Jazz Funeral

phrasing.
    “What are you laughing at?” She’d picked an inopportune moment. He had just buttoned his shirt and was admiring himself in Skip’s newly purchased full-length mirror. “Something wrong with the outfit?”
    “Don’t be silly. I was laughing at myself.”
    “Well, why don’t you just change? I mean I know it’s an informal party, but …” He let his voice trail off.
    She was lying on the sofa, wrapped in a towel, having flopped down because there simply wasn’t room for both of them to move about at once. And there was another reason.
    “I don’t know what to wear.”
    As if on cue, a singsongy voice floated up the stairs: “Margaret Langdon!”
    “Dee-Dee. Hot dog.”
    She jumped up, smiling.
    “You’re going to the door like that?”
    “I always do. He dresses me.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I don’t mean he hooks my bra or anything. He styles me.”
    Steve gave her the kind of look Jimmy Dee gave her when she mentioned Steve. In a way, they were rivals for her, she was coming to accept that. But they weren’t rivals in the usual way. Jimmy Dee was gay. He probably couldn’t have admitted he was jealous of Steve, or wouldn’t have figured it out. He never said so, seemed always surrounded by an admiring throng, but Skip knew how lonely he was. A lot of his friends had died, and he didn’t have lovers anymore. Or not often, not much outside his fantasies. They were best friends, she and Dee-Dee, she and her older, gay, eccentric landlord. He played at straightening her out—she was the depressed one, according to him—and she drew comfort from it. But she knew he needed someone to love. As did she. And he lived only steps away—in the building’s slave quarters.
    So when Steve Steinman had entered her life, Dee-Dee had reacted with as much testosterone as if they were married. And Steve, sensing male possessiveness even when it wasn’t supposed to be there, had reacted accordingly. The fact was, they hated each other, and both knew it would hurt her to admit it. So they contented themselves with snipes, which she simply put up with. She kept thinking it would work itself out.
    She flung the door open and hurled herself at the somewhat smaller frame of her dapper landlord, nearly burning herself on the joint in his mouth.
    With one hand Dee-Dee removed the joint, and caught her waist with the other. “Ah. Just in time, I see. You need me, don’t you?”
    Without waiting for an answer, he handed Skip the joint and strolled to her closet. Skip didn’t want any, and handed it to Steve, who toked enthusiastically.
    Jimmy Dee was also going to Hamson Brocato’s party, but he was still hanging about in an old pair of shorts and a faded purple T-shirt. His impeccable casualness made cool seem the invention of middle-aged gay lawyers rather than high school hooligans a third his age.
    “It’s casual,” he said. “How about your linen thing?” He pulled out a dress he’d made her buy, a kind of jumper, or over bare skin, a sundress.
    “A dress?” She wrinkled her face up.
    “Well, I certainly don’t care what you wear! Why not just pour your tiny body into that gorgeous blue uniform?” He was going into his swish act, which was funny, but always intimidated her when he did it around hair and clothes—made her as unaccountably subservient as bossy hairdressers did. She was six feet tall and statuesque. Well, Junoesque. Goddesslike, the normal Dee-Dee said. The swishy Dee-Dee called her tiny.
    “Okay, okay, I just don’t know if it’s very flattering.”
    Steve said, “It isn’t.” Which wasn’t like him at all.
    “Oh, it’ll do. Turn your backs.” Normally she’d have dressed in the bathroom, but tonight she didn’t want to leave the men alone together. She searched for a neutral topic. “Jimmy Dee. Tell Steve about Ham.”
    Hamson Brocato, their host for the evening. He cut quite a figure in New Orleans, which automatically made him an object of interest for Steve, who couldn’t get enough Big Easy lore. And, along with something called the Second Line Square Foundation, he was currently Steve’s employer. Dee-Dee’d known him all his life.
    “Well, he’s producer of JazzFest,” Dee-Dee said with a shrug.
    “Oh, come on,” said Skip.
    Steve knew what Hamson did. And Dee-Dee knew he knew. Ham had hired Steve to make a promotional video for his pet project, arguably a very good cause—and for Steve, a very good opportunity.
    “Well, hell.”