flat punked out toward the end of Mardi Gras

flat punked out toward the end of Mardi Gras

fiction
Edward w Pritchard


After a week of celebration and excess I am always flat punked out toward the end of Mardi Gras.

 Mardi Gras is a religious fete after all and the spiritual feelings awakened in me sometime during my week at Mardi Gras in New Orleans will cause me and my companion to feel the need of repentance and sober contrite behavior.

A soft rain will be falling early in the French quarter. The noise will have stopped about 5AM and all the police will be taking a well deserved nap and not one piano or saxophone will echo about.

Each of us take a long hot shower and put on some sensible clothes the kind that cover your body and modesty conceal what wasn't meant to be seen. Then it's to the Café du Monde for white powdery beneits with hot tea for me stark black coffee for her. Whispered conversation and each reading half a news paper. The business or religious news will do fine.

Then it's a long drive in a taxi or street car to a botanical garden. Life is in colorful bloom and a million flowers and plants welcome Spring in nature's annual Bacchanalia.

Sitting in the airport for the ride home it's a long time before I want to search a riotous convulsing crowd with my eyes for a glimpse of sets of colorful beads.