Lousiana Hotshot

girls at bay.
    He was a little bit scholarly-looking, which befitted his day job, and a little bit devilish, which was more appropriate for his two night gigs, bartending and playing the trumpet. He was a sometime member of a band called the Boucree Brothers, which was more or less a pickup band made up of family members, not all of them brothers. Darryl was someone’s nephew, Talba couldn’t quite remember whose. He probably had the best smile in Louisiana.
    “Do you know Shaneel? Cassandra’s friend?”
    “Not really. I hear she’s a pretty good kid.”
    “Well, Cassandra’s a mess. I’d like you to meet her.”
    “Thanks so much.”
    “She’d like you.”
    He shrugged. “Kids do. It’s rare to encounter such extraordinary brilliance and wisdom in one so young and handsome. They recognize it.”
    Talba rolled her eyes. “And Millie said Tujague was arrogant.”
    “Now, him I do know. He came and did an assembly for us once.”
    “Hey! He did?” She saw an opportunity here. “Could you—”
    “I met him is all. He wouldn’t know me.”
    “Oh.”
    “I thought he was a good guy. But I bet Millie’s right— there are guys who surround themselves with sycophants. Not that I know anything about the rap scene. But I guess a groupie’s a groupie, no matter what their sex is.”
    Talba was playing with her food, her mind wandering, suddenly fixing on the pitiful image of Rhonda lying in a pretty blue dress in her nice padded casket. “Can I tell you something weird that happened to me? I cried at the funeral.”
    “A lot of people cry at funerals. I hear it’s more or less expected.”
    “No, you don’t get it. This had nothing to do with Rhonda.”
    He took her hand. “Well, stress. And that music. It always gets you.”
    She pulled her hand away, wanting to be taken seriously. “Darryl, I’m telling you. This was
weird.
It wasn’t just crying, it was like the floodgates had broken. And I had this strange sense of déjà vu.”
    “Funerals are pretty much the same, I guess.”
    “But that’s just the thing— this is the first one I’ve ever been to.”
    He made a fist and banged the table. “You know what? That’s the trouble with our society. You don’t get to have an experience, because you’ve already had it. Sure, you’ve been to funerals. You’re been to hundreds of funerals— it’s just that you were at the movies at the time; or in your own living room with the TV on.”
    “But I didn’t
cry
then.” She heard the whine in her voice, the faint childish note of desperation.
    Darryl sobered instantly. “You sound like you’re about to now.”
    She was shaking her head. “I don’t know. This was just so off-the-wall.”
    He clasped his hands together on the table, serious at last. Apparently he’d finally gotten the picture: something weird had happened. “You know there’s something we’ve never talked about? Whatever happened to your father?”
    “My father?” She was taken aback. “Oh, I see what you’re getting at. Well, he’s not
dead
or anything. He just… left my mother.”
    “So you weren’t at his funeral.”
    “No.” She felt her lower lip start to quiver.
    Darryl wouldn’t quit. “Do you ever see him? I mean, you must have been close at one time.”
    They might as well have been talking about calculus, this was such bewildering territory. “Why do you say that?”
    He looked a little bewildered himself. “The poem… ‘Queen of the May.’”
    “Oh, the
poem.
My mother hates that poem.”
    “Really? She should be glad you had such a good dad— I’d love to be a father like that.”
    “Well, actually, it’s just about… oh, hell, you should never try to explain a poem. Let’s just call it poetic license. I don’t remember my father. I don’t…” She stopped. She’d been about to say she didn’t even know what he looked like, but that surprised her so much she didn’t want to go on with it.
    Darryl said, “It has to hurt.”
    “No, really. I didn’t even
know
him.”
    “It has to hurt,” he repeated. “It’s got to. Why else would you have written the poem?”
    He spoke with such emphasis that she looked him full in the face, and saw there, in the set of his jowls, in his usually laughing eyes, such sympathy, such pain on her account that she had no idea what to make of it; literally couldn’t imagine where it had come from. And then, in the midst of her confusion, her throat closed; a flock of butterflies took