How Best to Avoid Dying Read online

  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.

  But if you listened to the words—not every word, only every third word—the song is one of the saddest pieces of music ever recorded.

  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.

  What happened to Zane Bellows? Some say he and Licorice sank to the bottom of Town Lake. Some believe he didn’t destroy Licorice at all and is simply waiting until the world is worthy of hearing it. Still others claim he’s in India searching for the source of all sound.

  The truth is, Zane Bellows changed his name and his appearance and began a career as a freelance jingle writer. You’ve heard his work. His songs have sold everything from dog food to diapers. But in each lighthearted jingle Zane slips subversive hints and harmonies, like hiding hallucinogenic mushrooms in Wonder Bread. Once again change is sneaking in. Zane Bellows is transforming the world one commercial at a time.14

  1 If you’re not John Erler, please don’t be discouraged. Perhaps I’ve missed the spot trying to write a story for John Erler and hit splat damn on a story for you. If this is John Erler . . . hi.

  2 Though knowing you and your passion for Brian Wilson, I’m sure you’d argue that The Beach Boys’ Smile gives it a run for its money… not the 2004 or 2011 version, but the one we never heard.

  3 You once said to me that a man must love and serve a woman because woman has suffered so much. That’s one of the reasons you loved her.

  4 Yes, that’s right, just like the name a young Marlon Brando propelled from the depths of his soul at the end of the film. She’s heard it before. Don’t do it. Zane didn’t and she was pleased.

  5 You’re not gay. You are homoerotic. I would say you believe in the erotic in variety of forms. But people who know you could see you as gay. I think this turns girls on.

  6 You’ve been in love. “Goofy love,” you called it.

  7 You and I were once watching a blue jeans commercial in which a couple faces a herd of buffalo plowing toward them. They take each other’s hands and the buffalo stream all around, but leave the couple unharmed. “That’s what it feels like to be in love,” you said. “You feel like as long you’ve got the other you can do anything.” A cliché, certainly, but such a passionate cliché.

  8 You’re enthralled by laughter in music. I’m sure your passion is inspired by Brian Wilson. As I write this I’m listening to you on the radio (KUT). You’ve been playing songs with laughter in them for much of the morning. Laughter: rhythmic, repetitious, melodic. Isn’t laughter where music began?

  9 Remember how change snuck into your life? It was because of her. You hardly knew it was happening, but one day you found yourself kinder.

  10 Part of me wanted you two to fall apart. I’m sorry, but you were almost offensively happy. Watching that kind of love can be stressful. But then you cried, and you’re not the kind to cry. Lots of days you wouldn’t answer the phone.

  11 I had thought you were not in this story. None of the characters are based on you. But perhaps you are here. Perhaps the three (Zane, Stella, and David) are you. Zane is action; David is inaction; Stella orbits the two like a comet between stars. Is your genius your contradictions? Is your being the unlikely love affair and hate affair of anonymous elements? The pain and joy of your year has pushed out the edges of your soul. In some ways it can hold more than it ever held. But the seams are torn and your soul pours out on me and all those you see.

  12 You loved her when she danced with you riding piggyback, stumbling, laughing, making love to Smiley Smile.

  13 Maybe you love her even more now that she’s gone.

  14 I’ll take the dream that you and I and junior and all our friends old and new and all the good people in the world are gonna live lives of total ecstasy and one by one slip into Heaven where there’ll be Gladys Knight records and licorice for all.

  —Abbie Hoffman, in a letter to his wife.

  THE ADVENTURES OF STIMP

  Stimp was trying to get the key to turn on
his apartment door. It was getting dark and he was frightened.

  “You’re all right, you’re all right,” he whispered to himself, trying to twist the key. But he didn’t believe he was all right.

  Stimp could hear Pumpkin squeak from inside the apartment. Pumpkin was a hamster, a fat hamster. Some days Stimp could hardly see her eyes for the fat and fur surrounding her face. She was so brave. Never afraid. Sometimes she’d crawl to the top of the water bottle and jump over to the wheel and get her fat little legs caught in the spokes. She smelled like hamster. A wheaty, wood-chippy smell. The whole one-room apartment smelled like hamster. Stimp smelled like hamster. He couldn’t smell it himself, but he had overheard someone at the post office mention “the aroma of gerbils.” The person had said, “gerbils,” but Stimp knew he had meant hamster. So Stimp had made an effort to not smell like hamster. He had washed, purchased special perfume-enhanced soaps, stuffed his pockets with potpourri. He had even given Pumpkin a very unappreciated bath. But you can’t get the smell of hamster off a hamster any more than you can get the smell of baby off a baby. Now babies, that’s a smell. Stimp liked that smell, but he was afraid of babies. He had once held a baby, his mother’s neighbor’s baby. He hadn’t hurt the baby, but he had imagined what it would be like if he had. Like if the baby just wriggled a little too much, or some loud noise made Stimp throw his arms up in the air like he’d done with that platter of Ritz Cracker sandwiches at his mother’s housewarming party. Crackers hit the ceiling, some stuck there. Which is bad for a cracker, but really bad for a baby. And they probably wouldn’t believe it was an accident. They’d probably think he wanted to hurt the baby—not just hurt, those crackers splattered—kill the baby. The judge would be all stern and say something like, “Let the hamster-smelling man with the tiny, crooked penis approach the bench.” But how did the judge know about his penis? But Stimp wouldn’t ask because that would be contempt. His lawyer was no help. A cheap, state-employed lawyer who wouldn’t like Stimp. He’s all, “I’ll prove my client is innocent,” but winking at the jury and whispering under his breath, “Innocent of showering, ha ha.” And they all laugh, which is nice for them, because they’re all mad at having to be a jury instead of at home or at work. No, instead they have to watch a child-killing, cracker-smashing, hamster-smelling, small-crooked-penis-having, gerbil-fearing, scabies-suffering guy on trial. And who would take care of Pumpkin? Probably no one. Pumpkin could be starving in her cage, especially since he had put the brick on the top so that she wouldn’t get out. But now he wanted her to get out. To get free! Not to have to eat her own leg or something. Hopefully she’d try around the water bottle. The mesh is loose there. Yeah, and just in time because here comes Mr. Crawnan, the world’s worst landlord. Knowing Mr. Crawnan, he wouldn’t even wait for the trial to end, he’d go right ahead and rent the place and sell all Stimp’s stuff, which is totally illegal, not that Stimp can talk, since he killed a baby. Except his vinyl collection, Mr. Crawnan would keep that for himself. He had once even said, when fixing a lightbulb, “Nice album collection.” Yeah, right. Nice. You mean very nice, as in very nice for your love nest upstairs with all its purple pillows, felt walls, and mood lighting. Yeah.

  So he’d be stomping, Mr. Crawnan that is, all around the apartment, clumsily searching for the albums, which are hidden. Stimp would hide them for sure. Note: first thing tomorrow, hide albums from Mr. Crawnan. And while searching he smashes the Precious Moments figurines, which is okay cause they’re creepy and Stimp only kept them because his mother gave them to him, but he made them face the wall cause their eyes are all big and freaky. And Mr. Crawnan knocks over the hamster cage just as Pumpkin nibbles through the mesh around the water bottle and Pumpkin jumps into her clear plastic ball, rolls out the door, down the stairs, and into the stream just behind the apartment building. And Pumpkin doesn’t care a tinker-tat about the fish staring at her through the plastic because she’s coming for Stimp, her friend, so Pumpkin gets to the prison where Stimp is because Stimp lost the trial, and she sneaks Stimp a key, pretending just to be a mouse. Stimp’s cellmate, Rocko, doesn’t tell on him cause he has become such a good friend cause he had scabies once, too. And he understands how Stimp feels being oppressed because of the small, crooked penis. Not because Rocko has a small or crooked penis, his penis is fine. But Rocko is black and black people get oppressed, which Stimp understands because he owns three Ray Parker Jr. albums, so Rocko wishes Stimp luck as he sneaks out, but Rocko stays cause he’s trying to get his GED. And there’s a huge search for Stimp, but Pumpkin leads him to a safe place to hide. A circus, where Stimp guesses people’s middle names, only it’s a scam because they have to show their driver’s license to get in the circus and the guy who sees their license tells Stimp their middle name through a radio in his ear, but sometimes it’s just an initial and Stimp has to guess and he guesses wrong, but the circus boss says that’s okay cause it makes it look more real, and say, don’t I know your face, say, I hadn’t noticed the smell because of the elephants, but say, aren’t you the Hamster Man that killed that baby? And Stimp has to run and hide in the woods where Pumpkin teaches him how to live as one of the beasts. Free. Alive. Strong. But when the winter comes, there are no more berries or leaves or anything and even Pumpkin looks skinny. Pumpkin scratches a picture in the dirt showing a stick figure man eating a stick figure hamster and Pumpkin crouches by the drawing and nods her little head and points her little claw at her little chest and Stimp is so hungry he almost does eat Pumpkin, but instead he cuts off his own pinky with a sharp rock and makes a tiny fire to roast it over. He feeds most of it to Pumpkin and saves just a morsel for himself. As the months go by he takes another finger and another and another, till finally he only has one finger left and he can’t hold the sharp rock, not even with his toes, which would have been smarter to eat first, but now he and Pumpkin just lay on their backs, hoping it will rain in their mouths, but it doesn’t and they die. Which is sad because Rocko, now out of jail and a captain with the police, is looking everywhere to find Stimp and when he finally does, he sees Pumpkin and Stimp both dead, Pumpkin cradled in Stimp’s one remaining finger. Rocko cries and tells the dead Stimp he was innocent because the baby was already dead when it was handed to him and the mother knew it, and she just wanted to blame it on Stimp so she had given him the baby and had paid someone to make the loud noise, so it’s okay he threw the baby, and that he broke out of jail, and he has a strange penis, and he smells funny, and he’s always afraid, and the key turned and the door opened and little Pumpkin squeaked to see Stimp home. Stimp closed the door behind him and sighed. “No nibbling. Good hamster.”

  Then he put on his favorite Ray Parker Jr. album and they danced. Stimp jumping and flaying, Pumpkin rolling back and forth in her plastic ball.

  FOUR TINY TALES CONCERNING TRANSFORMATION

  1

  The Yellow Stone

  I sit and mindlessly dig my fingernails into the thin tree bark, peeling it away and letting it fall to the mud. I like the smell.

  As I dig, I find, smack dab in the middle of the tree, a tiny, yellow stone. Like a jewel, sort of, I think at least. I have never seen a real jewel. Plastic stuff, well, yes. Mother did enjoy her collection. Tacky I suppose, the collection that is, but my yes, they were tacky times.

  So I begin to pick at the yellow stone, thinking of wealth and my mother. It’s wedged in, but I’m determined to get it out. I’m not lacking strength. I once dated a tennis player. Strong, very fit.

  As I pick away, sweating and grinding my not-so-false teeth, I groan. Groans of stubborn desire, well so I thought, but I begin to sense that the groans are more ones of pain.

  Then I make another realization.

  I wasn’t the one groaning.

  I stop in mid-pick.

  I listen…I listen again. I skip the third listening and move straight on to my fourth listen.

  Could the groan be coming from my yellow gem?

  No wait, just wait (and a fifth
listening).

  Is the gem moaning? Or worse, is it the tree? Have I discovered that trees do indeed feel pain? Please no, a hard salt-encrusted No. If trees feel? Years of pulp and paper screaming at me for past crimes. Writing, reading, bottom cleaning. No. Not the tree, I couldn’t live with the guilt. It would be too much. Far too much. Like beets on a salad.

  What then? I poke at the bark. What would this be? Then, wonder of wonders, a section of the wood, incredibly similar to the shape of a small lizard, transforms into a golden purple. And my stone seems in a timpth of time to be bedded in a purple pillow of this lizard shape’s head, with a newly appearing counterpart. A twin, if you will, only a space away.

  “Well, well, well, well,” said I. “What is this?”

  To my surprise (though probably not to your surprise, you smug little bastard) the lizard spoke up.

  “See here,” the voice began. “I am a creature of skin change.” His accent seemed to be German, or Chinese. Same thing in its fullest. “I am a chameleon, a rather rare wood-dwelling chameleon, and you, fair digger, have not only destroyed my summer home but also waged war against my eye.”

  “I saw only a stone.”

  “Yes, a stone. A false eye. I lost my real one some years ago in a boating accident. So now I have this glass clump instead. Because of its foreign origin it remains unchanged as my color blends.”

  “Yes, well. Sorry.” I did feel bad. Imagine. But he’s the one who put it in the tree.

  “I have filled my wound,” he says, slowly crawling higher up the tree. “And will never fully blend in again.”

  2

  Don’t Tell

  •Don’t Tell

  •Look, don’t tell anyone this happened.

  •Of course not.

  •Because I’m not like you. This was a one-time thing.

  •I understand

  •But, well, it was nice.

  3