harkville
, with its dancing whores
and painted men, its waitstaff who’ll shoot absinthe up your ass
for an extra five dollars—
Harkville
objects to the X-shows?”

“
It’s a
small but vocal contingent,” O’ Fauh said. “They think the shows
are
inhumane
.”

“
The very inclusion of
Harkville on a map is inhumane!” Kilroy snapped.

Silence. Kilroy put a fist
against his forehead.

O’ Fauh cleared his throat.
“Just whert I heard.”

Kilroy looked up again.
“That ‘town’ is a collection of garbage that would give Mr. Lein a
formidable erection.” He stubbed the cigar out and whirled, his
coattails sending up a puff of dust and dead bugs collected from
the windowsill. He strode toward the bed. “It’s what happens if you
let dogs and chimps run a town.”

O’ Fauh crossed his
surprisingly small ankles. “Nerntheless, Harkville has influence
with our straw house of a gervernment.”

“
Yes,” Kilroy mused. “All
Harkville would have to do is huff and puff and—”

“
Exactly. Its people know
how to incite. To keep ’em quiet, the gervernment could intervene
and shert the X-shows down.”

Kilroy shook his head. “The
X-shows do too much for the economy. They won’t be shut down. But
we could face regulations.”

“
Yes, yes.” O’ Fauh
nodded.

“
Well. No sense in worrying
yet.” Kilroy returned to the window and stroked Bode’s cheek.
Ripped the cigarette from Bode’s mouth and made as if to put it out
between his ribs. Bode jerked back; his elbow struck the window.
Kilroy’s smile grew stranger, more private. He ground the cigarette
in the ashtray then turned back to O’ Fauh. “Get me those tickets,
please. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a show that wasn’t my
own.”

MORTUARIUM

Then.

Bode waited on the stairs
for Kilroy to arrive. From the living room came the click of his
father’s knitting needles, and the clack of his mother’s marbles as
she shot them over and over across the hardwood floor.

Outside, it was dark. A
streetlight illuminated a large, misshapen pile of dog waste across
the road. The neighbors’ pointer, Lefty, number two-ed in the same
place every day, creating an ever growing mound that no one ever
cleaned up. Bode wished he had time to run across the street and
shovel it into a garbage can. He wanted Kilroy to be impressed with
where and how he lived. Though even from what little he knew of
Kilroy so far, he suspected Kilroy would be fascinated by the idea
of a dog that mountained its crap, and a family too bored to clean
up after it.

Kilroy arrived wearing a
black suit with red pinstripes. His hair was pulled back into a
short gold ponytail, and he looked…nervous? Not nervous enough to
shake Bode’s image of him as someone assured and ambitious, humble
enough to admit he didn’t always know what he wanted, and yet
confident in his ability to get it once he knew. But his speech was
quick, his movements jerky, and Bode flushed with
satisfaction.
He
was rattling Kilroy Ballast.

Kilroy stood on the porch
and held out a single point-petaled rose. Bode took it and smiled,
and was about to step out when he heard his mother’s voice. “Bode?
Where are you going?”

Bode glanced over his
shoulder, surprised. “Out, Mom. I have a date.”

Nothing else but the snick
of marbles colliding with marbles. Bode joined Kilroy on the porch,
shutting the door behind him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She doesn’t
usually even notice if I’m there or gone.”

Kilroy’s mouth twitched
up—again, that hint of nervousness. “So you don’t need me to assure
her I’ll have you home at a decent hour?”

Bode laughed. “No. You can
have me out all night, if you like.” His skin immediately grew hot,
and he had to step past Kilroy and walk toward the car in order to
shake off his embarrassment.

The performance was
called
Mortuarium
, and it featured music pieced together from sounds of dying
hospital patients—groans, whispers, cries, last breaths, and
prayers. Laughter, sometimes. Curses. Questions. The music played
over eerie scenes, some of which were performed live, some shown on
a video screen.

It was hardly a romantic
date, but Bode wasn’t inclined to expect romance from
Kilroy.

Still, he struck Kilroy
lightly on the arm as they left the theater. “That was morbid.
That’ll give me nightmares. Goll-
ee
, you sure know how to pick a
date.”

“
Did you like
it?”

“
Well, now all I can think
about is being dead.”

Kilroy shepherded Bode
across the street amid the slew of cars pulling away from the curb.
“It was beautiful, though, wasn’t it?”

Bode glanced at him. That
fine, smooth face gave the impression of impassivity, unless Bode
looked close. Kilroy seemed enlivened somehow by the performance.
His mouth turned up slightly, and his pupils were
dilated.

“
I guess,” Bode admitted.
There had been something oddly impressive about the
experience.

In the past two weeks,
Kilroy had come to see Bode twice more in the revue at the Little
Comet. Both times afterward, he’d come backstage to talk to Bode.
The last time, he’d taken Bode to get dinner.

He’d questioned Bode in
depth about dancing, wanting to know how and where Bode had
learned, how many people came to each show, and whether Bode’s solo
garnered more applause than his costars’ numbers. Bode, knowing his
show was a collaborative effort yet unable to resist the urge to
preen, said that he was one of the more experienced dancers there,
and that his solo seemed to be the most popular part of the
show—which wasn’t saying much.

“
I want
people to feel
more
when they watch me. But it’s hard to reach
them.”

Kilroy had repeated that
it was the simplicity, the easy grace of Bode’s performance that
made him stand out.
“Everyone else,
they’re either trying too hard, or not hard enough.”

Finally Kilroy had asked if
he could take Bode on a date.

Bode had been surprised.
Dating was a quaint idea—outdated, a little foolish. Garland joked
about it all the time. The people who did it were mostly young. It
had become a sort of rebellion, a demonstration of adolescent
silliness. While romantic relationships rarely lasted, they did
provide a temporary excitement to some people.

Bode also knew that since
meeting Kilroy Ballast, he’d had significantly more energy. He
threw himself into rehearsals and teaching, simultaneously
distracted and hyper focused. He thought of Kilroy often. He
worried that because he now knew someone found his “simplicity”
beautiful, he wouldn’t be able to maintain that effortlessness. He
would become self-conscious and start to overthink his
performances.

“
It
was
beautiful,” he said now, trying to match Kilroy’s excitement.
Wishing Kilroy would call
him
beautiful.

They walked to Kilroy’s
car, and Kilroy said, “Sometimes I wish we were only allowed to
create using what we find. Like the noises of the dying. I wish we
didn’t drive cars or live in houses with central heating. I wish we
had to
work
a
little for everything—our food, our comfort, our praise.” Kilroy’s
voice rose and his words ran together. “Imagine if complacency were
impossible. If the only way to survive was to break what exists and
reincarnate it.”

Sometimes Kilroy got like
this. Manic, chatty, sweeping his arms and speaking to the stars.
And his clothes were strange—tailcoats and vests. Bits of flair
like epaulettes or brass buttons. When he got like this, Bode could
imagine him jabbing the air with a silver-handled cane to make a
point.

“
You wish people still
loved the arts?” Bode asked.

“
Ah,
they
do
though.” Kilroy opened Bode’s door first. Went around the
driver’s side and climbed behind the wheel. “Artists have just
gotten it in their heads that audiences want to see
more
—bigger, faster,
stronger, newer, bloodier. And people do. They want novelty. But it
has to be combined with—or grounded in—what people have always felt
a connection to. Nature. Unembellished beauty. Birth, death, and a
sort of vintage supremacy.”

“
Simplicity?” Bode
suggested.

“
I suppose. If nature can
be considered simple.”

Kilroy drove Bode home.
They parked outside Bode’s small white house, and Kilroy peered out
his window and tapped on the glass, inviting Bode to look at the
moon. “This, Bode. We’re all
this
. And it’s nothing to get bored
with.”

“
It’s almost full,” Bode
said, wishing he could say something smarter. Kilroy could talk
circles around him.

“
We are
great, and we are
meaningful
in our smallness. Boredom is ingratitude. Boredom
is showing our bellies to our stupider natures.”

Bode had gone to church
years ago with his father. The room had been about a third full.
The preacher had described miracles from ancient times that sounded
like special effects in a movie—plagues and lightning storms.
Toward the end, the preacher said something like,
“The next time you see a bird, think about how
grand it would be to have wings. Think about the small designs that
hold up something big. And be glad.”

Now Bode’s father never
left the house. Well, not exactly true. He did yard work. And
Bode’s mother played marbles. All day long, shooting marbles across
the living room floor, the snicks and clacks lodging in Bode’s
brain even as he slept.

“
I’m not bored around you,”
Bode murmured.

Kilroy paused, smiled, a
flash of something like terror in his expression. He leaned over
and kissed Bode.

The kiss was deceptively
simple. Layers and layers there, and
be
glad
.
Be
grateful.