Free How Best to Avoid Dying by Owen Egerton Page A

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 aconfused 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 .
    â€œDon’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 .
    â€œWhy Licorice ?” Shelly asked.
    â€œBecause 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.
    â€œCan I keep my boxers on?” asked Lane Rope.
    â€œYes, 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.
    â€œHow did he get like this?” Zane asked.
    â€œSlipped, 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 andout 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.
    â€œIt’s just an album,” Lane Rope said.
    â€œNothing is just anything,” Zane shouted. “Anything is everything.”
    But they didn’t understand. In