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the
show—which wasn’t saying much.
    “ I want
people to feel more when they watch me. But it’s hard to reach
them.”
    Kilroy had repeated that
it was the simplicity, the easy grace of Bode’s performance that
made him stand out. “Everyone else,
they’re either trying too hard, or not hard enough.”
    Finally Kilroy had asked if
he could take Bode on a date.
    Bode had been surprised.
Dating was a quaint idea—outdated, a little foolish. Garland joked
about it all the time. The people who did it were mostly young. It
had become a sort of rebellion, a demonstration of adolescent
silliness. While romantic relationships rarely lasted, they did
provide a temporary excitement to some people.
    Bode also knew that since
meeting Kilroy Ballast, he’d had significantly more energy. He
threw himself into rehearsals and teaching, simultaneously
distracted and hyper focused. He thought of Kilroy often. He
worried that because he now knew someone found his “simplicity”
beautiful, he wouldn’t be able to maintain that effortlessness. He
would become self-conscious and start to overthink his
performances.
    “ It was beautiful,” he said now, trying to match Kilroy’s excitement.
Wishing Kilroy would call him beautiful.
    They walked to Kilroy’s
car, and Kilroy said, “Sometimes I wish we were only allowed to
create using what we find. Like the noises of the dying. I wish we
didn’t drive cars or live in houses with central heating. I wish we
had to work a
little for everything—our food, our comfort, our praise.” Kilroy’s
voice rose and his words ran together. “Imagine if complacency were
impossible. If the only way to survive was to break what exists and
reincarnate it.”
    Sometimes Kilroy got like
this. Manic, chatty, sweeping his arms and speaking to the stars.
And his clothes were strange—tailcoats and vests. Bits of flair
like epaulettes or brass buttons. When he got like this, Bode could
imagine him jabbing the air with a silver-handled cane to make a
point.
    “ You wish people still
loved the arts?” Bode asked.
    “ Ah,
they do though.” Kilroy opened Bode’s door first. Went around the
driver’s side and climbed behind the wheel. “Artists have just
gotten it in their heads that audiences want to see more —bigger, faster,
stronger, newer, bloodier. And people do. They want novelty. But it
has to be combined with—or grounded in—what people have always felt
a connection to. Nature. Unembellished beauty. Birth, death, and a
sort of vintage supremacy.”
    “ Simplicity?” Bode
suggested.
    “ I suppose. If nature can
be considered simple.”
    Kilroy drove Bode home.
They parked outside Bode’s small white house, and Kilroy peered out
his window and tapped on the glass, inviting Bode to look at the
moon. “This, Bode. We’re all this . And it’s nothing to get bored
with.”
    “ It’s almost full,” Bode
said, wishing he could say something smarter. Kilroy could talk
circles around him.
    “ We are
great, and we are meaningful in our smallness. Boredom is ingratitude. Boredom
is showing our bellies to our stupider natures.”
    Bode had gone to church
years ago with his father. The room had been about a third full.
The preacher had described miracles from ancient times that sounded
like special effects in a movie—plagues and lightning storms.
Toward the end, the preacher said something like, “The next time you see a bird, think about how
grand it would be to have wings. Think about the small designs that
hold up something big. And be glad.”
    Now Bode’s father never
left the house. Well, not exactly true. He did yard work. And
Bode’s mother played marbles. All day long, shooting marbles across
the living room floor, the snicks and clacks lodging in Bode’s
brain even as he slept.
    “ I’m not bored around you,”
Bode murmured.
    Kilroy paused, smiled, a
flash of something like terror in his expression. He leaned over
and kissed Bode.
    The kiss was deceptively
simple. Layers