Mitch laughed inside his throat and lifted Sassafrass ’til her head touched the ceiling (which was low), and Valentinoed back, “Mamselle, the paid artiste has no worries. Mamselle, you are bein’ supported—and I say this with modesty—you are bein’ upheld by the only horn player in the only combo in the only club in Compton, California that hires non-Texas blues bands. Now that’s not the Village Vanguard or the East, or the Afro-American Livin’ Theatre, but we got soul . . . an’ we get paid. Below union scale, but we get paid. An’ we can’t play free, but we can play funky. We on a double bill with some old dudes could show ninety-eleven young horn players what dudes are, just by standin’ up all beat an’ crooked. And I tell ya, Sassafrass, we gonna get it on tonight—for you. I’ma do every blues lick I ever knew, and I don’t want you to arrange nothin’, don’t want ya to carry nothin’, I just want ya to groove on the rhythm. Same as all that ol’-fashioned knottin’ and tyin’ you be doin’, only it’s me. Sassafrass, I know why you so ol’ fashioned and respectful of the old folks—’cause they know where we come from, and how to make do. And can’t a soul down at the place tell a holler from a scream, but we do be gettin’ holy.”

By this time Sassafrass was beaming, and squirming because she was still in the air. Mitch let her down right where he could pinch her ass, and it wasn’t until they were in the car that she got a chance to tell him about the cocaine Cypress gave her to sell so she could invest the money in the artists’ community in Louisiana, and they could get on to a new way of living.