The Grand Ballast (11 page)

Bode had tried to climb as
high into the clouds as LJ, had tried to accept the Haze with
gratitude. But part of him resisted the drug’s effects. That part,
Bode suspected, was the debt. He couldn’t just drift away from the
evil he’d done. He had to prove to Kilroy he was sorry. He had to
suffer the way he’d made others suffer.

But the coward in him still
needed tenderness, even while serving a punishment. And so Bode
curled up next to LJ when he could. Spoke to him. Pretended, not
that Driscoll had never died, but that Driscoll had never existed.
Pretended that, if not for Kilroy’s orders, LJ would never lay a
hand on him, would treat him gently. Pretended there was still
something splendid about life, something he alone would make the
world see.

SO HAPPY AT HOME

Then.

There was a song that had
become quite popular, called “Happy at Home.” Even the dullest
souls could hum it.

So haaaapppyyyyy

That the nights I spent alone are faded,
gone

And anywhere I roam I’m holding on

To you, to you, to you and to our

Happiness, right now here at home

Scootle dootle doo do doo da-doo

Every rain and every shine

Will bring me home to you

Dootle doo da doo doo doo da doo…

Bode hated the song, and
hated it even more when he and Garland began performing a duet to
it at the Little Comet as part of the variety show. The routine
required relatively little effort from Bode or Garland. It was
corny, comprised of basic steps and cliché, over the top
gestures.

People loved it.

“
See,
this
is what I’m talking about.” Bode
stormed into the Little Comet dressing room. Garland and Danielle
were at their mirrors applying makeup. He held up page three
of
The Rag
, the
local newspaper, and shook it.

Garland looked up. He only had eyeliner on
one eye. “Hello to you too, Bode,” he said coolly. Garland had been
curt with him lately—frustrated that Bode was spending more time
with Kilroy and less time at the theater. It was uncomfortable to
even say Kilroy’s name around Garland. Last week, Bode had tried to
tell Garland about the new apartment, and Garland had ignored him,
asking instead if Bode had the winter class list drawn up.

Bode disregarded Garland’s
tone. “We got reviewed. By Miss Geanna Bilmer, theater critic.” He
yanked the paper straight and scanned it. “First, she goes gaga
over our routine, Garland, which we both know is corny as hell.” He
read: “‘The number, cute and zany, left me with a smile on my face.
This is sure to be the most popular performance the Little Comet
has put on in some time.’ Then later she says, ‘Martin is
technically proficient—’ what the…? It sounds like I run a computer
repair shop—‘and his guileless charm shines in this routine.’” He
folded the paper. “I don’t want to be technically proficient, I
want to destroy people’s
souls
.”

“
Rawwwr,” Garland
agreed.

Bode stepped farther into the room. “You
know what I mean, though?”

“
I
wouldn’t worry about it, Bode.” Garland blotted under his eye with
a tissue. “I mean, the paper’s literally called
The Rag
.”

Danielle turned, her mouth
full of bobby pins, one hand holding up the section of hair she was
working on. “Besides,” she said around the pins, “isn’t it great
that someone gave enough of a shit to write about us?”

Bode rattled the paper.
“Why are people’s standards so low? We pour our souls into our
other performances and get empty seats, but we do one cheesy
number, and everyone flocks to see it.”

“
Maybe people don’t want
our souls.” Garland pursed his lips at the mirror. “They just want
to see two guys do a funny dance.”

“
It’s
stupid.” Bode leaned against the doorframe. “People like stupid
things. They don’t like to
think
.”

“
Oh, cluck-cluck. Not
everyone can be as sophisticated as you.”

Bode came up behind his
chair and grinned into the mirror. “I’m a dick, huh?”

Garland glanced at him
through the glass. “I’m surprised you can say the word dick, you
guileless charmer.”

“
Bode’s a dirty boy, deep
down.” Danielle said. A couple of pins fell from her mouth as she
stuck another one through a twist of hair.

Bode’s face grew
hot.
Since moving into the new place, Bode
had tried to leave his primness behind. He and Kilroy spent their
days talking. About art movements, about the ways the world had
been ruined. They cooked meals from scratch and read aloud to one
another. And the sex—a shuddering, gasping sickness that kept them
both up all night. Bode, his mouth gaping, sweat darkening his hair
and glistening on his temples and in the lines of his
muscles.

“
I’m sure as heck
not
guileless
,” he
muttered.

“
Was anyone else mentioned
in the review, or just you?” Garland scooted his chair toward Bode
and reached for the clipping. “Some of us would like to know what
Miss Bilmer thought of the whole show.”

Bode passed the paper to
Garland.

“
Uhhhh,”
Danielle said, smacking her lips at her reflection. “I’m getting
acne again. What is this,
Puberty:
The Revenge
?”

Garland glanced up at her.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, almost tersely. And in the silence
that followed, his cheeks grew redder than usual, and he looked
back at the paper.

“
No mention of me. Not even
a comment about how my fiery hair complements the lighting. Or vice
versa.” He slapped the page down on the dressing table. Danielle
reached for it.

“
You know,” Garland went
on. “I had a dog once that could dance. It got up on its hind legs
and walked around until you gave it a treat. I think I’m just going
to start sniffing my own butt and performing very basic extensions
to my normal musculoskeletal function and seeing if anyone will
feed me.”

Bode stepped into the room.
“See, Garland. You feel it too, right? That people reward us for
mediocre work? That we need to be doing more?”

“
I don’t know. We get up
there; we dance. People laugh. Geanna Bilmer says we make her
smile. We get a paycheck. All is right with the world.”

“
No.” Bode shook his head.
He walked back to the door and then spun dramatically. “I’d like to
extend an invitation,” he announced, gripping the
doorframe.

Garland traced his other
eye with liner. “If it involves free food…”

“
I want to put on a show
that’s not technically proficient.”

Garland rolled his eyes.
“Oh, Bode. Are you going to turn this review into some sort of
feud? Should Miss Bilmer sleep with one eye open?”

Bode leaned into the
dressing room, holding onto either side of the doorway. “This isn’t
about the review. This is about doing something that makes
people
feel
.
We’re not going to impress them with what delightful little dancers
we are. We’re not trying to give them the warm and fuzzies. We want
to make them uneasy.”

“
Hell yeah,” Danielle said.
In the weeks since her parents’ divorce, she’d become intense on
stage—almost frightening in her dedication. She danced far more
wickedly than she had before, with less concern for technique and
more concern for feeling. She moved with such power and fury that
Bode was envious.

Bode let go of the
doorframe. “This will be a different sort of experience. This will
remind people everything that feels good brings with it the fear
that it will be lost, taken away.”

Garland reached into his
bag for rouge. “Well aren’t you just the trout that shut its gills
and sank?”

“
I’m serious. I want to
remind people who they are. Who we all are.”

Danielle punched the air
with both fists, lifting her feet off the ground. “I’m in.” She
brought her fists down on the table, making the leftover bobby pins
jump.

Garland sighed. “We’re
going to lose money. So much money. You do realize we’re in the
red, right?”

“
Well, let’s go down with a
bang then,” Bode said. “Unless you have some brilliant idea for how
to make money?”

“
More
delightful little dances.
‘
Scootle dootle doo do doo
da-doo…
’
”

“
Besides that.”

“
Why don’t we change our
name from the Little Comet to Master Shang’s Fuck Palace of
Underage Schoolboys and be done with it? We can pretend we’re an
X-show.”

“
You’re
disgusting.”

“
People
like three things,” Garland said. “Simplistic crap, over-the-top
violence, and sex. They do
not
like to be
unsettled.”

“
People like to be
unsettled more than they think. They just don’t seek that kind of
experience out. The kind of people who come to our theater seek out
nice things.”

“
I like nice things,”
Garland said softly.

“
Even when it’s pain,
people choose easy pain—soaps operas, sappy ballads, angst with no
real weight behind it. If people don’t challenge themselves,
nothing is going to change.” Bode paused. “So let’s ask them to
challenge themselves.”

“
Let’s
challenge
ourselves
,” Danielle
added.

“
I can see I’m going to
lose this battle.” Garland pinkened his cheeks with rapid strokes
of the makeup brush. “Just tell me what to do. Because I don’t have
a whole lot of unsettling ideas on my own.”

***

Bode told Kilroy about the show later, as
they lay in bed. “I don’t get why Garland’s so resistant. I mean, I
get that we make more money when we give people what they think
they want to see. But…”

“
But where’s the art in
keeping things comfortable?” Kilroy adjusted his head on the
pillow.

“
Exactly. I want to tell
stories about what it means to be human. There’s so much that we
are—that we
were
and could be again. I want to show people that. All of it.”
Bode propped up on one elbow. “Why is it that when I dig deep, I
get blank stares, yet when I do something easy, something safe,
something that requires very little sacrifice on my part, I get
applause?”

He expected Kilroy to agree. But Kilroy
simply watched Bode for several seconds, not moving except to
blink. “Can you say for certain what someone experiences when they
watch you do that scootle-dootle dance with Garland? What seems
uninspired and overdone to you might cut quite deep to someone
watching.”

“
I doubt it.”

Kilroy ran one finger along Bode’s jaw. “If
dancing with Garland is fun, if it makes people feel happy…is that
wrong?”

Bode shook his head again. “It’s too easy,
and it’s not… That’s the scariest thing in the world to me. The
idea that people will never ask anything more from me than
mediocrity.”

Kilroy chuckled. “Oh, Bode. There might be a
thing or two in the world scarier than that.”

Bode laughed too. Drew a circle on Kilroy’s
chest with his fingertips. “I guess.” It irked him a little that
Kilroy wasn’t completely on his side.

“
Maybe the reason the duet
feels easy to you is that you don’t give yourself over completely
to the joy of the piece.” Bode opened his mouth, but Kilroy cut him
off. “I’m not criticizing. But shouldn’t it take as much effort, as
much talent, to convey joy as it does ugliness? If you let
it?”

“
I don’t…know.” Wasn’t it
Kilroy who’d called
Mortuarium
beautiful? Then there was that moment after they’d
had sex for the first time:
“It helps to
be a little scared. Doesn’t it?”
And
Kilroy had loved that first solo he’d seen Bode in. Kilroy
certainly seemed to prefer performances that had an edge of
savagery.
“I just don’t want to
be…
innocent
. I
want to
move
people.”

“
You do,” Kilroy said
quietly. “That’s a gift you have. You draw people in. You invite
them to see the world as you do. You make them feel what you’re
feeling.”

Bode thought about it. “It
doesn’t seem that way. It seems like they invite me to give them a
version of the world they’ve already decided they want to see.” He
shifted. “I know I sound like an asshole, it’s just…dance is
so
important to me. And
I don’t want to…to get stuck doing the same thing over and over.
But I also want people to like me.”

“
I know.”

Bode lay for a moment in silence, listening
to Kilroy breathe. “I don’t know what the point of art is if you
don’t scare people a little.”

Kilroy kissed him softly and whispered, “Not
all art has to change the world. Some only has to change a moment.”
His teeth flashed in the darkness. “But if you need help losing
your innocence—just ask.”