“Hi,” I say, when I stop beside her chair. I wish the band wouldn’t play rock and roll; you can’t even talk over the noise. She smiles but she doesn’t say anything. I’m going to be shot down.

I lean over and shout above the music: “How you doing?” She says something that I think is “okay” and I feel completely stupid, leaning over her like this. She looks like she just wants me to go away quickly and leave her alone. I won’t score. She won’t dance. Friday night is flying away.

“Want to dance?” I shout in her ear. The black horn player is crouched on the stage in front of the mike, the spotlight on him, his cheeks ballooned out as he blows and sweats, his jeweled fingers flying over the valves. She shakes her head and gives me a sad look. Smoke two feet thick hangs from the ceiling.

“Hell, come on,” I say, putting on my friendliest smile, feeling my confidence—what little I had to start with—ebbing away. They’re all like this. They won’t talk to you, they won’t dance. Why do they come out to a place like this if they don’t want to meet men? “I’m not going to bite you,” I say.

She takes one hand off her drink and leans slightly toward me. “Thanks anyway,” she says. The flesh around her eyes looks dark, it’s bruised, she’s hurt. Maybe somebody slapped her. Maybe she said the wrong thing to the wrong man and he popped her. I know it can happen between a man and a woman. It can happen in a second.

“You live around here?” I say. I don’t know what to say; I’m just saying anything to try and keep her talking.

She shakes her head, closes her eyes briefly. Patience. She’s weary of this, maybe, these strange men asking, always asking, never stopping. “No. I live at Hattiesburg. I’m just up here for the weekend.”

“You waiting on somebody?”

She draws back and blinks. Now she’ll tell me it’s none of my business. “Not really,” she says. “I’m just waiting.”

“Well come on and dance, then,” I say.

She opens a small brown purse that looks like a dead mole and pulls out a white cigarette. I fish up my lighter and give her some fire. She inhales and coughs, her tiny fist balled at her mouth. Maybe she’s had a bigger fist at her mouth. Maybe she likes it.

“Thanks,” she says.

“You going to school at Hattiesburg?” I say.

She nods, looks around. “Yeah.”

“Just up here living it up on the weekend.”

“Not really. I just came up to Jackson to sort of be by myself for a while.”