“Oh, believe it! Booker and me both. We had rented instruments and Mama said to pay our part for them, we had to play in church every Sunday. People would come to that church just to hear Booker Dexter play! I tell you, the old ladies wept in the aisles.”

“And the young ladies too, no doubt.”

“No, the young ladies got damp and frisky.” He grinned. “My brother and I, we were every Sunday in those pews, no matter what we’d been doing on Saturday night.”

“I won’t even try and imagine what that was.”

He laughed. “Music kept us out of real trouble. We played in church and at school. At Jefferson High there was Dr. Browne. Man, he turned out more jazz musicians than any school ever has in the history of the whole world! I play a little piano, a little sax, but my brother has God-given genius. Oh, children! When Booker puts that trumpet to his lips, he leaves you slain! Well, you can hear him! He could bring down the walls of Jericho. He’s a progressive jazz man.”

“It certainly sounds progressive.”

“Dig it!” Terrence nodded in time to the beat. “They are cookin’ tonight!”

Later, the band took another break, and Booker and Diana again disappeared. A different drummer and piano man came out and seated themselves at their instruments. A vocalist shimmered out from behind flimsy curtains and took the mic. She wore a white strapless evening gown and long white gloves that contrasted vividly with her dark skin. She had orchids pinned in her hair, which was upswept with lots of escaping curly tendrils. The piano man introduced her as Miss Jaylene Henderson. As soon as she opened her mouth and the first notes of “The Man I Love” poured out, the Comet Club came to a standstill, and even the musicians lapsed into something of torpor. She lit into “How High the Moon,” and everyone in the room seemed to rise on the tide of her voice. Throughout her set, she alternated sad with soaring till I felt like my emotions had been through the wringer. She could do anything with that voice, silky one moment, rasping the next. She sang “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” in a voice like molten honey. Terrence asked if I wanted to dance.

He held me in a practiced embrace, and he danced well, though not like anything I’d been taught at L’Oiseau d’Or, and certainly not like free-form bop to Bill Haley and the Comets at Casa Fiesta. His arms wrapped round me like you would feel a silk scarf around you. His physical warmth penetrated my skin, down to my very bones. He responded to the music, and I responded to him. He had, I noticed, perfect, small ears.

She finished “Smoke,” nodded to her musicians, and her voice, like a ribbon of lyrics, rolled out, “‘You must remember this . . . ’”