The Grand Ballast Read Online Free PDF Page A

Aww, rugged nuts.” Sibyata
yawned. “You got a real thing for that babydoll, don’t you, Kil?
Where’d you find him, a solid gold sewer?”
    Bode’s stomach went
uncomfortably tight. He wished he could remember what meetings
meant. He searched his clouded memories and didn’t come up with
anything but slivers. Roulette was out of the car now, fastening
his pants.
    “ What does it matter where
I found him?” Kilroy asked.
    “ I’m only saying…” Sibyata
tossed Kayak’s leg aside. Kayak crumpled into a tangle of limbs on
the grass. “We been riding with you three years now, and you ain’t
ever told us where you got pretty Bode.”
    Three years. Bode had been
here three years. He stored that information away.
    “ Go on to town, then.”
Kilroy waved her off.
    “ How many hours we got to
ride to Hilgarten after your meeting?” Sibyata asked. “Can we get
drunk?”
    “ You get drunk before
Hilgarten and I’ll turn your cunt inside out and make you squat
over a fire.”
    “ Boy, he’s a dapper dandy,
ain’t he?” Sibyata muttered, rolling her eyes.
    Roulette passed her and
thumped her in the ribs with his elbow. “And you’re about as
charming as the reflection of my asshole in the toilet water.” He
spun and walked backwards, facing the rest of them with spread
arms. “Let’s get to town.”
    Roulette looked hacked-at—patchy beard,
stringy hair, clothes that hung from him like Spanish moss. But in
the right lighting, with makeup filling in his bald spots, he
became mysterious. His movements on the trapeze were passionate,
even if none of that passion came through in his eyes. When he
collided with Sibyata on the bars, they tangled like spiders, and
there was something horrific and appealing about it.
    It seemed possible that the trapeze had once
been to Roulette what dancing had been to Bode. That Roulette had
learned his art carefully from the time he was a very small child;
that he had hoped one day to show the world amazing things.
    “ An hour and a half—no
more,” Kilroy called. “Hilgarten’s two hours away. We have a show
there at eight.”
    Bode watched Sibyata and
Roulette walk off, Kayak crab crawling after.
    The snake charmer cried
out. Harold was wrapped around his injured arm,
squeezing.
    “ Come
on,” Mr. Lein snapped at the snake charmer. “The people want to
see danger .”
    The snake charmer threw
off the snake and cradled his wrist. “Get that thing out of here. I’m going to
town.”
    Eventually it was just Bode
and Kilroy, with Mr. Lein lurking on the periphery, stroking
Harold. Bode finished his cigarette. Felt Kilroy’s gaze on
him.
    “ Lein,” Kilroy said. “Call
Mr. O’ Fauh. Tell him we’re ready.”
     
    ***
     
    “ I wish he was mine,” said
the man seated in front of Kilroy’s desk. He said it in in the
sighing way little girls in old cartoons used to wish for ponies or
princes. He didn’t look at Bode for more than a few seconds at a
time.
    Bode wondered if anyone
made cartoons anymore. He didn’t know how long it had been since
he’d watched television. When he was a teenager he’d liked an
animated show called The Wild
Man —violent, interactive, 3D. If you
bought a special box to hook to your TV, it flecked you with warm
water when a character got his guts shot out. Electroshocked you
when characters were being tortured. A young artist had created it,
intent on horrifying viewers, but the show had died quietly after a
single season.
    Kilroy offered Bode a
cigarette. They were sitting side by side on the window ledge in
Kilroy’s car. Bode was shirtless, but Kilroy had let him remain
clothed from the waist down.
    The man in the chair was
Charles O’ Fauh. Bode didn’t know much about him beyond that he was
an associate of Kilroy’s—though he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d
met O’ Fauh before.
    “ Bode is invaluable to me.”
Kilroy held up a lighter. A few years ago, those words would have
had Bode curling his body like a pissing,