They Gave Me a Check at Twelfth Night, So I Took Their Mardi Gras novel · Chapter 24 of 32

Chapter 24: The Gate

The den of the Krewe of Thalassa stood on the Industrial Canal, a warehouse the size of an airplane hangar, and by seven on Fat Tuesday morning it held forty floats and two thousand people in costume.

I came through the staging yard gate at ten past, in the Maid's gown.

It was sea-green taffeta with a gold sash and a wreath of paper shells.

The oldest queen had worn it in 1969 when she was the keeper of the baby and seated at a kitchen door.

She had sent it to Mama's by her driver in tissue paper, with a note.

Wear it where they can see you.

I had taken in the waist myself at four in the morning.

Gaspard walked a half step behind me in his pilot's blues with his cap under his arm.

He'd asked if he should wear the tuxedo.

I had told him the blues were better, because they were the thing he wasn't ashamed of.

Beyond the gate, the yard was a roar of horns and generators and laughter.

Papier-mâché sea monsters rose forty feet over the rooftops, painted in purple and green and gold, with fish and mermaids and a great gilt Neptune on the Captain's float.

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