“Just don’t let it get to your head, is all. God gives us all kind of ways to make others feel small.”

“Say.” I set down my drink. “That didn’t bother you, back there. Did it?”

“Of course it bothered me. Like the man said, I don’t want to be a member of any club that won’t have me. I did it for the publicity, is all. And now I like it better right here among my own kind, where I know folks can appreciate me.”

“You think I’m stuck on myself, don’t you?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know anything about you, Miss Macallister, except you’re the kind of woman who likes to have her own way.”

“Most men like to have their own way, and nobody faults them for it.”

Barbara laughs and says that’s true, sure enough, if by most men you meant all men, which is why she stays away from them generally. Speak of the devil. The orchestra then starts filing back to their instruments. Each man—they’re all men, of course—holds a drink in one hand, full enough to make you guess it isn’t his first. I jingle my ice and consider them as they tune and riff.

Barbara leans over. “Something on your mind? Besides that.”

What I mean to say is Nothing. What comes out is My sister.

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” she says.

“I think she’s in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble? Man trouble? Baby trouble?”

“Both, I guess, but those are just the root cause of her main trouble. I don’t know for sure, though. I haven’t seen her in twelve years.”

“Twelve years!” Barbara chokes on her gin. “What kind of idiot child you be, Miss Macallister?”

“Now, that’s not fair. Maybe my sister’s the idiot.”

Barbara shakes her head. “Don’t matter. Blood is the only thing that counts in this world, boss lady. Don’t you know that? I don’t care what you done or what she done, you both need your heads knocked together. Ain’t nobody in the world understands you like your sister. Ain’t nobody ever will.”

At that point, the orchestra swings into action, thank God, swallowing up all the other noise in the room. I don’t want to continue that conversation and wish most fervently that I hadn’t started it to begin with.

The trouble is, you can drown out a conversation like that and even stop it entirely, but you can’t forget it. The words keep beating inside your head to the illicit syncopation of the music outside, until you’re half convinced you might go crazy with them.