Jazz Funeral

the most part she didn’t notice her thoughts, had found some inner space to go to, where she could cover her pain with gray clouds. When she finished the beer, she felt better.
    She thought: The thing to do is stay loaded.
    She could do that. She had money and she was tall enough to reach the bar. And she had the sense to know that no matter how ugly she looked to herself, for some outlandish reason there would be men who’d be interested, who’d offer her things. Drinks. Pot.
    She could get by.
    She went back into the kitchen and got a rock-hard doughnut, knowing she couldn’t afford to fall off any bar stools. If someone took her to a hospital, or some juvenile facility, or jail, her parents would find her and she was dead. So she had to remember to eat. It was the only thing she did have to remember except a key … but there wasn’t one.
    Who cared? She probably wouldn’t be coming back here anyway. She had no idea where she’d sleep that night. Maybe outside. By the river. In an alley. She’d be too wasted to notice.
    She found her sunglasses and, slipping them on, stepped into the glare, biting into the doughnut, feeling it give beneath her teeth, crunching it but not tasting. She threw it out. She could get a Lucky Dog. She’d lived in New Orleans all her life and never had one. The thought almost cheered her up.
    She ate the hot dog, went into an Irish bar, and got a beer. But not soon enough. The dog had hit her stomach with a thump that dislodged feelings, stirred up thoughts—about what it meant that Ham was dead, what that would do to her life. She drank quickly. She couldn’t think about that.
    A man sitting two stools down from her, a short guy with muscles and a tan, played an Irish song on the jukebox. The sadness of it penetrated every cell of Melody’s body, locked her into a grim spasm of desperation so strong, so severe that if she didn’t tense all her muscles, keep them tight, not give a millimeter, she’d fly apart, faint again, maybe melt, she didn’t know; she just knew she had to stay tight to keep it together.
    The man said, “You cold?”
    She shook her head.
    “You looked cold. Holding your elbows, curling up almost.”
    She knew she was making a spectacle of herself.
    She tried to uncurl but couldn’t. “The song is so sad.”
    “That it is,” he said. “That it is.” As if that was the only fact he knew in the universe. Melody wished he would talk to her—about anything, it didn’t matter much. It might be distracting.
    She wanted to talk to someone about Ham, to somehow rid herself of this horrible burden she was carrying, but she reminded herself anew that she had no friends, no boyfriend, no family. She was alone. Except for Chris, of course, and she couldn’t talk to him. A thing like a roach, all crawly and ugly, lodged in her throat when she thought of it. Wasn’t there anybody?
    Madeleine Richard!
    But no, not Madeleine Richard. She’d already been through that. Richard would turn her in.
    She got another beer. Was there someone in the Quarter? Surely there was someone. How could a musician not know someone in the Quarter? A musician and a sister of Ham Brocato’s. Ham! Of course. She did know someone, someone Ham and Ti-Belle knew. Someone she probably couldn’t trust, but who couldn’t be bothered turning her in either. Somebody she’d always liked, who was as much an outlaw as she was.
    He lived way on the other side of the Quarter, near North Rampart, dangerously close to Treme. Ham had told her never to walk there alone, but Ham hadn’t known that one day soon she was going to be completely alone, no one to walk with, no one even to lecture her, as he had. He didn’t answer his bell. But where would he be? Nowhere.
    She knew he had to be home—he didn’t go anywhere else anymore, except to Ham’s once a week. It was very sad, Ham had said—the wreck of a fine musician. Ti-Belle had laughed: “Another of Ham’s strays.”
    She looked through the courtyard gate—yes! There he was, in a ridiculously brief blue bathing suit, eyes closed, stretched out in the sun, skin like milk, and a squeeze bottle of sunscreen right beside him. Why was he bothering? she wondered. He was always going to look like pompano en papillote .
    “Andy! Andy, it’s me! Melody.”
    He didn’t budge.
    “Andy Fike! Wake up!”
    A kid about her age, black, but somehow nothing like Joel, came ambling down the street. “Wha’s wrong, baby—your boyfriend throw