Free A Circle of Celebrations: The Complete Edition by Jody Lynn Nye Page B

of gorgeous costumes. Each was arranged on a life-sized mannequin that wore a wig and a mask. Looking into the empty eye holes gave Irmani the creeps, so she concentrated on the dresses and tunics, and read the posters on the walls.
    Properly speaking, the big party going on outside was Carnival. Mardi Gras was only one day, the last blowout. Fat Tuesday, the last day of Carnival, preceded Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Irmani had childhood memories of meatless days and fish on Fridays.
    “Did you ever have to give stuff up for Lent?” Gib asked, as if reading her mind.
    “Never paid much attention to it, except when I was in Catholic school,” Irmani said, dismissively. “The nuns made us do it. We never had to give up anything necessary, only pleasures and vanities, but it was hard. I hated it.”
    “We had to write ours down,” Gib said. “I made it up most times, but my mom wouldn’t make dessert all the way through Lent. I mean, is it really giving anything up if you don’t get to make the choice? It’s supposed to be free will, giving up stuff for God.”
    “He doesn’t care,” Irmani said. “If He did, would He have blown this place up with a hurricane?”
    Gib shrugged his shoulders.
    Finally, it was their turn to pass by the glass case. On a lining of folded purple velvet was a collection of jewelry, the parure , as the King of Comus said. The tiara intimidated her, with its rose-cut diamonds, and the ivory domino on a lorgnette was too fussy for her taste, but she couldn’t stop looking at the strings of filigree gold beads interspersed with colored gemstones. She knew at once that they were the real thing. Fantastic. She felt her fingers curling into her tingling palms.
    “I gotta have that,” Irmani breathed.
    “Uh-uh,” Gib said. “We don’t take anything but money. Just money. We don’t want anything that hard to fence.”
    “I don’t want to fence them,” Irmani said. “I just want them. They are gorgeous!”
    “You don’t need them, baby,” Gib argued. “Look how many throws you’ve got! Dozens!”
    “But they aren’t real,” Irmani said. “ These are real.”
    Gib knew there was no arguing with her once she’d made a decision. The two of them went back out into Jackson Square for the afternoon. Irmani had to drag her mind back over and over so as not to get caught when they did a little business among the steadily increasing crowd.
    Just before closing time at five o’clock, they wandered casually in, as if for the first time. Irmani followed the man in the suit, the curator. She sidled up as he was about to lock the cases and gave him a mind-blowing smile. He returned it a little uncertainly, then went back to his task, never realizing there was a gap in his memory as to how many items were in the display after the pretty girl with café au lait skin had gone away.
    Irmani grabbed Gib, who was hanging out among the mannequins, and dragged him out to the street.
    “I got them,” she gasped, pulling him around the ironwork fence that blocked off the looming façade of the Presbytère from her sight. Leaning into the branches and leaves that poked through and provided a natural screen, she picked three strands out of the thick rope of sparkling beads that hung around her neck. Gib gawked.
    “Look at them,” she said. Her eyes, her brain, and heart, felt as if they were filling up with the energy from the glowing jewels interspersed between gold beads. Amethysts, emeralds, and rubies, like pieces of a stained glass window twinkled in her fingers, more real than anything around them.
    “We’re gonna get in big trouble,” Gib said. “Someone’s gonna see them.”
    “So, what if they do? Watch.” When she let them go, they disappeared into the jungle of plastic, metal-toned strands, blending in with the cut facets like tigers lurking amid hanging vines. “These are the most perfect things I have ever seen!”
    “I dunno, someone must have seen.”
    “No one