by Walker Percy
“Yes! Yes!”
“Then wait a minute. I’ll be right back.”
“Binx, we love you too!” cries Donice for the fun of it and leans way out the window. “Will you come to see us?”
“Sure. Now hush up. I want to talk to Kate.”
Kate looks back at the car. “You were very sweet with them.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Will you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“I’ll be up here all day with Lonnie and the children. Will you go downtown for me and pick up some governments at the office? Your mother has decided again to keep them at home. She thinks that if war comes, her desk is safer than the vault. Will you go?”
“Alone?”
“Yes. You can ride the streetcar down St Charles. It is nice sitting by an open window.”
“I wouldn’t know what to ask for!”
“You don’t have to. I’ll call Mr Klostermann and he’ll hand you an envelope. Here’s what you do: take the streetcar, get off at Common, walk right into the office. Mr Klostermann will give you an envelope—you won’t have to say a word—then catch the streetcar at the same place. It will go on down to Canal and come back up St Charles.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Here.”
She considers the quarter in her palm. “Here’s the only thing. It’s not that I’m afraid.” She looks at a cape jasmine sticking through an iron fence. I pick it and give it to her.
“You’re sweet,” says Kate uneasily. “Now tell me …”
“What?”
“While I am on the streetcar—are you going to be thinking about me?”
“Yes.”
“What if I don’t make it?”
“Get off and walk home.”
“I’ve got to be sure about one thing.”
“What?”
“I’m going to sit next to the window on the Lake side and put the cape jasmine in my lap?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’ll be thinking of me just that way?”
“That’s right.”
“Good-by.”
“Good-by.”
Twenty feet away she turns around.
“Mr Klostermann?”
“Mr Klostermann.”
I watch her walk toward St Charles, cape jasmine held against her cheek, until my brothers and sisters call out behind me.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A small section of this book originally appeared in Forum in slightly different form as “Carnival in Gentilly.”
copyright © 1960, 1961 by Walker Percy
cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4532-1625-5
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
