Robin And Mary’s Mardi Gras Misadventure: Part II
(We resume this narrative where Part I left off,
with our hapless heroines following a subtly menacing Frenchwoman into New
Orleans on oversized bicycles, amid signs and portents that made streets
flowing with blood look like BALLOONS AND A FRUIT BASKET.)
Mary and I
followed the Frenchwoman out into the Ninth Ward, which had been deep
underwater during Hurricane Katrina.
The houses were modest and some were missing altogether, along with
churches and schools that had never been rebuilt. Still, the residue of that terrible flood gave the place a
certain seaside ambience and from the standpoint of somebody riding a bicycle
it was anyway flat.
And it was
spring! It was early February but in
New Orleans azaleas were blooming and lantana, and those Japanese magnolias
that take a girl’s breath away. I
circled back to admire them, always bringing up the rear.
Outside places are
my chief joy but I am willing to admit I move across them with the ponderous
sick inevitability of the Russian Army.
I do eventually roll into Berlin, but perhaps others find me pokey. Mary would zoom past me like an SST,
smirking, and the Frenchwoman said:
“Myself, I ride 25 miles each day without fail.” And another time: “I love to eat and would be big as a house
if it were not for my bicycle.” (This
was at lunch, while I was cramming something in my mouth.)
We helped the
Frenchwoman with her pet project, a “street library” for the Ninth Ward
children. That day it was in a community
garden. We read kid-books about
gardening, then planted raised beds into which, despite our best efforts, the
children sowed enough seeds for Kansas.
“These are my friends from Chattanooga, Tennessee,” the Frenchwoman told
them.
Mary corrected her
that it was Dade County, Georgia, and the Frenchwoman said: “Whatever.
Just keep ze children from killing each other with ze hoes.”
Mary and I enjoyed the children but were
unaccustomed to their rampageous ways, and when they had dispersed I said, with
feeling: “I understand beer is sold in
New Orleans?”
The Frenchwoman
replied: “But we will be late for ze
parade!” So we rode on.
A word on
cycling: There is a reason bicycle
pants are padded in certain key areas.
Neither Mary nor I had ridden a bicycle for so long in years and by
midafternoon we had discovered that reason.
But we rode on!
Things I remember
from that long, long day are: the Mississippi River, the levee and the “wedding
cake houses” built for riverboat captains. We visited an open-air market where
I snuffled hopefully around for beer but found only handcrafted soap. We’d meet men and the Frenchwoman would
introduce us – “These are my friends from Chattanooga, Tennessee” – later explaining
confidentially: “One of my former
lovers.”
A terrifying
drawbridge separated us from the main part of town. I took a picture of Mary and the Frenchwoman watching it lower
after letting a ship pass. When it was
down again cars zipped across looking like the Scary Traffic scene in cartoons. We felt like bugs about to fly into the
zapper and the Frenchwoman allowed us to push our bikes through an underpass,
but she said coming back that night we must cross the bridge or risk murder.
Later, my husband
said, “You were riding bicycles in traffic?
At Mardi Gras? Where people are
drunk? Without helmets?”
But I never
thought about helmets, only: hats. Mary is an artist and dresses with a certain
flair. The Frenchwoman was, well,
French. In the bridge photograph, Mary
wears a hat with a feather and the Frenchwoman a small flattish affair she’d
chosen after discarding another, pronouncing:
“Eet ees not me.” With my jeans
and cotton BOPs (“big ole panties”), I was consumed with fashion angst.
We rode on.
Night fell as we
watched the (endless!) parade. There
were marching bands and Greek gods and people in malevolent masks throwing
beads. It went by so slowly I felt it
was the sidewalk moving instead, with me on it, and I realized I was dizzy with
fatigue. Across the street a shop sign
flashed POBOYS and BEER and I ached with longing.
But it was not to
be! After the parade the Frenchwoman
said: “This is a madhouse. I know a quiet Italian restaurant nearby.” So back to the bikes! And after that: “Ze jazz club opens at 10.
It is just a few blocks.”
It was never “a
few blocks.” It was miles. The Frenchwoman charged ever forward,
sailing through red lights without pausing.
I think it was the jazz club she was aiming for all night, that someone
special was in the band. But what a
scene from hell that was! Men in tutus,
blowing cigar smoke at us. We rode on!
It had to end
somewhere and it did. The Frenchwoman
went through a green light on Chartres Street, then Mary, and I was bringing up
the rear as usual when a car slammed into me.
There were brakes
screeching and people screaming and I realized I was dead. Then I thought: OK, maybe crippled. Then
I got up from the pavement without a scratch.
So. Maybe I really am the
Russian Army.
The Frenchwoman
offered to call a taxi but I didn’t want to be any trouble: How would we get the bikes home? So we climbed back on. And not 10 minutes later, for no apparent reason
– fatigue? saddle sores? – Mary went
sailing in slo-mo off her bicycle and –
Splat!
It was some kind
of cosmic error, I expect, but our joke in the ensuing days was: “Robin got hit by a car and Mary’s in the
hospital.”
Let’s leave the
story there, the Frenchwoman alone with three bicycles – I don’t care, I hate
those bicycles! – while Mary and I speed off in an ambulance to an ER, only to
be greeted with the words:
“I imagine there
was alcohol involved?”
(To
be continued…)
No comments:
Post a Comment