Jazz Funeral

and fell into step.
    Am I crazy? she wondered.
    But the thrill of adventure—and perhaps, just perhaps, the edge of depression—outweighed what she knew to be good sense.
    “Herbie,” the musician said. He offered to shake. “What’s yo’ name?”
    “Janis.”
    She couldn’t think of anything for a while, finally said, “I liked your number.”
    He shrugged. “Been doin’ it all my life. Don’t pay nothin’. I just do it.”
    She pondered what he was saying, but couldn’t make sense of it. They walked in silence, and when they got to the friend’s place, Melody thought it must be a very close friend indeed. It was one room with nothing in it but a double mattress, a couple of night tables, and a chair. The sheets on the mattress looked pretty grimy.
    Herbie sat down on it and rolled a joint. Gingerly, Melody took the chair. Finally she got up the nerve to ask, “Did you mean you play music because you have to? Because there’s something in you that has to?”
    “Huh?”
    “I mean, you said, ‘I just do it,’ even though it doesn’t pay. I was wondering what you meant.”
    “I’m wonderin’ what you mean.” He offered her a fat joint.
    “I don’t know.” She laughed. “I don’t know what I mean.”
    She did know, but she couldn’t make herself understood. She felt small and inadequate. Decidedly unhip. Herbie was a man who probably used music as language, rather than words, and had little need to talk about the fact.
    “Hey, baby, you okay?” he said.
    She nodded, found she couldn’t speak anyway. The grimy sheets were starting to look sort of poetic, like they could be the inspiration for a line in a song.
    Somebody’d beaten her to “Empty Bed Blues.” Something less obvious anyway, something about grinding poverty and barely scraping along.
    “Why don’t you come over here and sit by me?”
    Melody heard steps on the stairs outside. Herbie’s friend? Would the two of them gang-rape her? Or was it a woman, a jealous woman who’d stab her lover and his … holy shit, his what? Guest?
    Get real, Melody.
    “Janis? Come here, babe.” He patted the mattress beside him.
    Melody’s heart pounded like John Henry’s hammer. I have to get out of here .
    “What’s wrong? What’s wrong, Janis? Everything’s all right, baby. Ol’ Herbie ain’ gon’ let nothin’ happen to you.”
    Why was he asking her what was wrong? And why was he taking that smarmy tone? It wouldn’t fool a two-year-old.
    She got up and bolted. Opened the door, slammed it behind her, and flew three flights down to the bottom, passing a young black man in a baseball cap, nearly knocking him off his pins. He called after her, “Hey, motherfucker!”
    But not a word out of Herbie. She ran all the way back to Bourbon Street, where she could blend into the crowd, and even then kept looking around her. She bought a praline, and then another, and walked endlessly, around and around this block and that, up and down, neck constantly swiveling for Herbie and his band of rapists in baseball caps.
    When she started to come down from the pot, she began to realize what an ass she’d been—going to a strange man’s apartment, fleeing, all of it. There wasn’t a piece of it she could make sense of, and she felt a fool. The independent, exhilarated feeling had drained off, and what she wanted now was a pair of arms around her. She thought briefly of her mother.
    Ha! Fat chance .
    She wanted to cry. To cry into someone’s shoulder and have her hair stroked and no questions asked. She went back to the band’s apartment, as she’d known she would all along.
    It was dark when she got there, and she thought that was good. If they were asleep, Chris would let her in and she could just slip into bed beside him and hang onto him and that would be that.
    She knocked a long time before he answered. “Who the hell is it?”
    “Melo—Janis!”
    The door opened so fast a cool breeze brushed her cheek. He was naked. “You split on me.”
    “I had to. I’m sorry, I—”
    “Listen, I’m with someone else.”
    She stared, not taking it in. She’d only been gone twelve hours, thirteen, fourteen at the most. “Someone else?”
    He shrugged. She kept staring, trying to process the information.
    Finally she said, whispering, barely able to make the sounds, “Could I sleep on the couch?”
    He stepped aside and padded back to the mattress on the bed. Vaguely, Melody was aware of another face shining, somewhere in the