Jazz Funeral

to get him out of nostril range.
    The dancing girl wasn’t Melody, and his first thought was to leave, never mind the two-drink minimum, until he saw the girl on the bar. She was lying there on her side, her feet got up in some kind of mermaid’s tail, but the rest of her stark naked except for the two-by-two-inch G-string they all wore. She rested her head on her right hand and had her left arm folded over her breasts, so that the effect wasn’t erotic, merely shocking. Shocking because she was a teenager with a pageboy, a kid about Melody’s age, looking as if she was lying by a swimming pool. Shocking because her face was a baby’s face, the face of a child whose worst problem ought to be algebra. She wasn’t even wearing makeup.
    He was staring at her, trying not to gasp, not to change expression, when he heard Patty say, “Oh my God.”
    He turned toward her—toward the center of the club—and saw what she saw: a short-haired girl with walnut-sized breasts, brand new, just sprouting, barely budded little things. She was standing on a chair, pulled up to a table, pumping her pelvis. The girl was thin, like Melody, wearing only the ubiquitous G-string and a pair of knee-length boots. Her crotch was about six inches from the face of the man sitting at the table.
    “Don’t look,” he said to Patty, he didn’t know why.
    A waitress led them to a table and brought them a pair of five-dollar Cokes. George stared at a landscape dotted with “table dancers” like the girl with the walnut breasts. In the center was a carpet-covered stage, inhabited by three more naked beauties, performing on their backs—doing somersaults, leg lifts, getting into contortions that looked like weird yoga postures. They probably were yoga movements, it dawned on him—these clubs didn’t have choreographers; the girls probably had to use whatever they knew.
    But these girls were background—the table dancers were what hurt. High school kids shaking their booties in men’s faces. It made him want to throw up.
    Patty reached for his hand. “Do you see Melody?”
    “No.” It came out like a squawk. A girl came and whispered to Patty, who answered. The girl drew up a chair.
    “She asked me if I wanted to buy a table dance for twenty dollars to embarrass you,” Patty said. “I said we’d give her twenty bucks to talk to us.”
    George nodded. “Do you know a girl named Melody?” he said, knowing how futile it was.
    She shook her head. “My name’s Tulip.” She spoke in a high baby voice.
    “How old is that girl?” He pointed to the one lying on the counter.
    “Twenty-two. Me too.”
    What was there to say? Where should we look for our daughter?
    “I bet you’d never guess that,” said Tulip. “Because of my voice. I sound like a baby, don’t I?” Her words were slurred. She was pretty loaded. “The owner here told my girlfriend, ‘Tulip’s butt’s too big, but I had to hire her because she sounds like a child and I love to fuck children.’” Tulip giggled. “You get along however you can.”
    George threw his Coke against the wall. He didn’t know he was going to do it, later wondered how he’d decided to aim for the wall instead of the fat, stinking barker, who proved also to be the bouncer. The man was at the table, grabbing George under the armpits, muscling him out before the shards of the glass had hit the floor.
    “My money!” cried Tulip, her too-red lips twisted in despair.
    “I’m leaving, goddammit! Let me pay her!” The man let go.
    George tossed her two twenties and stalked out, Patty trailing.
    Blinking in the brightness outside, Patty was pale. “What happened, George? Are you okay?”
    “I’m okay.” He spoke louder than he needed to, yelled at her, really. They walked in silence to their car. Only when the motor was running did George turn to her. “You read about that stuff, you know? You hear about it.”
    She nodded, her brows drawn together, as if she were trying to keep her face from falling apart.
    “But it doesn’t prepare you—I mean, you don’t know until you see it. You just don’t know.”
    Patty was shaking. She wasn’t crying, she was just shaking, as if she were very cold.

CHAPTER TWENTY
    Melody took the shuttle back to the Quarter, breathing everyone else’s beer fumes and wishing she could have gotten loaded at JazzFest, could have found someone to buy beer for her. This time, she was really at the end of the line; no turning back. She’d seen