Afterward, they stood together under the hot spray for a time, then toweled each other off. Within the hour, they were jeaned and tee-shirted, ready for action.
“I figure we’ll head down to Decatur Street first,” Frank began. “We can grab some beignets and café au lait at the French Market, then check out a costume shop or two. Okay by you, darlin’?”
“Sounds great!” Carol answered, putting more enthusiasm into the words than she felt.
But, in fact, the whole morning was great. The weather was a pure delight—bright sun, clear skies, warm air. The Carnival crowds seemed more high-spirited than ever. The coffee and square sugared donuts were delicious.
As they were polishing off their open-air breakfast at the Café du Monde, Frank said, “What would you like to be tomorrow? Devils are always fun, but the suits are hot. It’s supposed to get up to eighty degrees tomorrow, so I suggest something cooler.”
“Like what?” Carol asked.
Frank squinted up at the sky, thinking. “I don’t know. Let’s go see what we can find.”
A short while later, they were knee-deep in colorful costumes at a shop called “Demons-R-Us.”
“Hey, this is you, Carol!” Frank called, holding up a wisp of gold net and satin, studded with purple and green sequins.
Carol came over and fingered the flimsy costume uncertainly.
“Well, it would be cool all right, but what is it?”
“A harem outfit. See? Here’s the mask and veil.” He thrust the costume into Carol’s hands. “Go try it on. I want to see how you look in it.”
Moments later, Carol reappeared. Frank gave a low whistle of approval. “That’s you, all right!”
Carol laughed. “Just about all of me,” she answered. “Won’t I get arrested in this?”
The shop owner, a heavy-set, dark fellow, came over and looked Carol up and down approvingly. “You got all the vital parts hid,” he assured her, even though her breasts were barely contained by the tiny gold lamé bikini top. “Besides, on Mardi Gras nobody gets arrested. They take all their damn clothes off and nobody notices.”
Carol looked down at herself—breasts bulging, a purple jewel winking in her belly button above gold satin briefs with a voluminous, see-through net skirt.
“Honest, Carol, you look fantastic,” Frank told her, grinning broadly. “And I’ve found just the outfit to match yours.” He plopped a shiny turban on his head and swirled a golden cape around his shoulders.
“This goes with it,” the shop owner said, handing Frank a huge fake mustache, which he immediately stuck to his upper lip.
Carol howled. “Perfect! I’ll wear this, if you wear that.”
Their costumes set for the next day’s frolic, Carol and Frank ambled back toward the hotel to drop off their packages. It was such a gorgeous day that Carol almost forgot the danger lurking in the city—almost, but not quite. She kept a wary eye peeled for the man with the tattoo. He could be anywhere. He could threaten Frank at any moment.
“I figure after we stop by the hotel, we can head on to Bourbon Street for a bowl of red beans and rice,” Frank said. “Does that sound right?”
“Sounds super! I’m starving,” Carol admitted.
“We can hang around the Quarter and see what’s happening, then walk over to Canal Street about four. The floats for the Proteus parade are probably rolling out of their den already. It starts at six, but we need to get there a couple of hours early to find a good spot. There’ll be thousands out to watch, especially since Comus and Momus cancelled their parades.”
Frank’s mention of the thousands of spectators sent a wave of apprehension through Carol, but perhaps there would be safety in numbers. She wished they could go in costume, but Frank had said it wasn’t done. “Why, it’s downright illegal to dress Mardi Gras before the day!”
The afternoon passed in a dizzying flash of sound and color. Bourbon Street was even more crowded than it had been the night Carol arrived. After lunch, then a couple of Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s, they made their way slowly toward Canal Street. Shortly before four, they were settled in a prime viewing spot on the neutral ground—the grassy strip down the center of Canal Street. Waiting with them were noisy revellers of all ages, from an old man in a wheelchair wearing a button that read “I’m 100 today—throw me something, mister!” to toddlers tied atop step ladders.
When distant music sent word through the ranks that the parade was coming, the crowd went wild. Carol covered her ears against the din.
The glittering captain of the Krewe of Proteus, mounted on horseback, led the twenty-float parade. On either side of the street, black men marched along carrying naphtha-fueled torches. Frank explained that in the old days of Mardi Gras these flambeaux provided the only illumination for nighttime parades.
The volume of noise increased as the king’s golden shell rumbled into view. The parade-watchers gasped in collective awe at the shimmering magnificence of the king and his court.
Silver sovereigns, frisbees, and red and silver go-cups rained down on the eager crowd from the masked riders on the tractor-borne floats.
Carol was in the spirit of things. Jumping up and down and waving, she yelled, “Throw me something, mister!” Immediately, she was showered with bright-colored throws.
“Damn, you’re a good catcher!” Frank congratulated when she came up with a cup, a frisbee, and several aluminum doubloons.
Floats, horses, dancers, bands—the spectacle stretched on and on. Carol didn’t know exactly what she’d expected, but her first Carnival parade was beyond any of her fondest expectations. She felt like a child at her first circus, a teenager with her first boyfriend, a virgin bride on her wedding night. She laughed until her face hurt and yelled until her throat ached.
“Oh, Frank, I’ve never had such fun!”
He ducked down and stole a kiss. “You think this is fun, just wait till tomorrow, darlin’.”
Hours later, they trudged back to the hotel, tired but happy. Fireworks lit the sky; the party was still going strong.
As they walked, Frank kept Carol mesmerized with his vast knowledge of Mardi Gras trivia. “This was a special night for the Crescent Club and the Krewe of Proteus—their one hundred and tenth anniversary. Imagine keeping a party going that long!”
“I wanted to see the king,” Carol lamented.
“Nobody sees Proteus,” Frank told her. “His identity is always kept secret, his face always covered, even at the ball after the parade’s over. You’ll get to see the real King of Carnival tomorrow, though. In fact, you can see him right now.”
They were passing a newsstand. Frank paused to buy the Times-Picayune and held up the front page for Carol to see.
“There he is—local businessman B. Temple Brown, Jr. His queen’s a debutante—Elizabeth Fitz-Hugh Kelleher. She’s right pretty, too. This says her mother was a queen back in 1964.”
They were standing on a corner in the Quarter, Frank reading under a street lamp. The people passing in the dark made Carol jittery. She tried to be watchful, to scan every face, every arm for a tattoo. What if he was there in the crowd? She had to get Frank moving—back to the hotel, back to safety.
“Frank, why don’t we look at the paper back at the hotel? I can read all about it there.”
“Sure,” he answered, folding the paper and tucking it under his arm. “We need to get back anyway. We have to be up early tomorrow to put on our costumes, then catch the Zulu parade at eight-thirty before Rex at ten.”
“Just how early are you talking about?” Carol asked suspiciously.
Frank laughed. “Oh, about the same time as if we were going to meet Choctaw.”
Carol groaned.
A few minutes later, they walked into the hotel courtyard. Frank took Carol to her door, but they parted there after a lingering kiss.
“I’d sure like to come in,” he said. “But I reckon I’d better let you get some sleep, darlin’.”
Carol watched Frank unt
il he reached his apartment, then waved good night and closed her door. Once she was inside and alone, she realized that her nerves had been wound tight all day. As much as she had enjoyed the parade and all the merrymaking, she felt a great sense of relief knowing that Frank was safely back in his room.
She sighed deeply. “Now, if we can just get through tomorrow.”
As weary as she was from their busy day, Carol was sure she would fall asleep the minute she went to bed. Instead, she lay there, jumping at every sound. As much as she wanted to forget all thoughts of Eileen and the man with the tattoo, they kept creeping back to plague her. She tried to soothe them away by going over Cami’s wonderful experience with Vic and her own lovely lovemaking with Frank. Things had been so perfect all day.
“Too perfect!” she said uneasily.
Now she felt like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Although she longed to believe otherwise, there was no doubt in Carol’s mind that her happiness with Frank, their newfound love for each other, was no more than some sort of Carnival-induced magic. Their feelings for each other could disappear as quickly and as surely as the bright fireworks had vanished this evening, leaving the night sky bare and black. More than anything, she realized, she wanted this relationship to work—to last.
“Vic and Cami are so happy now,” she murmured, burrowing deeper into her covers. “I want Frank and me to be like them. No reason we can’t be.”
Even as she said the words, she knew there were many reasons that loving Frank Longpre might turn out to be a disaster. Carol herself could cause their undoing. She knew secrets about Frank’s wife that she would always have to keep from him or run the risk of driving him insane. She also knew that somewhere out there, lurking in the dark streets of the French Quarter, waiting for his chance, was a murderer who had marked the man Carol loved as his next victim.
She tossed in bed, further tangling the sheets, trying to fight her own thoughts as if they were demons she could drive away with sheer willpower.
If only she could talk to Frank—tell him all she knew or suspected. He was the one person in her life with whom she longed to share everything. But everything in this case was far too much.
“I wish we really were Vic and Cami,” she moaned. “Then our lives would be so simple.”
Carol gasped aloud when she realized what she’d said. Her thoughts went back to earlier in the day, when Frank had proposed that very solution. She wondered…
“No! It’s too incredible! I’m not even going to think about it.”
She pounded her pillows, trying to make a more comfortable place for her aching head. Settling in, she willed herself to go to sleep. But she’d sown the seed that would keep growing in her mind for most of the night.
What if they went back? What if they could leave Eileen and her murderer to this century? Could she and Frank correct the mistakes Cami and Vic had made long ago? Could they live happily ever after in another time?
No, she told herself sadly. Such things simply did not, could not happen. Tears squeezed out at the corners of her closed eyes as a sense of hopelessness overcame her.
Even as she fell asleep, harp music filled the night. And far off somewhere, a little child kept crying pitifully for Cami.
Chapter Sixteen
It seemed Carol had been asleep only minutes when the phone woke her the next morning.
“Hello?” she answered groggily.
“Up and at ‘em, darlin’!” Frank’s voice exploded through the phone line with more exuberance than any decent human being should exhibit so early in the day. Carol was just recovering from the first shock when he shouted, “Happy Mardi Gras!” Then the final insult to her auditory system—he tooted a party horn into the phone.
“Yeah, right,” Carol moaned. “I get the message.”
She hung up on him before he could blast her with his horn again. Inch by weary inch, she dragged herself out of bed. A short while later, she was decked out in her harem costume, her early-morning scowl covered by a sequined veil.
The knock at her door could only be her sheik.
It was, indeed! Frank Longpre transformed—baggy satin pants, bare chest, flowing cape of gold, bejeweled turban, and black mustache.
“Carol, sweetie, you look fetchin’ enough to curl hair.” He rolled his eyes and twitched the mustache, Groucho-style.
Carol gave him a bump and grind to show off her belly jewel. He roared with laughter. “Do that for King Zulu LXIII and I’ll bet you’ll get one of their special throws—a Zulu coconut.”
“What would I do with a coconut?”
“Treasure it forever!” Frank winked and waggled his mustache at her again. “Now let’s get going. I brought breakfast in a brown bag so we can eat on the run.”
As they hurried through the breaking dawn toward Canal Street, they munched donuts and drank coffee from plastic cups. It seemed to Carol that the entire population of New Orleans had hit the streets already.
“Don’t you people ever sleep?” she asked.
“Not on Mardi Gras. Even the post office closes. Everybody comes to the party.”
As they made their way through the crowded streets of the Quarter, Carol tried to keep her eyes peeled for trouble. But the sights she saw—the fantastic, outlandish Mardi Gras costumes—soon distracted her thoughts from the tattooed murderer. When one male reveler jogged by—completely naked, his whole body painted metallic gold—Carol stopped dead in her tracks.
“My God!” she gasped. “Is that legal?”
Frank eyed the golden fellow with far less interest than Carol. “Hell, anything goes on Mardi Gras, honey!”
Soon they were in their favorite spot on the neutral ground, the very air about them charged with a special Carnival electricity. All heads turned as the wild African music and hot jazz of Zulu heralded the coming of the parade. The Olympia Brass Band led the show, along with the Southern University Marching Band and Dancing Dolls. The crowd went crazy, gyrating to the beat.
“This king’s a retired postal clerk who’s been a member of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club since he was fifteen years old—James L. Russell,” Frank informed Carol, shouting to be heard over all the noise. “His queen’s a young lawyer, Ernestine Anderson. Louis Armstrong was king back in 1949. I’ll bet that was some parade! Watch for the honor guard, too, the ‘Soulful Warriors.’ Then there are other famous Zulu maskers—Big Shot, Witch Doctor, Ambassador, Mayor, Province Prince, Governor, and Mr. Big Stuff.”
“Should I twitch a hip at them?” Carol asked, demonstrating her earlier maneuver with a wink and a giggle.
“You can do anything your little heart desires, honey. For instance…” Frank caught her in his arms and gave her a long, deep kiss, smoothing his hands over her bare hips.
“Frank!” she protested, trying to shove him away. “People are staring!”
The spectators around them applauded, urging Frank on. Carol blushed right down to her belly jewel.
Zulu was crazy and wild and funny and magnificent. The stately king wore flowing robes of purple trimmed in gold while his queen was gowned in white and gold. They made a handsome, glittering pair. The other members of the club were not nearly so elegant in their blackface, fright wigs, and outrageous grass skirts. Carol did indeed capture one of the prized Zulu coconuts for her exceptional hip-swiveling.
Hardly had the thirty-two floats and numerous other units of Zulu faded into the distance before Rex, the King of Carnival, drew into sight.
“For a while, it looked like there wouldn’t be a Rex parade this year,” Frank said—loudly—to Carol. “When the other old guard krewes pulled out in protest to the new ordinance against discrimination, everybody figured Rex would follow suit. But their motto is ‘Pro Bono Publico’ and I guess they figured there’s nothing better than a parade for the good of the public. It wouldn’t be Mardi Gras without the Monarch of Merriment. Shoot! The Krewe of Rex is our symbol. They’re responsible for the whole concept
of daytime parades, the Carnival colors, and the anthem. For doubloons, too. They threw the first ones.” Frank paused and craned his neck. “Here they come, honey!”
Carol stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the ocean of bobbing heads.
Rex’s white-plumed captain, astride a snowy stallion, rode proudly at the head of thirty-three mounted lieutenants all garbed in the traditional Carnival colors. The bright sun on their gleaming costumes was almost blinding. Nor was the king’s traditional float a less-glittering strain on the eyes.
Carol gasped aloud. “Oh, Frank! It’s gorgeous!”
Rex, King of Carnival, wore the costume handed down for over a century—blond wig, bejeweled gold jacket, white tights, gold boots, and a gilt robe edged in ermine. His queen was almost as elegant in her jeweled white gown, collar, crown, and train.
A shower of medallion necklaces, go-cups, and doubloons pelted down on Carol and Frank. Laughing and kissing her, Frank wound a rainbow of plastic beads around Carol’s neck.
He fingered one of the necklaces and shook his head. “Back in the old days, they used to toss these real pretty strings of glass beads. You still see them around in antique shops nowadays. But that was before World War II. The necklaces came from Czechoslovakia and when the war broke out the supply was cut off. Since then the throws have all been Hong Kong plastic—not as pretty. But, shoot, it isn’t the looks of the stuff but catching it that counts.” He grinned at Carol and slipped another necklace over her head. “Right?”
“Right!” she agreed. Then going up on tiptoe, she screamed, “Hey, throw me something, mister!” A grinning masker obliged.
The king’s float passed, the Jester float, the Rex Bandwagon, the Royal Barge, and the “Boeuf Gras,” the fatted bull, symbolic of the last meat to be eaten before the Lenten season.
Carol felt let down when the parade rumbled off down Canal and the music faded. Frank didn’t give her spirits long to sag.
“Now the real fun begins,” he told her. “Come on. We have to get to Bourbon and Dumaine for the big costume judging—the annual Bourbon Street Awards. Wait till you see this show!”
Whispers in Time Page 28