“Well, at least it was my doing and not anyone else’s.”

“You’re a fool.”

“So what!”

“Touché!”

“I think I’m feeling well enough to leave now,” I said.

“All right. You can go.”

“Take it easy, Doctor Blue.”

“No, I doubt if I’ll take it at all.”

I looked through a glass and saw Alice, Pauline, my mother and father, and my sister Debra. A version of the opening statement of the theme to “So What” played in my head. Why wasn’t there a dirge in my slide for Otis? Would Alice help me help us both out of the wee hours of the blues? Would Pauline jump on my case with her usual “Now, ain’t this some shit?” line? Would Debra and my folks send me through all kinds of changes? Was Doctor Blue right about me being a fool? I walked out into all of that and all the rest, hoping I’d be able to play the chord changes between what I did mind and what didn’t matter.

One Last Riff Before We Hit It and Quit…

ONE LAST RIFF BEFORE
WE HIT IT AND QUIT…

IT WAS WITH A STRANGE ELATION that a week later I found myself alone with Alice. She had invited me over for dinner, and after we’d eaten, I felt guilty that my thoughts were on going to bed with her and not on Otis’ funeral, which had been earlier in the day.

“It’s still hard for me to believe that Otis is dead,” I said.

“Hard or easy, it’s all the same,” she said.

“I guess you’re right. You know, I still haven’t been able to feel anything behind his death.”

“What do you want to feel?” she asked.

“Something.”

“Oh, come on, Melvin! Otis was never your friend.”

“Maybe that’s what’s been bothering me—knowing that I hated him all those years we were supposed to be so tight. And now that he’s dead, feeling guilty about it.”

“That’s nothing to feel guilty about. I can see why you resented him. I never understood why you let him make you his flunky. If I were you, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. But, Melvin, you’ve always been hung up on what you’re supposed to feel, and not what you do feel. You want to be on everybody’s side but your own.”

We were on the couch and she was sitting with her legs crossed with the right foot tucked behind the left ankle. I followed the way her finely whittled body weaved its way vinelike up into the couch.

“How’re you doing?” she asked.

“I’m all right. Still a little sore, that’s all.”

“Does that hurt?” she asked, sliding her hand along the left side of my rib cage.