The Grand Ballast (26 page)

“
Bode, it’s okay,” Valen
said softly.

“
No.”

“
I’ll fight them any way I
can, okay?”

“
I promise…I promise…”
Blood oozed from Bode’s lips. His eyes drifted shut again, and he
had to work to open them. “You think I’m s—stupid, but I…keep my
promises.”

I want to give you a
reason to hope.

“
There’s nothing you can do
now, okay?” Valen leaned his head against Bode’s.

“
W’ll you c’me with me?”
Bode asked, louder, pushing against Valen. “’f I get you
free?”

Valen was silent a moment.
His nod was slight—just a rasp of his cheek against Bode’s—but it
felt to Bode like a victory.

“
Tonight,” Bode whispered,
smiling as his eyes fell shut. “Tonight I’ll end this.”

***

Then.

The officer told him not to watch as
Driscoll was pulled from the car. He stood between Bode and the
vehicle for a few seconds, as though he meant to shield Bode. But
Bode watched.

Glass in Driscoll’s body, catching light
from the police strobes. Blood darkening the face, painting it
almost unrecognizable. And then Bode stopped thinking. Let the
questions wash over him. They took him to the hospital even though
he wasn’t hurt, and they took Driscoll to the hospital even though
he was dead.

When the police came into Bode’s room to ask
for his account of the accident, he realized he could say anything.
Nobody else knew what had happened on that empty highway, and the
officer’s blank look suggested his mind was anywhere but on what
Bode was telling him.

“
I saw him round the curve,
going too fast,” Bode said hoarsely, pressing his fingertips
against the stiff cotton of the hospital sheet. He couldn’t make
himself say anything else. Couldn’t make himself lie.

“
And he lost control?” the
officer asked.

Bode nodded.

“
He was a sick
man.”

Bode nodded again, heart thudding.

The officer wiped his nose with the side of
his hand. “He shouldn’t have been driving.”

It was that easy. The officer didn’t
question his account, didn’t look at him suspiciously. Only flipped
his pad shut and added, “Shame.”

It took Bode a second to
realize the officer meant the accident was a shame—not that Bode
should
be
ashamed.

The officer left Bode alone.

Eventually the hospital got ahold of Bode’s
parents, and they brought him home.

For days afterward, Bode didn’t speak or
eat. He stayed at his parents’ house and listened to the click of
marbles and the rumble of snores. Occasionally he looked down to
find himself sitting on the floor or on his bed, his hands shaking,
no memory of how long he’d been there. He hadn’t talked to Kilroy
at all. Or, if he had, he didn’t remember.

Shame.

Bode knew the truth. Remembered Driscoll’s
gaunt face in profile at the traffic light. Remembered jerking the
wheel. Just enough to scare Driscoll.

He dragged himself out of bed once a day to
eat. Had panic attacks just trying to open the silverware drawer.
And yet, sometimes he was fine. Sometimes, everything seemed very
ordinary, and he almost believed his own story. That Driscoll, sick
as he was, too sick to be driving—had lost control.

***

Bode lay in bed. He could
hear the
clack clack
of marbles downstairs, but he didn’t care. Moments dropped
like spiders from unseen webs. They dangled and swayed, no order to
them at all.

The walls of his room were
so uniform, unmarked and pale.
He thought
about his reaction to Kilroy’s pamphlets from Belvedere Farm.
Thought about Garland teasing him for years about his prudishness.
About Geanna Bilmer from
The
Rag
. About how, maybe if he had treated his
body more like a gift, if he had offered more of himself, Kilroy
would have been satisfied with him. Wouldn’t have needed
Driscoll.

He stared at the wall. There was nothing he
could do now. He couldn’t concentrate enough to dance, and without
dance, his life would be meaningless, as dull as everyone else’s,
just day after day trying to push aside his guilt. He’d have to
take up marbles.

His only hope was
something
new
, a
complete sacrifice of himself to some unexpected project. But he
couldn’t figure out how to do anything else. Be anything
else.

He stood. Went downstairs
and grabbed his coat.

His car had been repainted,
but he was never going to drive it again.

He walked an hour and a
half to Kilroy’s apartment. He didn’t give himself time to panic
when he reached the door—just knocked.

Kilroy answered. He was
wearing a sweater and jeans, and looked almost boyish. No
upholstery-patterned jackets, no sharply creased dress pants. He
looked like the attendees of Driscoll’s birthday party.

Bode stepped forward as
Kilroy started to shut the door. Put his hand out to keep the door
open. “I need to talk to you.”

Kilroy hurled the door
open suddenly and stepped back. “If you’ve come for your things,
get them and
go
.”

“
Hold on.” Bode’s legs felt
weighted down as he stepped inside. “I want to tell you about the
other night.”

“
You think I don’t know?”
Kilroy’s voice was soft, but raw with fury. He slammed the door
shut behind Bode. “I know you were there when he died. The police
told me.”

“
No. Kilroy, no…” Bode
trailed off, unsure how to defend himself. His desire to make
Kilroy to understand, to ask forgiveness, dissolved. “I was there,
but I didn’t—”

“
Didn’t what? Didn’t run
him off the fucking road?” Kilroy was right there behind Bode,
breathing against his neck.

“
He lost
control.”

“
He
lost…?” Kilroy stepped in front of Bode, shaking his head.
“No. No, no. No. Your jealousy, Bode. Your
obsession
.
You
lost… You hated him from the
moment you saw him.”

Bode wavered, sick and dizzy. “Did you
really love him?”

“
Why would that matter?”
Kilroy snapped.

“
You didn’t, did
you?”

Something unidentifiable
blazed through Kilroy’s eyes. “Did it occur to you that perhaps
someone who’s sick needed
comfort
in his final months? That love is not always a
match held to a fuse that will set you soaring? Sometimes, Bode,
it’s about being quiet, and being
there
.”

Bode let out a sharp, quick breath. “I
didn’t kill him.”

“
Don’t be such a miserable,
half-flattened
worm
.” Kilroy stalked down the hall and into the kitchen. Bode
followed. “I’m busy.
I’ve found things to
keep me busy. I’m starting my show.”

Bode stiffened.

“
I have performers lined
up. I have sets built. I’m moving on.”

Bode looked away. Through
the window, the trees were slathered in sunlight. Invisible
goings-on shook the bushes, and the air
looked
cold.

“
The show will be in
Driscoll’s honor.”

Bode felt both far away from this travesty
and like he was pressed up against it, unable to move. He was
completely ruined, and here was Kilroy, talking about starting an
X-show. He pulled in a slow, painful breath.

“
Did you do it?” Kilroy
asked softly beside him. “I need to know the truth. Did you do
it?”

“
Yes.”

Kilroy said nothing.

“
I don’t know what to do,”
Bode mumbled. “I feel terrible every day. I can’t sleep. I can’t
stop thinking about it.”

To his surprise, Kilroy
blinked several times, rapidly, and tears slid down his cheeks.
“
You
can’t stop
thinking about it?”

Bode felt a growing sense of horror,
watching Kilroy cry. “I know it doesn’t mean much to say that, but
it’s true, and—”

“
What you’ve done is
reckless
and unholy.”
Kilroy sobbed. “You will burn; Jesus
fuck
, you’ll burn
forever
.
You and
your stunted brain and your pretty body. You know how to make your
own reflection ugly.”

Bode was too stunned to reply.

“
Go away now,” Kilroy
ordered. “Go.”

Bode felt fragile as a
pinched grape, as though everything inside him might suddenly shoot
from his skin. What Kilroy had said was true. He
had
done something
unforgivable. He’d meant to hurt Driscoll, and he had, and since he
couldn’t have Driscoll’s forgiveness, he
needed
Kilroy’s.

Yet he found himself enthralled by what a
truly pathetic man Kilroy was. He’d witnessed Kilroy’s moments of
terrible insecurity, and he’d empathized. He’d heard directionless
monologues, pathological ramblings, and until recently, he’d
believed them side effects of genius. “It was an accident.”

Kilroy laughed, a scratchy honk in the back
of his throat. “What were you doing out there on the road with
him?”

The pain struck so deep
that Bode started to panic. “Tell me
something
I can do. Tell me what I
have to do for you to forgive me.”

Kilroy didn’t answer.

“
I can’t live this
way.”

Kilroy snorted. “What choice do you
have?”

Bode looked at the spot on the floor where
he and Kilroy had fucked that afternoon months ago. Saw his body as
it must have looked that day—shared property, bruised and sweaty,
belonging to the wildness of the moment. Right now, the image was
oddly comforting. Perhaps he did have something to offer.

“
Please,” Bode repeated.
“I’m sorry.”

“
Why are you saying this to
me? He’s the one who’s dead. He’s the one you’ve wronged.” Kilroy
spoke quickly. “It makes no difference to me. People die, they
live. If you feel guilty, that’s your burden.” He met Bode’s gaze
at last. “I will say I thought better of you than this. You ought
to have more dignity than to beg.”

Bode nodded, jaw trembling. You could
misstep. You could jar the beauty of a dance, but it was fixable.
You flowed forward from that mistake and created a new line, a new
shape, and you went on improvising glorious stumbles until you fell
back into the story you were meant to be telling.

“
I love you,” Bode said.
This was the story he was meant to tell. “I
love
you.” How foolish it all felt
now. His jealousy, his anger. And yet the fear of losing Kilroy
still howled in him.

Kilroy wouldn’t face him. “There’s nothing I
can do for you.”

“
But maybe there is
something I can do for you,” Bode said, his voice gathering
strength. “Something I could do to show you I’m sorry.” He couldn’t
go back to being alone with those spider moments. The marbles, the
knitting, the lawnmower. His parents going on as though nothing had
happened. The police failing to punish him. Kilroy was the only one
who knew the truth. And somehow that made the guilt harder to
bear—that it was nurtured, preserved, by the only person whose
opinion Bode cared about, no matter how hard he tried not
to.

“
What could you possibly
give me?” Kilroy started to walk away.

Bode’s heart surged with an absolutely wild
desperation. “I’ll be in your show.”

Kilroy stopped. Turned.

Bode folded his arms across his stomach,
leaning forward. “I don’t know—if—if you can use me, but I’d…I’d
work for you. My body could be a—a gift.”

Tears stung his eyes then,
and he didn’t mind. If he was spineless and rotten, he’d pay. He’d
make sure he paid.
“I
want
to,”
Kilroy had said once, his arm drawn back.

I want you to.

Kilroy studied him. For a second, Bode saw
some of the old tenderness there—that adulation that had warmed
him, raised him up, pushed him to create.

In love with someone else’s love for me.

“
Be very sure.” Kilroy’s
voice was almost too soft to hear. “Be very sure you mean what you
promise.”

“
I’m absolutely
sure.”
Revel in the parts of the dance you
fear.

“
You’d be paying a debt.”
Kilroy spoke as though he were telling a story. “You would have to
suffer.”

Yes.
That sounded fair. He’d once believed he had so much affection
to give, so much compassion and empathy. But he might as well have
been the glass lodged in Driscoll’s body, fragmented and buried
deep in the mess of what he’d destroyed. “Okay.”

Kilroy was calm and still in a way Bode had
never known him to be. “You would have to be the real things, the
true things. Pain and joy both. You’d have to make people see your
guilt, your shame, and all your vestigial love for a world that
doesn’t need you anymore.”

The words twisted in him, but Bode nodded,
his eyes dry, his mind quiet at last. “Can I come home, then?” he
asked.