Carnival

The moonlight on the bayou a creole tune that fills the air
I dream about magnolias in bloom and I'm wishin' I was there

Louis Armstrong—Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans

So far, it was the best vacation idea Rude had ever had.

OK, Reno mentally revised. It was the only vacation idea Rude had ever had. It was an insulated community in the coastal region with some unique religious customs. Chief among them, a forty day period of deprivation and the preceding weeks of drunken debauchery.

It was the drunken debauchery that Rude, Tifa, Reno, and Cloud had come to witness.

Reno stretched his feet out on the apartment balcony and cracked open his morning beer. He was actually several hours behind the locals from the look of it. He wondered if Rude and Tifa had ever made it into town. They had insisted on driving in; the last he had heard, his terse partner was cursing the narrow one way streets and the signs written in some incomprehensible foreign dialect. Reno and Cloud had parked outside town and taken local transit in last night and had been drinking and debauching for some time.

Reno glanced over his shoulder to confirm that Cloud was indeed still passed out with half a bottle of the local brew clutched in his hand.

The local religion had its good points. Maybe they’d convert. Reno lit a smoke and continued his people-watching.

Cloud crept onto the balcony with a beer. “Motherfucker, my ass hurts.”

“You didn’t complain last night, babe.” Reno sat up and kicked over a plastic bottle bearing the logo “Fat Tuesdays.”

“We had something orange in that, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, it was called 190 Octane. You wanted that one because you said orange shit was healthy. Apparently the locals call that a yard bottle. There are two more empties in the room. We had sex down there.” Reno pointed to a town square with a statue of a horse.

“Tell me I didn’t fuck the horse.” It would explain the sore ass, anyway.

“No, we did it over the fence.”

“And nobody noticed?”

“In this town?” As if to prove his point, a prostitute displayed her wares to a sailor across the street. “Wonder where Rude and Tifa are.”

Cloud shrugged. “How did I get beads with tits on them? I’m gay.”

“Hell if I know, but I gathered last night that the only way to get lots of beads is to flash tits at people. We have no tits. So be happy you got any beads at all.”

Finally the two of them managed to get dressed, conscious, and sober at the same time. They wandered down to what appeared to be the main drag to watch the street performers and grab some food from the local vendors. Reno’s phone rang.

“Partner, where are…no! You are shitting me! Where? We’re on our way!” He turned to Cloud. “Rude’s been arrested.”

“What? You fucked me over a fence in the town square. Exactly how do you get arrested in this place?”

“We’re about to find out, babe.”

They rounded the corner to find Rude detained by the local police and Tifa with what looked like several hundred beads around her neck. Neither had to ask how she had gotten them.

“Sir, urinating on a church is against local ordinances…”

“I was not aware it was a church, officer.”

Ever helpful, Reno offered “Look UP, yo. It’s a church.”

“If I’d looked UP, Reno, I’d have pissed on my foot.”

Reno sighed and paid the authorities their cut as Cloud investigated the nearby street vendors and Tifa shared her beads. Reno, following his own advice, looked up at the church. He was drawn to it somehow. The traffic from the street seemed suddenly muffled as he noticed one of the doors cracked. He opened it and walked in, pressing himself against the wall until his eyes adjusted, a warrior’s instinct.

To his right was a bank of candles, the honeyed smell of wax and incense filled the air. To his left was a grotto dedicated to what he assumed was the local saint; a primitive carving of a woman with her hand raised as if warding off danger. Something moved in the darkness beyond.

“May I help you, my son?”

“No…Father.” Reno grasped for the proper title. He was really the last person to be caught dead in a church. “Just came to bail out a friend and came inside for a moment.”

It was only when the priest rose that Reno noticed how impossibly old he was, and near blind. The Father moved carefully over to the grotto and filled a vial with water, making a sign over it. He handed it to Reno, who took it because he really didn’t know what the hell else to do.

“You need to rescue another.”

“What?”

“He is in danger. Go to him.”

Whatever his opinion of organized religion, the only thought that made it through Reno’s mind was that something was happening to Cloud and somehow this old coot knew something about it. He bolted out of the church like it was on fire and found Cloud rooted to the sidewalk in front of a woman holding what appeared to be a shrunken skull. Cloud’s face was blank, confused. In his haste Reno tripped and spilled the vial of water, breaking it at the woman’s feet.

She hissed like a snake. “Bead kisser!” Reno pulled Cloud back and down the alley beside the church. He blinked. “What the fuck was that?”

“You tell me. You were standing in front of some old hag with a skull like you were hypnotized.”

“I was looking at some stuff she was selling and I felt really tired, and the next thing I knew I was remembering being in the labs, and Zack dying, and all this bad shit…what was that you threw at her?”

“Long story, babe. Let’s get a drink.”

They walked back out to the street when a man, obviously a prostitute, approached them. “Hey dudes, where ‘yat? Whatcha do to scare off ol’ Regine?”

“Tossed holy water at her. No joke, yo.”

The man nodded, a green Mohawk and more piercings than Rude ever dreamed of bouncing in the sun. “You get it from Fadda Sots? Ol’ man crazy as a stomped bug but he don’ like ol’ Regine. Kinda gotta agree wit’ him on dat. Yalls in town for da parades?”

Cloud’s eyebrows rose. This dude was hitting on Reno. First he’s nearly abducted by some voodoo queen then Reno is picked up by a green haired hooker.

Rude had the best vacation ideas. Cloud flagged down a drink vendor and bought another yard bottle, this one called a “hurricane.” It was the color of Reno’s hair and tasted like cherries. When he returned, Greenie was discussing gil.

Cloud interjected “Sorry friend, we spent all our money bailing out a friend for pissing on the church wall.” That shut up the hooker and they continued down the street.

Reno was for once speechless. “I have never been propositioned by a hooker. Thank you.”

“Yeah, well shut your mouth before he likes the looks of you and comes back.”

They wandered the streets until sunset, successfully avoiding crazy voodooiennes but not prostitutes. Reno observed that the latter were more plentiful than roaches in the slums of his childhood. One horrible moment Cloud spotted four foot long silver hair and nearly expired of a heart attack.

“RENO! LOOK!” It couldn’t be, but after the church and Old Regine, anything was possible. Cloud regretted being armed only with a small assortment of knives but Reno did have his EMR. They followed the figure for blocks before it turned around and proved to be yet another prostitute, an old woman who had to be seventy if she was a day. And who unfortunately showed her sagging breasts to a horrified group of young mercenaries in town for the festivities.

Whether it was relief or horror, Reno and Cloud collapsed against the wall of the bar, helpless in laughter as the old broad rolled and stuffed her wrinkled tits back into her leather bra.

“Sephiroth is an old biker whore. NOW I’ve seen it all.”

Tifa chose that moment to run up. “Cloud! I finally found you some dick beads! I had to flash three sailors for them!”

Rude asked “Been having fun? Tried to call you but no one can hear a phone in this mess.”

“We thought we saw Seph but it was some old biker whore.”

Rude finally, after years of being Reno’s partner, broke into hysterical laughter. “What? No. The King Parade is starting. Tell me later.”

“So, partner. You’ve read up on this place, tell me about the church.” The one thing Rude did like to talk about was anything he had researched.

“What about it?” Rude was busy devouring some kind of obscenely spicy thing which looked like it should have still been alive. Reno’s new rule with the local cuisine was try it, eat it if it tastes good, and don’t ask any questions because you don’t want to know.

“What’s up with the candles?”

“You light one to pray for something, they believe the angels keep praying until the candle goes out. Same goes if you are thankful for something.”

“The woman in the grotto?”

“Local saint. Called the Lady of Perpetual Succor, she protects them against flooding. Whole fucking place is below sea level so I guess it makes sense. There is a statue of a man in the back of the church holding keys, he’s another saint that lets people into heaven, but the voodoos call him Papa Legba. You thank him when things go right, give him candy or cake or money. You’ll see piles of it around the statues sometimes.

“They’re an odd people, but they do know how to party.” As if to prove his point, Rude reached for a bottle of some local concoction. It resembled beer but had an alcohol content of lighter fluid. He passed it to Reno who drank it appreciatively. “Why you asking?”

“Weird shit happened to me in the church, yo. Ducked in there for some reason and the old priest told me that Cloud was in danger. Sure enough he was.”

“Might wanna light one of those candles then, partner.” Rude shrugged and went back to whatever creature he was eating. Reno, less adventurous, opted for a sandwich.

The parade was typical coastal fare. Loud music, louder crowds, flashy flashy flashy. Beads were thrown and Tifa got most of them, but she shared. Jazz bands marched down the street and Reno and Cloud used it as an excuse to dance, or kiss, or as the liquor continued flowing, grope. Between the bands and floats, men carried torches that they twirled and caught. Even Reno’s inner pyromaniac gasped.

“They are called flambeaux” Rude filled in. Reno was amazed. Give the man a little research and he’d talk his head off. “The tradition started before there were electric lights, the fires were to light the parade route.”

The floats were decorated after the suits of the tarot. They tickled at the back of Reno’s mind. Death crossed love. Hadn’t their love crossed enough death already? Then again, he’d imbibed enough alcohol to find significance in anything. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs and watched Cloud reach for a bag of candy.

When the parade was done they walked back to their rented apartment. Tomorrow they would sleep in and recover, making the trip back to Edge the next day. They were weighed down with beads, mostly donations from Tifa, and sticky with the local multicolor hard candy. So far, Rude had been arrested, Cloud had nearly been abducted, and Sephiroth had turned out to be a whore, and Reno had been hit on more times than he could count. “It’s the hair, yo!”

They were coming back next year. They were SO coming back next year.

They passed the church. The door was cracked.

Reno stopped. “Uh, can you guys wait a minute?”

He walked in and lit a candle, leaving the suggested gil as payment. He looked at the woman with her hand up. “Protect him,” he asked. On the way out, he noticed the man with the keys. He didn’t know if it was the Saint or the papa, but he pulled the remaining pieces of candy out of his pocket and laid them at the feet of the statue. He noticed gil notes, pieces of paper stuck in the brickwork of the wall, pieces of cake.

“Thank you.”

He walked out to his friends, the jazz and sin still floating pleasantly in the warm night air.