Messi@ Read Free Page B

are one, mon clochard , she murmured between clenched teeth. There is no difference between us. I will sleep with you, look for lice in your clothes, wash your intimate parts. Felicity saw herself cradling the destitute creature. As she nearly touched his head, she saw that the bum’s suffering pose was disguising the fact that he was fishing white envelopes from the back of her pew.
    â€œHey,” she said.
    The bum straightened up and slunk away in a hurry, dropping an envelope. Felicity picked it up. Donations to the Christmas Campaign for the Restoration and Renovation of St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans, La . There were a few crumpled dollars inside. Felicity dug in the hip pouch zipped to her shorts and took out a five. She put it in the envelope and was about to return it to the box when she had another thought. She dug deeper in the pouch and came up with a Post-it note and a pen. She wrote on it, 363-54-2122 , and tucked the note in the envelope.
    â€œRestore the cathedral, Mother of God, and restore my lottery ticket, and restore me to wholeness, and give me back all my loved ones, and take Grandmère to you!” concluded Felicity.
    She stood up to go. “Oh,” she added, “and grant me that orgasm.”
    That was her whole wish list.
    As she rose from her knees she knew what she had to do. Her uncle, Major Notz, who lived in the Pontalba Apartments to the right of the cathedral, was the man for the job. Major Notz had always been there for her and, though he was not actually a blood relative, had been a kind of father to her. An army buddy of her dead father, he had appeared one day at their house with presents and affection, and had persisted in caring for Felicity against the formidable opposition of her grandmother, who had hated the major from the very beginning. Felicity needed his comforting bulk now.
    In her absence—how long had she been gone?—Jackson Square and, indeed, the whole sky had undergone a miraculous transformation. The sun was shining through the drizzle, and the once nearly empty square was teeming. Several tattooed and pierced young people, called “Shadow people” by the Times-Picayune but known familiarly as “Shades,” lay playing cards under the mounted statue of General Jackson doffing his hat. The painters and fortune-tellers were back at their easels and cardboard tables. Behold humanity, Felicity thought, and smirked. Half of them want their portraits done; the other half want to know the future. And the other half provide it. That’s three halves, and there you have it. Expressionist math. Felicity was an expert at it ever since she’d decided, at age thirteen, that nothing adds up.
    A mime with rain-streaked makeup, huge breasts, and hairy arms stood on a crate. A hand-lettered sash identified her as Miss Bra ’99. Two tourists made faces to try to make her move. When they walked away, Miss Bra ’99 came off her pedestal and took a few dollars out of a bucket at her feet. She ducked behind the Lucky Dog vendor, lifted her short skirt, and took a roll out of her panty hose. An unmistakable bulge remained. She added the dollars to the roll, stuck it back in, and climbed up on her box. The Lucky Dog vendor sold a hot dog to a midget who stared intently at Miss Bra. Why, thought Felicity, would anyone want to be such a sad parody of woman? Why, indeed, would anyone want to be a woman? Period. She had never sung, “You make me feel like a natural woman,” and she had experienced a genuine vertigo of nausea when she watched a television commercial for some female hygiene spray featuring a white woman belting out that song.
    Holy Mother, holy, holy, bla, bla. She was moved by something both hilarious and infinitely sad. What times I live in. It was enough to make her wish she had been born in the fourteenth century, a nun sweet on Jesus. Anytime but now. Anyone but me.
    Still, there was a tiny dot of mellowness in her