The Grand Ballast (35 page)

Valen held out a hand. Bode
eyed it unsteadily, unable to hear anything but the harsh pounding
of blood in his head.

“
Come on,” Valen said
softly.

Bode reached out and took
Valen’s hand.

Valen stepped beside him
and gripped his arm gently, guiding him toward the back door. Out
and across the yard to the barn. Bode took gulps of air so cold it
stung his teeth. Valen led him inside and helped him up the ladder
to the loft. Sat beside him on the bed and raised his hand. Bode
flinched.

Valen looked at him, and
Bode couldn’t read the expression. Disapproving? Disappointed?
Valen slowly put his hand down. “You know me better than that,” he
whispered.

Suddenly Bode couldn’t be
sure if Valen had said,
You know better
than that
or,
You
know
me
better
than that.
He felt deeply ashamed either
way.

Valen placed his hand
gently on the back of Bode’s neck. Unsure what else to do, Bode
leaned closer to him. He breathed in sharply and then laughed.
Laughed for a long time, out of control. “I don’t want to do it
anymore,” he said at last. “The one thing I enjoyed, and I’ll never
do it again.”

“
Dancing?”

Bode felt his smile flicker
like a candle flame, broadening and contracting before finally
going out. “He was just a man. Less than a man; he was a fucking
worm. But I loved him. I did. And I don’t know why.”

Bode didn’t really expect
a response. He swallowed. “There were so many people,” he went on,
not sure his voice was coming out strong enough for Valen to
understand the words. “So many people who just sat and watched when
I danced, and they didn’t seem to feel anything. I needed someone
who
saw
me.”

Valen rubbed his neck
silently.

“
He did.” Bode rested his
head on Valen’s shoulder. “He saw me.”

He imagined he was
watching a shadow puppet play, silhouettes scrambling and bopping
one another on the head. The world tilted, and he collapsed to his
knees in front of some memory of Kilroy. He could smell the fabric
of Kilroy’s pants, the faint mustiness in his heavy tailcoat. The
image faded, becoming long, sloppy blurs of color, like a ruined
panting. He thought he heard a soft, familiar laugh, rippling like
a banner in the breeze. “It was… I felt…like we were the only two
in the world who understood. I would have followed him anywhere.
I
did
.”

“
So he wasn’t always
cruel?”

Who in this whole fucking
world is kind?

Bode sighed. “I waited. In
the Grand Ballast, I waited for someone to see…” He closed his
eyes. “Some nights, when the Haze didn’t have me too bad, I’d pick
someone in the audience. Most of them were slack-jawed, gone. But
I’d find someone who looked awake. And I’d imagine they saw me,
really saw how much pain I was in. I imagined them stopping the
show. The whole fucking show, and coming up to me. Asking if I was
all right.” He opened his eyes. “But if someone had tried that? I
don’t know what I would have done. I was there paying the debt. My
choice. My fucking redemption.”

“
That’s over,” Valen said.
“So what do you want now?”

“
All I want now is just
quiet. I want—I want a home somewhere with a big yard and trees
everywhere. And I don’t want to do anything meaningful. I don’t
want to—” he swallowed again, trying to ignore his stinging eyes
“—don’t need to make anyone see.”

Out of the corner of his
eye, he caught Valen’s nod.

Bode nudged Valen. “What do
you want?”

Valen’s gaze shifted to the
wall, and his hand stilled on Bode’s hair. “I don’t know. Really. I
could learn to want a lot of different things.”

“
Learn
to want.” Bode moaned,
laughing, and wiped his eyes on Valen’s shirt. “You’re so
sad.”

Valen snorted. “I
know.”

“
You’re going to have to
figure it out someday.” Bode couldn’t keep the bitterness from his
tone.

“
Can I suggest
something?”

Bode waited.

“
We help Harkville liberate
the farm. We continue working here for a while, until we have some
money saved. And then we leave. We find somewhere like you’re
talking about, and we try to have a normal life.”

“
We?” Bode
asked.

“
Unless you want to ditch
me.”

Bode shook his head. “No.
But we can’t have a normal life.”

“
Why not?
There are still
laws
. If we say Kilroy abducted us,
if we say that you burning the tent was the only way to get
out—”

“
It’s not just
that.”

“
Then what?”

“
What about…what else I
did?”

Valen was silent for a
moment. “Tell me.”

So Bode told him about
Driscoll. All of it. When he was finished, his voice was raw, and
Valen’s arms were tense around him. “Kilroy said if I ever tried to
run, he’d tell the cops about Driscoll. So whether it’s for arson
or for murder, I’ll go to prison. And then I’ll probably end up
somewhere like Belvedere Fucking Farm.”

Valen let him go and
leaned back. “No one can prove you set the fire at the circus. And
as for Driscoll, why would the cops care about a four-year-old
accident? They don’t care about shit that’s happening
now
, right under their
noses.”

“
Did you hear what I said?
It wasn’t an accident.”

“
Did you mean to kill
him?”

“
No, but—”

“
Bode, you’re not a
murderer.”

“
I
did
kill him! And Kilroy’s powerful. He can pay the cops to care
about this.” Bode rubbed his forehead furiously with the heel of
his hand.

They were both quiet
awhile.

Bode snorted. “Maybe we
should let Skullprute give us new faces.”

“
We’ll find a way to get
out of here.” Valen put his hand on top of Bode’s. “I
promise.”

“
Good.” Bode tried to
smile. “Because I don’t want to see another goddamn petticoat as
long as I live.”

Valen laughed. “I think
you’d look good in one.”

Bode flushed and ducked his
head. Gazed out the window for a few moments, watching the moon.
“There’s a difference, isn’t there, between guilt and
regret?”

He felt Valen’s gaze on
him.

“
I always felt guilty about
what I did,” Bode went on. “But I wasn’t always sorry.”

BELVEDERE FARM’S AMAZING, ONE OF A KIND
PETTING ZOO

On the morning of the visit to Belvedere
Farm, Darkenage spent two hours applying Valen and Bode’s makeup.
The effects were subtle, but successful. When Bode pulled his cap
on, he barely recognized himself. And Valen looked completely
different from the man Bode had pulled from the water at the Hydra
Arena.

“
I did my own makeup the
night of
Lucia
,”
Darkenage explained. “I was putting rouge on, and I just kept
looking at the
red
. And suddenly I realized I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t stab
myself onstage.”

Bode raised his brows. “But up until then,
it seemed like a great idea?”

Darkenage shrugged. “No one ever accused me
of being the soundest of minds.” He adjusted a contour on Valen’s
jaw. “I’m just glad I found Harkville.” He turned away from Valen
to cough into his elbow. Glanced up at Bode. “You didn’t care for
my song the other night?”

“
I don’t like the
spotlight.”

“
I always did. Then I tried
to move from opera to contemporary music and was told that my voice
was too strange and that I had no future in the industry. I was
devastated. I suppose it’s part of the reason I took the role
in
Lucia.
To die
inflicting my strange voice on the public. But since coming here,
I’ve been very appreciated. To the point where I feel ready to go
out into the world and try again.”

“
That’s good,” Bode said
uncertainly, casting a glance at Valen.

“
But I’m sorry you didn’t
like my song.”

He worked for a few more minutes in
silence.

“
Ah,” Darkenage said as he
finished. “Stranger strangers, I’ve never seen.”

“
Incredible.” Valen checked
his face in the mirror from various angles.

“
Quite a risk you’re
taking.” Darkenage offered a smile. “Going into the belly of the
beast.”

Valen grinned back. “Ah, well. Luck’s been
pretty good so far. At the card tables at least.”

Darkenage shrugged. “Can’t hold
forever.”

“
Maybe not. Better hope
that voice of yours makes you more money than your poker face.” He
clapped Darkenage on the shoulder.

Bode caught Darkenage’s quick, angry-looking
flush.

“
Come on.” Valen took
Bode’s arm and steered him toward the trapdoor.

The farm was astounding—a sprawling, idyllic
property with lollipop trees and a red barn. Tall white fences. The
grass looked painted. Where the Grand Ballast had intentionally
remained small, the farm spanned twelve acres and had two hundred
and forty participants—farmhands, “animals,” tour guides. Bode
stuck close to Valen as a peppy girl with red, curly hair took
their group into the stables.

Forty stalls. The men and women inside wore
various harnesses and bridles. Horsehair plugs in their asses. Some
had hay nets; some wore crib collars or support boots. Some had a
viscous substance coating their skin—honey, Bode realized—that drew
flies. Some had welts on their shoulders and legs. The girl
explained that the horses could be rented out for fifty dollars an
hour. She showed the group the selection of carts and saddles.

Skullprute said something in a low voice to
Valen. Bode didn’t bother trying to listen. In one stall, a groom
hauled on the bridle of a tall man in a leather harness. The man
pulled back, shifting anxiously. Every few seconds, the groom
smacked the man’s thigh with a crop. The man’s eyes rolled wildly,
and Bode caught a putrid smell—shit and sweat and fear. In the
stall to his left, somebody kicked up a puff of dust. When Bode
looked at Valen, Valen was staring out the backdoor of the barn,
into the vibrant sunlight. Outside, music played from tinny
speakers.

So happyyyyy at home.

So happyyyyy…

Next, they went to the petting zoo—the
performers stood on their hands and knees in a small wire
enclosure, hobbled and ear tagged and accepting food from tourists’
hands. They too had welts and sores. The hobbles had slipped down
on one woman’s wrists, and Bode could see where the straps had
rubbed her skin raw. A sign on the gate read BELVEDERE FARM’S
AMAZING ONE OF A KIND PETTING ZOO.

It was startling, to look at such ugliness.
To see what now passed for entertainment. How had he ever thought
that his dancing mattered? “Art” was just a label lazy people stuck
on games to make them seem important. He thought he’d struggled,
that he’d done something difficult, given a part of himself without
asking anything in return. What he’d done was move to music. It
meant nothing; it was nothing. No different than biting a hangnail
or crossing a street.

In the dairy barn, a narrow aisle separated
a row of men from a row of women. They were on all fours, naked,
facing away from the aisle. Crammed so close together their
shoulders touched, tethered with rope halters to a splintery rail.
Behind them were the machines Bode remembered from the brochure:
tall metal tanks with steel arms. At the end of each arm, a thick,
curved dildo. The arms juddered noisily, forcing the dildos in and
out of the “cows.” The men had tight leather straps around the
bases of their cocks, biting into their flesh. All of the
performers had plastic cups over their groins, attached by clear
tubing to the tanks.

Some of the performers were moaning, but
most stood silently. The women were breathing hard—they were having
orgasms, Bode realized. Over and over. The men couldn’t because of
the cock rings. Could only shudder and jerk as the dildos rubbed
their prostates, milking them. Whitish liquid ran through the
tubes, and Bode felt sick. He could see piles of it on the floor.
Tourists held their noses and laughed. One “cow” arched and
strained forward, trying to get away from the dildo. He was
begging, Bode realized.

“
Please, no, I can’t. Not
anymore. Not anymore…”

But even as he said it, cum dribbled out of
him and into the tube. The man sighed and slumped onto his elbows.
A tourist slapped his ass sharply. “Look alive, moo-moo.” Her
friend giggled as the man jerked back into position.

Bode took a step back and bumped against
Valen. The tour guide was saying something about the machines. She
kept using the word “livestock.” Bode grew dizzier.

They left the barn, and
Bode’s relief at being outside again was overwhelming. He never
wanted to go into that building—into
any
building—ever again. He wanted to
always be outside; he wanted it always to be daylight. Kilroy’s
office, the coffin car, a sawdust-covered ring under a bone-pale
tent… He couldn’t do that again. He needed to make sure he could
always move, always see.