Jazz Funeral

banished, was waiting for him.
    “She okay?”
    “She’s going to be fine. You think we can walk around awhile?”
    Proctor sighed. “We can give it a shot.”
    Nick didn’t perform anymore, he was practically a recluse, he did everything he could to discourage any sort of public following, and yet whenever he went out, he still got mobbed. Anywhere. He couldn’t go to the cleaners without autographing his ticket.
    “Come on, these people are cool. Let’s go get a snoball.”
    They walked in silence for a while, tense, expecting to be approached. Finally Proctor said, “What’d the cop want?”
    “Hell if I know. Had some kind of bug up her butt about Ti-Belle’s alibi. Picked a hell of a time to come, didn’t she?”
    Proctor shrugged. “I don’t know. It worked.”
    That struck Nick funny. He threw back his head and laughed like he hadn’t in a long time. “Well, you’re right about that. It did work, I guess. Now the whole world’s gonna know ‘bout me and Ms. Ti-Belle.”
    Proctor let a beat pass. Finally he said, “Her show was good, I thought.”
    Nick couldn’t tell if he was changing the subject or not. “Yeah, she was hot,” he said, going along with it. Then he said what he wanted to say: “I’m crazy ‘bout that little Cajun.”
    His friend didn’t answer.
    Nick wanted to know why, but didn’t know how to ask. He said, “She’s a great girl, isn’t she?”
    “Seems to be,” said Proctor, and he shrugged again, as if getting rid of something. His voice sounded vague.
    Nick said, “I think I’m gon’ get married again.”
    “Oh, lord, Anglime, what does it take? You got a houseful of ex-wives, and fifty-seven varieties of gurus, and not one shrink, I just noticed. Don’t you think you ought to get one? When in the hell are you gonna learn your lesson?”
    Nick grinned. He’d said it. He’d surprised even himself, hadn’t really known until he’d spoken it, and now that he had, he liked it. “I’m not kiddin’. She’s the one.”
    They were in the snoball line now, but these lines were always the slowest. Proctor said, “I’m not going to say how many times I’ve heard that one.”
    “Well, it was always true. You know anybody else who’s so friendly with all his exes?”
    “Nick, baby, this is costing you. It costs money to get married, in case you’ve forgotten. I mean, I know you’re feeling all romantic and all, but get real—we both know the expensive part’s at the other end. And anyway, you can have anything you want—I mean anyone you want doing anything you want any time you want. Why go through all that crap?”
    “I like bein’ married. That way you’ve got a deal. See, if you don’t get married, they just get pregnant and make you support them and the kids and you never have any say about it and it still costs you but you don’t have anyone to watch movies with.”
    “Chocolate snoball,” said Proctor to the vendor, and when he got it, he said, “You know it’s all I can do not to smash this thing on top of your pointy head?”
    That was the second thing that day that struck Nick as funny. He laughed like a loon once more and thought how good it was to be in love. He hardly ever laughed.
    “Hey, I mean it, Anglime. You’re the craziest dude I ever met.”
    Nick now had his own coconut concoction. “Let’s go hear some zydeco.”
    They headed toward the fais do-do stage. Proctor said, “You sure about Ti-Belle?”
    “Surer’n shootin’.” He laughed again. “And I’ve done a lot of that in my time.” He was having the time of his life; it wasn’t every day he made puns.
    “She just doesn’t seem like that kind of girl—the midnight movie type.”
    “What do you mean? Ti-Belle loves movies.”
    “I’ll bet she’d rather act in them than watch them.”
    Nick considered. “Well, she is ambitious. But hey, bro’, that’s fine with me—somebody in the family’s got to be. Sure ain’t me, now is it?”
    He was having so much fun, and Proctor’s mood was so serious. Dark, almost. “I worry,” he muttered. “I just worry, that’s all.”
    “Okay, spit it out. What are you so worried about?”
    “She wants a career, Nick. She wants it worse than air. She’s good, but she needs something and she knows it.” Proctor punched him in the chest with his index finger. “You, Nick. You know what I think she really wants? She wants to get you working again—with her. She needs you to perform with her.”
    “So