We made an exception when the Comet Club reopened months after the raid, an important night on Central Avenue. The club was packed and pulsating with excitement that night, full of white and black patrons, and the band was in fine form. Terrence and I got a few odd looks when we came in together, though we were not the only interracial couple, and that eased my mind a bit.

We joined a big group crowded round a single table. Clayton and Rita, Ben Tupper from the Challenger and his wife, Terrence’s sister Coralee and her husband. Coralee was cool to me, not at all chatty and friendly, as she had been before Terrence and I were a couple. Her husband was a small, lithe man who did not talk, just quietly grooved to the music. We all applauded wildly when Booker soloed. Everyone commented how the Comet Club was the same old place, as though the raid had never happened. But for me, things were decidedly different.

Jaylene stepped out and, with a nod to her musicians, performed George Gershwin’s “A Woman Is a Sometime Thing.” She made the song—sung by a man in Porgy and Bess—the saddest any woman could imagine, as though it were a dirge for her and a warning for me. As Terrence and I danced, my head against his shoulder, I glanced over at Jaylene, and though her concentration on her song never wavered, I saw a light flash in her eyes and a quick, grim curl to her lips.

After her set I excused myself to go to the women’s bathroom, where an older woman—a total stranger—snapped at me, calling me an ofay bitch, and others, also strangers, applying lipstick in the mirror, shot me looks meant to slay. Maybe they were friends or admirers of Jaylene. Maybe it was because I was clearly Terrence’s date. Maybe it was because I was the only white woman in the bathroom. I certainly didn’t let on that I was shaken, but I was, and I guess I knew now what it was like to be judged solely for the color of your skin.

I returned to the table and felt suddenly self-conscious about the music itself. West Coast Cool, progressive jazz, would never speak to my deepest instincts. Of the music that Terrence loved, I preferred the hymns and the old songs he played on Nelson’s upright. I could not truthfully groove to what the Comet Club adored.