Jazz Funeral

she could say what she was thinking—things could hardly get worse.
    “Oh, don’t be such a queen.”
    To her surprise, he laughed, preening a little; apparently pleased. “Well, did you do it?”
    “I come here for help and this is what I get? Of course I didn’t do it. I must have been crazy.” She got up and started to leave.
    “Mel, wait a minute. You’re in trouble, kid.”
    “What are you going to do about it?”
    “I’m going to light up a doobie. You woman enough for that?”
    She sat back down. The beer wasn’t really doing it right now. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”
    He pulled a joint out of his shoe, which he’d taken off to sunbathe. Melody didn’t have much in mind about what to do with her life, had started to think of it as fragments, laced together with beer and pot when she could get it. She wasn’t even interested in singing right now.
    She was so depressed it even occurred to her to go home—but the consequences of that seemed far too much to bear.
    I could get raped sleeping outside , she told herself.
    But she couldn’t imagine being raped. And she couldn’t imagine facing her parents today. Tomorrow. Any time, this wasn’t about time. She didn’t want to have to face them ever again.
    But I have no place else to go!
    Back to Chris’s? Somehow, that sounded almost as bad. She couldn’t be in love, feeling the way she did, knowing what she knew, being who she was. She didn’t even think she could sing, and they wouldn’t let her stay there if she didn’t sing and she didn’t … put out? The phrase had popped into her mind, but surely it didn’t apply. Chris wasn’t like that.
    The one person in the world she really wanted to see was Ti-Belle. But she didn’t want to talk to Ti-Belle. No way she was going to talk to anyone about what had happened, and that’s what they’d want to know about.
    She wanted to see Ti-Belle’s set tomorrow, that was what she wanted. Was she crazy to go?
    She was way too stoned to know. She looked at Andy. Should she go home? Should she ask him if she should go home? Talk about it with him?
    He was as stoned as she was, and it gave him a consummately silly expression.
    “Mel,” he said, “what’s a girl with bruises around her belly button?”
    She shook her head, at a loss for words, not believing he was trying to tell her a joke right now.
    “A blonde with a blond boyfriend.” He brushed her thigh with his fingers. “You can appreciate that, right?” He fingered her hair and, feeling how heavy it was with spray and gel, pulled his hand back in disgust. “Icccch.”
    “Andy, I’ve got to go. You’re not gonna rat me out, are you?”
    “Wait a minute. You never did say why you wanted to see me. You need a place to stay?”
    “No thanks. I’ve got a blond boyfriend.”
    Oh, shit! Why did I say that?
    “Oh-la-la.”
    “I’m just kidding. I’ve got to leave town, I guess. I just wanted …to say good-bye to somebody.”
    “Come here, honey. Give me a hug.”
    Ichhh.
    “I’m going to miss my bus.”
    She ran all the way to the river side of Bourbon Street, where there were places she knew she could get served. But suddenly she was unaccountably tired. She needed to sleep again. Where to go?
    By the river. Where she could feel the sun, where the river itself would be a warm and comforting presence, like the lap of a giant mother. She was so sleepy she could barely walk. But she did, somehow, more or less in a daze, until she got to the levee, where she curled up on the grass just behind Cafe du Monde, looking, she hoped, not at all like a drunken, runaway murder suspect, just an afternoon stroller having a little nap.
    She could hear the drone of bees, she thought, though maybe it was machinery somewhere, and occasionally whistles blew on the river, whistles on the paddleboats. The sun felt delicious, gold and lovely on her skin. The air hung heavy, river air. She felt like a baby, snug in a crib.
    She awoke slowly, not too much later, she thought, but she didn’t have a watch and didn’t care anyway. She wasn’t scheduled to bow to the queen today.
    She was aware that something had awakened her, of a vague feeling of uneasiness starting to give way to dread. Filled with panic, she opened her eyes, tightened her body. A man was sitting close to her, too close to blame it on coincidence. He was a grown man, not a boy, a white man in his thirties, perhaps, or maybe his forties—all men that old