How Best to Avoid Dying (9 page)

Zane watched David's slow breathing. He leaned in closer and caught the warm breath spiraling up like smoke from a chimney. He imagined tracing the breath backward, past the chapped lips, the unmoving tongue, the long red larynx, the spongy lungs, muscle, pumping blood. Stella returned and Zane quickly stood up, cracked his knuckles and said he had to be going. Her wide eyes questioned, but she only said, “Goodbye.”

He walked the streets of Austin until late into the night, and then continued walking into early morning, drifting in a
confused downpour of thought. It was not just that he, a confident and accomplished heterosexual, found himself drawn to a comatose man. Not just that he also found himself attracted to the young woman this same man was engaged to. What squeezed Zane's mind was that he loved them both, as a unit. He loved Stella and David, David and Stella, her open eyes and his faint breath.

As the dawn sky blushed over Austin, Zane surrendered all preconceptions and was born anew. “I love them both,” he muttered to the sun. “All things can be.”

Zane skipped back to the hospital, giggling as he went. He waved at bakers opening their stores and laughed at bankers and businessmen streaming into tall, glass buildings.
⁶

At the hospital he was told that visiting hours were from 3
PM
to 6
PM
.

“Don't worry,” he told the aging nurse behind the desk. “I'll be back.” She assured him that she would not worry, and Zane bolted.

Later that morning, Zane booked a studio on South Congress. It was a large space with hardwood floors and black, egg crate walls. He gathered the band and announced a new project entitled
Licorice
.

“Why
Licorice
?” Shelly asked.

“Because licorice can only be described with the word
licorice
,” he explained. “Bite into it and you have no idea what it really is, but it is definitely licorice.”

They started recording that day.

Zane's heart-altering experiences drove him to attempt the new. He wielded the microphone as if it were a supernatural sponge. He carried it outside to record the afternoon sun.
He placed it to his and the other band member's foreheads to soak up emotions.

For that first day's vocal sessions he asked that the entire band and the sound engineer be in the nude.

“Can I keep my boxers on?” asked Lane Rope.

“Yes, of course,” Zane answered. “But each and every thread of fabric will find its way onto this album and bear witness to your shame.”

Lane Rope removed his boxers.

At 3
PM
Zane was sitting with Stella/David in their tiny, white room.

“How did he get like this?” Zane asked.

“Slipped, hit his head on a doorstop,” she said with a sigh. “Completely random.”

The concept of random chance became an integral part of the recording process. During one session, Zane released a bag of moths into the studio to interfere with the playing. He hid alarm clocks throughout the studio, all set to ring out at haphazard intervals. On another track Zane had the band switch up instruments so that the bassist was on drums and the drummer had a guitar and the guitarist was on vocals.

The rest of the band felt lost. The new directions were disorienting. Imagine playing a game of pool on a deep-sea fishing boat. If you're concerned with the rules of the game or even the rules of land-bound physics, the act would be utterly frustrating, but if you forget about how the game should work or how the balls should roll and just enjoy the colliding of multicolored spheres as they bounce about, popping in and
out of pockets, well, then you'll have a blast. But the band just wanted to play pool.

Zane tried to inspire them. He told them all things are possible. He predicted that
Licorice
would end the Cold War.

“It's just an album,” Lane Rope said.

“Nothing is just anything,” Zane shouted. “Anything is everything.”

But they didn't understand. In frustration, Zane would retreat to David/Stella. His unmoving strength. Her sweet, soft glances. His stoic resolve. Her sighs and eyes. They were Zane's muse, his magic, his door into more.
⁷

“What did David do with his time before the doorstop?” he asked one drizzly winter afternoon.

“We own a gag gift store. You know, fake poop and things.” Stella reached into her purse and pulled out an oversized nickel and handed it to Zane. It looked exactly like a nickel, except it was four inches wide.

“That's funny,” Zane said, and he and Stella laughed.

“David designed that.”

Zane patted David's chest. “Very funny.”

Laughter became another key element of the
Licorice
recordings. Zane used laughter as an instrument, hiding giggles in the mix or featuring a snicker as a solo. Zane recorded the laughter of dozens of people of all ages, all ranks, all different levels of joy. The tenth track on the album was seventeen minutes of laughter overlapping and combining.
⁸

Zane wanted to include Stella/David in the recording process, so he often used their gag gifts to inspire the laughter he recorded. Once while walking to the studio for an evening session, Zane was asked by some tough looking street kids for a little change. Zane pulled out the oversized nickel and told them, “All I have is big change.” The kids beat him severely. Zane hurried on to the studio and recorded himself laughing with a fat lip. The flapping of the lip made for a wild bass sound on track six. Lane Rope was jealous.

But the other Sea Elephants were starting to follow Zane's lead. Shelly suggested recording at least one song in complete darkness and it was Polk's idea to fill a microphone with catnip and let a stray kitten provide the percussions for track four.

Zane had announced to Polygram that the new album would be complete by spring and it would be extraordinary. Already the rumors were churning. Greedy record executives rubbed their sweaty little hands and set the release date for the week of Easter.

Zane Bellows was changing more than only musically. He donated his leather pants to Goodwill. He took less time in the mornings to sculpt his hair. He smiled more.
⁹

“Do you think David is happy?” Zane asked on winter's afternoon.

“I don't think I've ever seen him happier,” Stella said.

“Are you happy?”

“Yes,” she said.

She wasn't. Stella was a tortured soul. She had grown feverishly in love with Zane. And accompanying that love was a yappy runt of a dog named Shame—shame for her unfaithful thoughts in the very presence of her betrothed. Quickly following and sniffing the ass of Shame was an even nastier mutt: Resentment. Unlike Zane, she could not conceive of a balance between the three of them. She began to hate David for standing (or lying) between her and Zane. Soon Stella was spending sleepless nights being chased around her mind by a savage pack of mangy mongrels.
¹⁰

Those same sleepless nights, Zane sat in the studio alone, remixing, changing, splicing, adding harmonies and atmospheric twists, often venturing into bizarre regions of sound and rhythm where even the other Sea Elephants couldn't follow. When Lane Rope discovered that Zane had backtracked his bass line on track nine and used it to accompany the sounds of dolphins making love, the bassist confronted Zane.

“Can't we just record some normal songs?”

“We're trying to transform the world here,” Zane said from his seat at the mixing board.

“I'm a bassist. I have no interest in transforming anything.” Lane Rope said. He collected his gear and left. Zane didn't bat an eye. He just returned to the mixing.

By Valentine's Day the album had only to be mixed and mastered. Zane was nearing exhaustion, but he managed to bring David/Stella a dozen red roses and a book on the Holy Trinity. Three was holy to him now. David as Dreamer. Stella as Listener. Zane as Creator.
¹¹
Stella smiled at the gift. Zane was
too preoccupied with telling her about the finishing touches he was putting on
Licorice
to notice that Stella was no longer wearing her engagement ring.

Over the next month Zane worked almost without ceasing on the album. Occasionally Shelly or Polk would drop by, but for the most part, Zane worked alone. Then on March 14, just minutes before midnight,
Licorice
was completed. Zane made a master tape and rushed to his most precious audience.

He bounced up the stairs of the hospital and down the hall to the room where David lived. Before he opened the door, he glanced through the window. To Zane's surprise, Stella was there as well. She was whispering into David's ear. When Zane walked in she looked a little shocked, but smiled.

“I'm so glad you're both here,” Zane said, his face glowing. “I want you both to be the first to hear
Licorice
.”

Stella said nothing, just nodded and watched as Zane readied a tape deck and turned off the overhead fluorescent lights so that the only light came from the door's window. Zane pressed play. He took his seat on the other side of the bed and the music began.
¹²

Colors heard, sounds tasted, secrets shared. Moments as subtle as whispers, others wailing out. There were smells in the songs, the scent of sex and rain and even David's breath. Lyrics simple as a child's nursery rhyme and filled with riddles and stories.

Zane swayed, his eyes closed, his hands waving. Stella watched him in the dim light and her eyes began to melt. The melodies tugged on her until she arched across the bed and
put her face close to Zane's. She placed her lips lightly on his. Her hands were on the bed, just touching David's hip. Zane's eyes were still closed and to him it was as if the music were touching his lips. He gave into the softness. Floating notes, floating flesh, and he let his hands fall onto David's stomach and pelvis.

Below them, the sheets began to rise. Zane and Stella's hands crept closer to each other, and closer to the peak between them. The final song of
Licorice
began a crescendo climb. The notes—higher and louder. The growing—taller and firmer. The hands—closer and closer and touching. Zane heard a perfect note he had not written, a sound he had not recorded. He heard the sound through his ears, through his lips, and through his fingers. It shimmered and echoed like a note struck from a triangle. It was a gasp, a breathing. Zane opened his eyes. In front of him was Stella, her lips still wet. Below him was David, eyes wide. Zane was surprised to discover they were blue. He had imagined them as brown.
¹³

The last sustaining moments of
Licorice
hung in the air, the three were wide-awake and together. David blinked at Stella and then at Zane.

“Stella,” David said. “Did I miss the wedding?”

The song ended.

“Oh David,” Stella held his head to her breast.

Zane tried to smile, tried to look at David, but he found the way David moved his mouth grotesque. And his voice, it was squeaky.

The hidden track on
Licorice
, Zane's favorite track, burst from the tape deck.

“What is that noise?” David asked.

“Noise?” Zane whispered.

“Zane, will you turn that off?” Stella said, her eyes never leaving David's.

Zane pressed stop. He watched Stella cradling David, and David reaching to touch her face. Stella's small diamond ring fell from David's open palm, hit the floor, and rolled to the tip of Zane's foot. Zane reached down and picked it up.

“You dropped this,” he said.

Stella said nothing, just squeezed David's head to her chest.

Zane placed the ring down, quietly collected the tape, and walked from the room. He made his way down the white hall, yanking the black tape and letting it trail behind him.

The next day Polk arrived at the studio to discover the
Licorice
recordings were nowhere to be found. Polk was convinced some other band had snuck in and stolen the recordings, but then he found a single tape with a note saying, “Goodbye.” The tape had just one song, Zane on guitar and vocals.

Over the next few weeks the band was too shocked by the disappearance of their album and friend to do anything. But after a month and plenty of pressure from the record label, Polk added drums to that one remaining song. Shelby gave it a guitar solo and harmonies. They called in Lane Rope to lay down a bass line. Finally the song was released as the last single of Zane Bellows and the Sea Elephants.

The song was so happy, a bubbly bubble-gum nugget, like vanilla Coke and Girl Scout cookies.

You know I love to feel the beat. Dead ahead is loving street
.

Music kills my blues. I'm never all alone now!

Are you alone now?

Are you alone now?

Are you alone now?

Baby, I'm coming on over
.

It was a huge hit. Billions sold all over the world. The Sea Elephants (sans Zane) went on tour based on its success alone and all retired as wealthy individuals. It was a sugary, sticky piece of pop candy glory.