Jazz Funeral

head. “No. A lot of things happened. I feel like I lost everything at once. I mean, my family and friends and…” She paused, suddenly shy. She had been about to say “my boyfriend,” but thought better of it. “I can’t go back. I can never go back.”
    “Your folks live in New Orleans?”
    She nodded.
    He looked at her for a long while, assessing. “Wonder how you’d look as a blonde?”
    She laughed, the sound coming out of her as unexpectedly as the sobs had. She saw suddenly how easy it was going to be. “That’s it! All I have to do is look different.”
    “That’s what they all do—the runaways.” He stared at her. “But I like the way you look now.” He was kissing her before she saw it coming, his lips on hers, his tongue probing, his hands reaching for her face, tenderly, gently. It wasn’t like kissing Flip, or anyone at Country Day, or anyone in the world, maybe. It was like fire and honey at the same time. So sweet, so impossibly sweet, but so incendiary, sweeping, like a brushfire. Flip kissed like a baby; this was a whole new category. Or maybe one kiss was much like another; maybe she was different. She put a hand on Chris’s neck, to pull him closer to her. His skin was impossibly hot.
    In a while, she said, “I need a break,” and pulled herself away, reached awkwardly for her beer, but only succeeded in knocking it off the bench.
    Chris pulled her back. “Let’s go to bed.”
    There they were, the magic words. Everything was working out so perfectly according to plan that Melody couldn’t quite keep up. She felt dazed, out of focus. Chris put his arms around her, simply held her, not pushing anything, which gave her time to think. And she realized it had all been a fantasy, that she’d never expected to end up like this, with Chris—to get the thing she wanted. She was so used to being thwarted—to being a child instead of an adult, always at someone else’s mercy—that she wasn’t prepared to get her wish. Or maybe she just wasn’t ready to do it. It was something you thought and thought about and it was a big, big deal.
    Oh, hell, be a grown-up.
    I don’t know if I can. What if it scares me? His penis. What if it’s … I don’t know, not what I expect. And what if he gets weird? What if he’s rough or something?
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m kind of mixed up.”
    “You’ve had a hard day.” He whispered it, massaging her shoulders. “Are you tired?”
    “Umm-hmm.”
    “Come on. Nothing will happen. I’ll just hold you.”
    “What?” Did things work like that?
    “Really. It’ll be okay.”
    The scruffy apartment apparently had two rooms and a kitchen, but Melody saw only the first, the living room. A door off the hall was closed. Chris glanced at it only briefly. “Guess Randy and Sue Ann got the bedroom.”
    “Are they a couple?” Randy certainly hadn’t behaved like it.
    Chris shrugged. “Sometimes. Give me a hand, will you?” Melody helped him unroll a foam mattress with a grayish sheet on it. He threw down a couple of dusty sofa pillows and found a sleeping bag to use for a blanket. “You want to take off your jeans or anything?”
    She shook her head and untied her shoes, trying to look nonchalant. To her relief, he removed only his shoes as well.
    When he got into bed, she pressed herself against him, fitting her contours to his, wanting to get as close as possible—to be embraced like a child. And he held her as tight as a teddy bear. She was inconceivably grateful.
    Sue Ann cut Melody’s hair the next day, not too precisely, but who cared? It was a modified punk look, spiked up with gel; irregular was what the whole thing was about. They played a gig on Royal Street, which was closed to traffic in the afternoon, to get money for the rest. Everybody chipped in, and they all went shopping together. They got her sunglasses, clothes from the flea market, different makeup and hair color. They didn’t stop at blond, they got purple too, for the bangs. Chris did her himself. Then Sue Ann did her makeup—a very light base to cover Melody’s tawny skin, red lipstick, and plenty of black stuff on her eyes. She put on a pair of striped pedal pushers and an off-the-shoulder blouse. Sue Ann added some zany earrings, dangling fruit baskets.
    Chris said, “You could knock on your own mother’s door and say you’re the Avon lady.”
    It was true, but Melody wanted to cry. She had a new name and didn’t even look like herself. She