Jazz Funeral

that song you just wrote is so good?”
    “You really think it’s good?” She didn’t believe him.
    “They don’t call it blues for nothin’—you of all people ought to know that.”
    “But you—all the Boucrees. Music’s in your blood. It’s your heritage.”
    “Bullshit! Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!”
    “Joel!” He had sounded almost violent.
    “My ancestors learned to play the banjo back on the old plantation ‘cause that was all they had except a back-breaking life and a bullet to look forward to if they tried to split. A public whipping at the very least. Can you imagine that, Mel? To be tied up and whipped? Don’t look at me like that. Your people did it to mine.”
    “Well. I didn’t.”
    He ignored her. “Why do you think black people converted to Christianity so easily? ‘Cause that’s were the music was—the only thing that eased the pain. You ever notice how many gospel songs talk about being saved? Why do you think that is? We Boucrees came out of poverty—the ones that weren’t musicians were laborers; the women cleaned white ladies’ houses.”
    He said “white ladies” with utter contempt—they were the enemy to him, she saw now, and she wanted to tell him that she wasn’t, she’d do anything for him, she worshiped him.
    “It’s only this generation we’ve joined the middle class, Mel. You know how weird it is for me to be going to Country Day? Nobody in my whole neighborhood can get over it. But I want to be a doctor—I’ll be the first one in my family to get a graduate degree—and my mama didn’t want me going to public school and she used to work for a lady who went to Newman and she couldn’t stand her. And after she saw the campus, it was Country Day or nothing—but my daddy wanted me to go to NOCCA, just in case; only I didn’t make it. My grandparents’ generation, they’re still poor, at least they think they are.
    “My daddy and my uncles made it on their music—made it a lot bigger than the family ever did before. One or two of them had a couple of years of college, but that’s all. They smoke a lot of marijuana, do other drugs, I bet, some of them. It hasn’t sunk in with them that they’ve made it, you know that? But me and my brothers and sisters and cousins, we have choices. We’re the first Boucrees who ever did, and some of us just aren’t as talented as the older generation. I don’t know, the talent gets thin or something when you aren’t as desperate.”
    “But what about me?” She was terrified his theory excluded her. “I don’t come from a family like that.”
    “I don’t know about you, Melody. You’re a real pretty girl from a real nice family. But you’re not happy. You couldn’t sing and play like you do if you were.”
    The Boucree garage was deserted when they returned, and Melody fell asleep almost instantly, shimmering thoughts of Joel flitting through her consciousness. It was funny, she hadn’t wanted booze or pot all evening. She was falling in love with him. He was enough for her.
    Sometime in the night she awoke to someone, she never knew who, playing the piano and singing, unaware she was on the other side of the wall.
    My own private concert, she thought, and was as happy as she’d ever been. It wasn’t till the music was over, till the place was dark again, that she noticed something was wrong. It had been wrong for hours, had started mid-evening perhaps, but she hadn’t wanted to pay it any attention. Now, alone in the dark, a little bit scared, it was hard to ignore. It was a strange itch between her legs.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
    It was Friday night in the Big Easy, but Skip and Steve were munching a hasty po’ boy on her coffee table, having decided there wasn’t even time to go out for a bite. Both had to work that night and early the next day.
    Skip was wearing a tank top and shorts, fresh from the shower but already sweating again. The ceiling fan was on, but it got hot in the tiny apartment when there were two people in it. And Skip had gotten so she very much liked having Steve in it with her, tight squeeze or no. She was realizing that more and more as the days wore on, the case wore on, and she saw him less and less. She was missing him even though she was living with him.
    All of the disadvantages and none of the advantages, she thought. She sighed. It had to be. It was the nature of her work. And his.
    “What’s wrong?” he said.
    “Nothing. I’m just … I don’t know. I wish we