They Gave Me a Check at Twelfth Night, So I Took Their Mardi Gras novel · Chapter 11 of 32
Chapter 11: The Board
Hortense did not strike me with the cane.
She pointed it, the silver tip steady in the air.
"The board meets tonight," she said, to the whole front row.
"The Monteleone."
"Nine o'clock."
"A keeper who humiliates the krewe in public forfeits her seat."
"I did nothing," I said.
"You made a spectacle of my granddaughter."
"I walked down some stairs."
"Nine o'clock," said Hortense, and she turned and went up the aisle with three hundred people parting for her.
Auguste's sister ran after her with the headset still around her neck.
The niece squeezed my hand and whispered, "I'm so sorry," and I told her not to be.
That night the board of the Krewe of Thalassa gathered in the Monteleone lobby under the big clock, seven men in dinner jackets and Hortense in gray.
Maurice stood in the middle.
I had come with the oldest queen, who had told me to wait until she called me.
I stood behind a marble pillar with Gaspard, and I could hear everything.
"It is a matter of decorum," said the treasurer, a soft man with a pink scalp.
"We cannot have a krewe event turned into a spectacle by a woman who is no longer a member of the family."
"She's still a member of the family," a thin voice said. "She's still married to your Captain's son."
"By a technicality."
"A technicality is the law."
It was the oldest queen.
She had walked into the center of the lobby on Gaspard's arm and left it, and now she stood alone with her cane planted, ninety-one and the size of a bird.
The men fell silent.
Hortense began, "This is a board matter..."
"It's a krewe matter, Hortense, and I am the krewe's oldest living queen."
"I have sat on this board when it had two women in it."
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