The Grand Ballast (6 page)

A small act.

A start.

LOVE; OH, MY
LOVE

“
Who is he?” Bode asked
after O’ Fauh had left. He had a headache coming on. He stayed
seated on the windowsill, letting the slight draft ground
him.

Kilroy remained standing,
staring at O’ Fauh’s vacated chair. The air in the room was all
spent smoke and chemicals. “O’ Fauh?”

“
Yeah.” Bode curled his
arms around his legs and knocked his forehead lightly against his
knees. Looked up. “What’s he do?”

“
Bodeee.” Kilroy grinned as
he walked to the coat tree by the door. “You’ve met him
before.”

Bode closed his eyes
briefly. Maybe they’d met face to face, or maybe they’d met with
Bode on his knees. Maybe they hadn’t met at all, and Kilroy was
just screwing with him. “I don’t remember.”

Kilroy shrugged his jacket
on and tugged it straight. “He’s an obnoxious wind-up toy. X-show
owners crank him up and send him buzz-stepping off to other X-show
owners. He goes around to the shows and says, ‘Oh, but lookee what
they’re doing over
here
.’” Kilroy buttoned his jacket. “He wants me to feel
threatened, like there are shows out there better than
mine.”

He picked up the vase with
the empress weed and carried it to the bathroom. Bode watched him
fill it. A memory took hold of Bode then let him go. “What is
Harkville?”

Kilroy brought the vase
back to the desk and set it down. “A western Sodom full of losers
and whores. I wouldn’t waste the spit it’d take to say its
name.”

Bode plucked at a thread on
his shirt. He felt relaxed tonight. Kilroy’s anger was focused on
something other than him, and nothing in the world seemed too awful
or frightening to handle. “What makes it so bad?”

“
It’s an illusion.” Kilroy
tilted his head, studying the empress weed. “It claims to be
something real, something marvelous. But its people are all painted
and broken and fucking one another and bored, the same as
everywhere else.” He turned to Bode. “They just dress it up
better.”

“
How do you know? Have you
been there?”

Kilroy gave him a look so
black Bode almost laughed. “I’ve seen it.” Kilroy’s voice was flat.
“Designed like some old tumbleweed town. No automobiles, no
computers. People pretending to be ‘in touch’ with their feelings.
Pretending to love and to create.”

“
Are you sure you’re not
jealous?” Bode had meant it half as a taunt, half as the sort of
gentle tease he’d offered Kilroy in the days when they’d lived
together.

Kilroy shook his head.
“Nooo. No. I’m not jealous of that whorestown. I’ll even admit
they’ve done some good. Their doctors are strange beasts.” He took
a slug from a whiskey bottle behind the desk. “The hole in
Sibyata’s side? That was the work of a doctor who’d fled Harkville.
And humanity has Harkville to thank for the cures to countless
sexually-transmitted maladies.”

“
So what’s the unrest
there? If they’re happy and in touch with their feelings and
all?”

Kilroy recapped the bottle.
“They hate the X-shows. ‘Cruel,’ ‘exploitative…’ But you should see
the monkey circuses they’ve got going on there.
Hypocrites.”

Bode stretched. “Real
monkeys?”

Kilroy raised a brow. “No,
smartshit.” He paused. “Get in the coffin car before I put my boot
so far up your ass you puke shoe leather.”

“
Kinky,” Bode muttered,
sitting up.

Kilroy cocked a hip and
twitched one side of his mouth up. “You know… I think you’ve got
more spunk now than you did before the Haze. It chewed you up and
spat out a better you, don’t you think?” He grabbed Bode by the
hair and pulled him to his feet. Bode gritted his teeth and
clutched Kilroy’s wrist with both hands, but he couldn’t loosen the
grip. Kilroy slugged him in the stomach then spat in his face. Bode
blinked rapidly, and Kilroy spat again. Again. Until saliva dripped
down Bode’s nose and slid over his lips and down his chin. Bode
wrapped his hands around Kilroy’s throat, but Kilroy yanked on his
scalp so hard Bode felt the hair rip.

Kilroy shoved him back,
watched Bode stumble and then catch himself on the wall. Appraised
him.

Bode swiped the spit from
his face and rubbed his throbbing scalp. “Asshole,” he
muttered.

Kilroy grinned again. “Is
my show cruel? Do you feel exploited?”

Bode stayed silent, hoping
he could get away with not answering.

Kilroy’s gaze dropped to
his watch. “The others had better be back. What did I tell
them?”

“
An hour and a half. That
meeting wasn’t even forty-five minutes.” Bode was still thinking
about Harkville. “That’s the kind of stuff you like—no cars or
computers. You said once that you wished people didn’t drive
cars.”

Kilroy’s brow furrowed.
“You remember that?”

“
Yes.” Bode was surprised
he did. “You told me the night…” He trailed off. The night of the
concert, the kiss, the beginning.

Kilroy sat on the edge of
the desk, his leg inches from Bode’s. “I find it pleasant, that
you’re remembering. It was hard to watch you in the Haze. To see
you forget what we had been together.”

“
You wanted me to
forget.”

“
No, no. I didn’t want
that. But the Haze was the only way to keep you at
peace.”

Was that true? Bode had a
faint, sickening recollection of a pain too big to absorb at once,
that had collected on his skin like liquid on soil before slowly
soaking into him.

Kilroy reached forward and
tilted Bode’s chin up with one finger. “You know, I’ve sometimes
worried you’re going to forget why you’re here. You never forget,
do you?”

Bode flinched.

Did he forget?

Sometimes. Stolen moments
of peace. Pushing guilt away like remnants of a bad
dream.

“
No.” He pulled away from
Kilroy’s touch.

“
Is it worse, without the
Haze? Do you wish you didn’t remember?”

Bode wasn’t sure what
answer Kilroy expected. “I don’t want to be in the Haze
anymore.”

Kilroy nodded, stood.
“Then it’s good to have you back.” He pulled the jacket straight
one last time then donned his hat. Turned to Bode with a smile.
“And yes, I said once that I liked the idea of a simpler time. Sans
machines. But I’ve changed my tune. Simplicity is key, but I do
like a good
show
.
And nothing compares to
convenience
.” He motioned to the
door. “Back to your box, Bode. We hit Hilgarten
tonight.”

HERE COMES THE
TRAIN

Then.

Bode had grown up in a
quiet town that clung to the edge of an old industrial city. While
he’d liked his town’s fields and greenery and leaning road signs,
he’d been fascinated by the city’s crammed, gray landscape—gravel
heaps and train tracks, shipping containers and murky puddles that
crept up around his shoes.

He had a memory of being in
his mother’s arms as she walked through the city. Feeling her
distance and understanding on some primal level that the world did
nothing for or to her but go round. She was spinning him. She
seemed to be knocking trees and clouds loose from his eyes. And
then she stopped. Held him in a moment of dizzy quiet while a low
rumble started in the ground. She pointed to a space between two
buildings. Elevated, rusty train tracks, dripping graffiti. The
whole street shook, and then a train blew by. He watched the blur
of the cars’ windows.

“
That’s the train,” his
mother said over the noise. “Look, Bode. Here comes the
train.”

***

The night after the final
performance of the revue at the Little Comet, Bode went to Kilroy’s
place and they each had a glass of plum wine. Bode sprawled in one
of Kilroy’s hard wooden chairs in the kitchen, wild with happiness.
Kilroy’s apartment was stark. The only real decorations were three
black and white framed pictures of numbers. They’d been seeing each
other for nearly a month, but Bode hadn’t been here yet.

“
Will you miss the show?”
Kilroy asked.

“
Yeah. But I’m excited to
get started on something new.” Bode took a sip of wine.

“
What’s next?”

“
Mmm.” Bode leaned back
further, glancing at the ceiling. “A variety show. Tap dancing and
top hats. Not really my thing, but we need to make money, and we
only make money when we do cheesy stuff.” He grinned.

“
You realize there’s not a
false note in your smile?” Kilroy studied Bode until Bode’s skin
prickled—pleasantly at first, but then in the crawling, too-hot way
of illness or terror. Until Bode wanted to smash his wineglass, or
maybe the whole damn bottle.

He looked away. “Do you
think I dance well? Really?”

“
Would I lie to
you?”

“
I don’t know. I just…” He
glanced up. “I try to push myself hard. Because I’m worried no one
else will. Nobody cares about quality. Not really.”

“
And you think you don’t
push yourself hard enough?”

Bode didn’t
answer.

“
I know the feeling,”
Kilroy prompted gently. “I’ve felt it too.”

Bode felt a rush of
warmth, disproportionate to what Kilroy’s words called for.
“I feel guilty a lot.”

“
Guilty?”

“
Like, anytime I fail at
anything, even something small, I feel guilty about it.” He focused
on the pattern in the formica. He’d never talked to anyone about
this, except maybe Garland. He made a face. “And I guess there’s
some more psychological bullshit there too, like maybe if I
were…better somehow, less self-centered, my parents would engage
with me more.”

Kilroy tilted his head. “You think you’re
the cause of your parents’ indifference?”

“
No.
Not…exactly.”

“
Why should failure make
you feel guilty, rather than ashamed?”

Bode drained the last of his wine. “I don’t
know.”

“
Do you feel you failed
tonight?”

Bode shook his head. “No.”

“
Good.” Kilroy’s voice was
very quiet. “I don’t want you feeling guilty tonight.”

Bode shifted. Kilroy was looking at him
again, and this time Bode couldn’t ignore the heat in his body, the
maddening haze the wine cast over his mind and that was pierced
again and again by a furious lust.

He knew what he wanted to
offer Kilroy, but he was afraid, and he
liked
being afraid.

“
Please, kiss me?” he said
at last. “Please?”

Kilroy was so still that he
seemed not to be alive at all—a clever puppet with no one at the
strings. Then he got up. Knelt on the kitchen tile and pushed
Bode’s legs apart—a sudden, dramatic push, like throwing open a set
of doors—and shuffled between them. He cupped Bode’s face and
strained upward, and Bode leaned down so that their lips met.
Bode’s chair slid back with a squeal, and he joined Kilroy on the
floor, one hand on Kilroy’s chest, surprised to find Kilroy’s
heartbeat going as fast as his own.

“
Will
you…?” He paused, still with his hand on Kilroy’s
chest.
Fuck me
sounded crude. But he wasn’t going to say something prissy
like
make love to me.
Garland would have laughed at him. So he spread his legs
slowly, almost tentatively, his knees aching on the tile. His jeans
were too tight around his hips, and the waistband of his underwear
stuck out. He felt so
ready
. God, the things he did for
dance—avoiding booze and sex and cigarettes, convinced everything
would ruin him for the stage. But tonight—
tonight
—the wine was a revelation,
and he wanted Kilroy’s hands on him, Kilroy’s body moving with
his.

Kilroy placed the tip of
his forefinger on the snap of Bode’s fly. Traced downward. Bode
dipped his head and let out a rush of breath like a laugh then
immediately forced himself quiet and waited.

“
Will I…?” Kilroy repeated
softly.

“
Please?” Bode whispered to
the floor. So many times he’d felt like this—like he wanted to beg
for something without knowing what. He saw random people and he
wanted to connect with them over something. The color of the sky or
the expression on a passerby’s face. He wanted strangers to love
him, to care what became of him, and it was frustrating when they
walked on with their heads down.

Kilroy
saw
him. Kilroy, who loved reality
and magic and braiding them together into something more special,
more violent than either could be alone. Kilroy, who knew why the
color of the sky mattered, why a stranger’s expression could shape
a moment. Kilroy both found and made miracles, and his touch
stirred something in Bode, made him desperate and joyful and
foolish.

He closed his eyes as
Kilroy’s fingers curled lightly around his chin. He made a small
noise, frustration and encouragement.