They call Adam Ant the Dandy Highwayman. “He had an excellent of style,” I said.
“Just like you,” Felicity said. Her name means intense happiness. It is a fitting name, except when it’s not.
Di-Di was eavesdropping but she pretended she wasn’t. She just motionlessly stared out the front window, stoically, her ears open the whole time.
There is a christening party outside. They are waiting for everyone to arrive before they are seated. Everyone is dressed in their Sunday best. There is no doubt who the proud parents are. They are the center of attention.
The father is tall with dark hair. They both seem to be in their late twenties-early thirties. A prime age, nowadays, to start a family. It used to be much earlier.
The world needs more children. They are the future.
The mother is a tiny whisper of a thing. Built like a bird made to bear children. She is swarthy. Italian-American? Stranger things have happened along St. Charles Avenue.
You can tell these people are the Carnival Class, that they all live in the Garden District. They are all variations on a theme. What they are doing with this Guy Fieri crowd, I don’t know. Commander’s Palace must be all booked up today.
Let us discuss the infant who was baptized today. We are all God’s children. That is one ugly baby, poor thing. We all have our own cross to bear. We all have our own row to hoe. We all have to find our own way, glowing like a curlicue cut in the dark with a burning stick.
Some sparklers are duds.
The father is tall, pale, probably descended from the first generation of American cotton brokers to arrive in the city. He is robust. He probably played baseball at Tulane. Most of the baptismal party is made up of withered blue bloods from Uptown, his side of the family. The other half are arrivistes, meaning that their families settled Uptown in the 1910s and 1920s. How can you tell? You can tell. That is the mother’s side of the family.
The mother comes from this second, though still eminently respectable, tier of the Carnival Class. She, like her husband, is also brunette. Unlike him, she wears her hair long. She is wearing a short red formal dress. She must be four foot ten. She is not over five feet tall and she must weigh a hundred pounds, at most. She could be a model. It is easy to imagine her as a charm on a bracelet.
Their daughter is ugly, as pale as paste with a shock of red hair. This poor little girl has a pig nose. Maybe it will grow out, but this is not a promising start. She has a walleye. She doesn’t have teeth yet but I will bet you fifty cents that they will grow in crooked and gapped. This girl is going to need a retainer at minimum. That should help her self-esteem.
This family is going to appear in the pages of St. Charles Avenue Magazine soon. News of the Carnival Classes doings is of interest to all, especially amongst themselves. There may even be a story about it in the Times-Picayune. This baptism may be that newsworthy if this is the kind of family it appears to be.
I am no geneticist, but I don’t understand how such a photogenic couple could have such an ugly baby that looks so unlike either. Maybe it has to do with inbreeding. As I say, I am not a geneticist. I am just your Man-in-New Orleans.
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Haha!
Wicked.