John Harrington's body swung in its harness, lifeless. His death enfolded the layers of irony he adored in his own work and mocked in the works of others. After all, there he was, bolting his new installation to the gallery's ceiling, fans blasting, hoses humming, air vectoring everywhere except his body, which had expelled its last breath in a soggy moan. John Harrington's last utterance was as wet and deep as sorrow itself—that's what they would say. Already, people chatted about Harrington's heart rate, his yawns, his stomach gurgles and expulsions. John Harrington transmitted his body's every sound—for what else was the body but a canvas for air?

His obituary, which he'd written continuously throughout his life, was mainly true. It was true he was the world's most famous Artist of the Air. He did spend his childhood in the wind-belt of Kansas, where he did build intricate kites. It was untrue that he lost a kitten in a tornado, pure fiction that he'd thrown himself in after it—the scar on his cheek was not cut by debris.

It was true that fame arrived with his Cloud Series II, which critics praised as "exquisite ephemera." True, no one could copy—though many tried—the delicate intensity of his cloudwork. True, spectators wept when "War Widow"—a towering black cumulonimbus shaped like a veiled woman—rained, then hailed, as it moved overhead. True, his political series, Speculative Bubbles, puzzled physicists and incited politicians on several continents. But it was false that each dome-sized bubble —painstakingly inflated over fields of tulips, railroad tracks, abandoned banks, or foreclosed houses—was popped by an outraged banker. For that, he'd hired an actor. It was true John Harrington's art gathered crowds, inspired change, made statements. Still, it never lifted him.     

Nor did the obituary address the recent years of failure. The utter lack of ideas. The inevitable copywriters' puns: "No Wind in Harrington's Sails,"  "Out of Breath!" "Master Zephyr?" All the while, his mind was flapping, flapping, waiting to take wing. There was his Propeller Period. His flirtation with dirigibles. Lame experiments with windmills, weather vanes, barometric pressure. Soon critics heralded a new young thing, freckled with blond braids, whom they'd dubbed the Sun Goddess. But her work was pap: prisms, silhouettes, and, of course, one enormous feel-good rainbow commissioned for an Olympic Opening Ceremony. That one stung John Harrington's heart as he'd not-really-watched it on TV. The crowd delighted in splashes of red, orange, yellow; bathed themselves in green, blue, indigo, violet. John Harrington marveled. It's what he missed in his own work: a breathless whirl of shared excitement, the collective sigh.

And so, finally, this, a massive work of intimacy: Respiration. He'd implanted devices in his nose, lungs, intestines, and trachea, live-feeding his body's air travels to the public, hoping someone would listen. When his fourteen-hour spell of hiccups made the news, it was time. On the day of his death, he was installing a gallery exhibit: a room strung with a complex chain of toys, balloons, parade floats, inflatables, all hooked to hoses and in turn all linked to him—everything powered by his exhalation.

Now, people talked of the tragedy. The Air Artist's last breath, so sodden with regret.

Except John Harrington's last breath wasn't sorrowful. In fact, as he hooked air hoses to the ceiling, he contemplated the joy of those people caught in the Sun Goddess's rainbow. Her face in smiling TV close-ups sparkled in his mind. His youth was over now. Isolation was turbulent, exhausting. Swinging, swinging, he considered the merger of air and light: perhaps a collaboration? 

Swinging in his harness, John Harrington touched the scar on his cheek and remembered: his sixth birthday party. His mother had covered a cake with candles, as usual, taking whimsy to extremes. The fire blazed; heat flushed his cheeks; he swooned in the melt of buttercream. Then everyone inhaled. He made a wish. They all blew the candles. But the flames swelled and licked his face. Guests swarmed around him, patting, dousing. His mother had apologized for the next fifty years, never knowing what she'd sparked.

But at age six, he knew. He had been seared by breath. One minute there was sugary safety, and the next, a blistering wind. Celebration and danger, child and crowd: all so finely joined. What power there was in air! What wonder up in the clouds, across the ocean, in human lungs—in the body of our bodies!

John Harrington was swinging in his harness when he realized he'd completely missed the point of his installation. His mistake was so obvious, in fact, that he laughed—a low, damp sound like something gusted from its moorings.

In the end, he got his wish.

Two days after his death, the Sun Goddess, whose graduate thesis cited Cloud Series II, slipped in the gallery to make adjustments. She understood spectacle. She'd heard John Harrington's last gasp, live, in her earbuds, and recognized its joy. Now, she redirected the hoses and fans. She stenciled a new title.

Resuscitation opened to record attendance. For months, crowds arrived to stand shoulder to shoulder in the gallery as the doors sealed behind them. The closeness of strangers' bodies, the warmth of anticipation made everybody giddy. They tittered. They whispered. The more they exhaled, the brighter the room grew. A baby would cry, her mother would "Shhhhh," and balloons bloomed from the walls. A teenager would hum and his friends would join in, uncurling long necks of floating giraffes. Every "Ahhh!" launched flocks of paper parakeets or squadrons of balsa planes. Sneezes spun whirligigs. Crowds got clever: they chanted cheers or puffed in symphony, propelling larger and brighter enchantments. One group swore they'd generated a cloud shaped like John Harrington's face; another claimed a tiny tornado dropped a kitten into a woman's purse. Inhaling, exhaling, the gallery billowed with light and motion and pleasure. John Harrington's last laugh lofted through the crowd. The room caught its breath.