Welcome to the wild place, far from home and weight of consequence. A place with a reputation for crazy.
Responsibility fizzles in a hotel ashtray while you—four drinks in and having left the bar with some floozy you’re convinced could be your next wife when the current one discovers what you’ve been up to—follow her out onto night-lit streets, where painted people, feathered people, shouting people hold glasses high as they navigate the crowd or dance in place, partnerless on crooked sidewalks. The smell of booze, sweat and diesel hits you, an invigorating intoxicant, as a flowered float rolls by. She tugs at you, her warm, plump hand leading you into the heart of wonderful madness.
“It’s time we honor you,” she says, her soft eyes meeting yours as she guides you through the crowd.
You’re dizzy and think it might be love—or at least lust—and you realize you’d forgotten this freefalling feeling or discarded it as fruitless somewhere on the way to middle age, but now it rushes back, an irresistible flow, and there is no stopper. She steps onto the slow-moving float and tugs you up. She’s what? In her early thirties, you surmise, admiring a curve of breast as she leans down.
“Watch your step, you horny dog,” she admonishes, and you comply and wonder if you’re blushing.
The wildly dressed people on the float greet the two of you with rousing shouts as you find your feet. She responds by kissing you hungrily on the mouth, stimulating hoots and whistles from the float crowd, and something else swelling within, manifesting as desire so intense that you barely notice as the shouts transform themselves into a chant that begins on the float then moves like a wave through the street crowd.
“Virgin King! Virgin King! Virgin King!”
Your lady smiles, her sequins aglitter, and a tall man with a rainbow-colored beard places a diamond-studded tiara on her head, and you should have known all along that she is royalty here, in this festive jungle of drinking, drugging, celebration without cause, of fucking and forgetting, only now, she is your bride, and you are royalty too. You realize that the crowd is chanting for you. For you!
“Virgin King! Virgin King! Virgin King!”
The bearded man reaches around and someone hands him a tall golden crown, heavy-looking, unornamented. You feel a strange rush as he lowers it onto your head. He offers you a hand as you step onto a high platform at the center of the float, where you join your lush bride, all smiles and kisses blown at the street crowd. She laughs and tosses her arm around your neck, her face suddenly youthful—you could swear she’s nineteen. You look from her face to the crowd to her face as the two of you stand tall above the partying throng.
Can this be real? A twinge of doubt twists in your gut, reminding you that just last night you stepped off a plane into a fight with your wife, each of you catching separate rides to different hotels—just a regular guy, struggling at work, frustrated at home, with a sinking suspicion your wife is having an affair—maybe that hotshot young lawyer who recently joined her firm.
“Virgin King! Virgin King! Virgin King!”
You’re King, goddamn it all!
You shake your head and look around. You need a hit of something to quell this doubt, and sure enough someone passes along a tray of straws and white powder. You chuckle because they read your mind, and though you’re not sure what it is, you fear your buzz is wearing off and don’t give a damn anyway, so you grab a green-striped straw stub and snort some up.
Oh, My!
A rush of lightning slams the back of your head like a beautiful white hammer. You laugh out loud then treat the other nostril before passing the tray along to your bride. The dancing, carousing crowd outside the bars and restaurants comes sharply into focus under the streetlights. Rhythmic music thrums through you. Your queen clutches your arm gleefully, grinning like a sheep dog.
The platform you are standing on is a firm mattress. It rises by unseen hydraulics higher above the flatbed of the flower-tressed truck. The chant changes now, as everyone admires the enchanted couple suspended above the world.
“King and Queen! King and Queen! King and Queen!”
“Come on, Honey. Let’s give ‘em what they want,” she urges, unbuttoning your shirt. You’re dizzy, not with drink or drugs but the florid scent of her, the taste of whisky on her breath and the irresistible depth of her softness. The crowd on the street and the cluster of crazies on the float recede to some dim place, softly cheering you on like a radio at low volume as she is all you see and taste and feel. Finally, skin to skin, her kisses take you down, folding at the knees. The crown tumbles from your head as you let go everything but her, forgetting that this Mardi Gras broadcast is live around the world.
Your wife on her bed at the Hilton five blocks south watches with a glass of wine and a keen, tearless smile. She reaches for her phone, when he picks up says, “You watching this?”
Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer living in Phoenix, Arizona. His flash fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in Delmarva Review, Lunch Ticket, American Journal of Poetry, Hole in the Head Review, New Flash Fiction Review, and The Indianapolis Review and elsewhere. New work is forthcoming in Blue Unicorn and Drunk Monkeys.