Short Mardi Gras Quotes

in until ten, not even on Mardi Gras nights. No one except the girl in the black silk dress, the thin little girl with the short, soft dark hair that fell in a curtain across her eyes. Christian always wanted to brush it away from her face, to feel it trickle through his fingers like rain. Tonight, as usual, she slipped in at nine-thirty and looked around for the friends who were never there. The wind blew the French Quarter in behind her, the night air rippling warm down Chartres Street as it slipped away toward the river, smelling of spice and fried oysters and whiskey and the dust of ancient bones stolen and violated.

The millions of vacationers who came here every year before Katrina were mostly unaware of this poverty. French Quarter tourists were rarely exposed to the reality beneath the Disneyland Gomorrah that is projected as 'N'Awlins,' a phrasing I have never heard a local use and a place, as far as I can tell, that I have never encountered despite my years in the city. The seemingly average, white, middle-class Americans whooped it up on Bourbon Street without any thought of the third-world lives of so many of the city's citizens that existed under their noses. The husband and wife, clad in khaki shorts, feather boa, and Mardi Gras beads well out of season, beheld a child tap-dancing on the street for money and clapped along to his beat without considering the obvious fact that this was an early school-day afternoon and that the child should be learning to read, not dancing for money. Somehow they did not see their own child beneath the dancer's black visage. Nor, perhaps, did they see the crumbling buildings where the city's poor live as they traveled by cab from the French Quarter to Commander's Palace. They were on vacation and this was not their problem.

He kissed her long and hot, drinking in her taste and scent. Her hands went to his hips, her fingers hooking through the belt loops on his khaki shorts. She pulled him against her, arching her back, the fly of her jeans against his. Josh sucked in a deep breath and finally, reluctantly, lifted his head. “I’m so damned glad to see you.” “I’m so damned glad I got on that bus,” she said, her voice breathless, her smile wide. “I hope you’re planning to stay for a while. Like all day. And night. And then the next. Four or five.” Her eyes widened. “The next four or five days?” He lowered his head, brushing his lips over hers. “I was thinking more like months.” She laughed softly, her breath hot against his mouth. “So everything I remember feeling last year is still here.” “Definitely still here,” he agreed. And stronger. Absence did make the heart grow fonder. He also knew it made memories fade and fantasies grow. But it seemed that neither of those things had happened in regard to Tori. He remembered everything—the freckles on her nose, the length of her eyelashes, the reddish-gold highlights in her hair, the way her laugh punched him in the gut and made him hard as steel. “Thank God,” she said softly. “So that’s a yes to the four or five months?” She laughed again. “Part of me is a very definite yes.” “That’s the part I want.” “Well, I can definitely offer you a chance to hang out with me for a few days.” “Done.” “You don’t even want to know what for?” “Doesn’t matter.” “Wow,” she said again. Josh brushed his thumbs over her cheekbones. “That’s what I was thinking.” She blew out a little breath. “So how do you feel about weddings?” “Are you proposing?

through. The eastern part of the city all the way to The Rigolets was bathed in a soft golden sunlight, almost like a beach at sunset. To the west, however, there was a wicked billowing black mass of clouds, an advancing stampede that blotted out both sky and earth. A seabird’s view of startling weather patterns was one of the major perks of this office: this sky looked not only scenic but particularly menacing. He could imagine the shock waves it was literally sending to all those boat captains out on the Lake trying to get back to the harbor, not to mention the fear in the hearts of all of the Carnival krewe captains who were trying to get their parades lined up and rolling. “Well, better to rain on Lundi Gras than Mardi Gras,” he thought. He heard noises in his outer office and stuck his head out to see if maybe he had a paying client after all. A short round lady with a distressed look was

my daughter Ginnevra—we call her Gin cuz it’s short for her name, and it’s her beverage of choice …