COLORED PAPER

Guidance: Boy gets girl, boy loses girl. Or the other way around.

It was the morning after Carnival night. Stefan stepped out onto the narrow third-floor balcony of his apartment, wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He pulled a strand of confetti from a branch of the jacaranda tree that grew in front of the building and dropped it to the sidewalk below, watching its floating gyrations until it settled gracefully into a puddle by the curb of the street.

He turned and looked along the row of balconies lining the front of the grey apartment building. Some of them had clothes draped over them, one a rug. The strands of confetti were draped everywhere, looking pathetic and trashy out of their partying context. It was overcast, and far down the street Stefan could see the glow where the sun was coming up behind the clouds. Then, three blocks away, in silhouette, a girl was leading a small elephant across an intersection. Lope, lope, lope, gone. Blue-grey sunshine poured down the street.

From inside the apartment, a sleepy, feminine voice called:

"Steffie? Where are you? What time is it?"

"Six," Stefan answered in a trance-like monotone, his eyes fixed on the place where the girl and elephant had disappeared.

"Six?" groaned the voice beyond the half-opened French doors leading onto the balcony. "Come back to bed," came the whining directive, now muffled by a pillow thrown over the owners' drowsing head.

Stefan ignored the command and continued staring down the street as the sun crept up the rows of buildings, tinting them a soft rose color. Somehow that girl and the elephant had dislodged something deep in his mind - some new and wildly beckoning thought. On a sudden impulse, he gingerly stepped out onto the fire escape and began climbing down the ladder, feeling the cool metal grids against his bare feet. Thoughts flew through his head, one after another, like the narrow steps he was now descending. "What am I doing? Am I really doing this? What about Monique? I can't believe I'm doing this! She'll be so angry when I don't come back in… Who cares?!! This is like something out of a dream! Maybe this is a dream…" The questions vanished as he stepped down onto the damp pavement and turned, eyes searching out his destination three blocks away.

They were touching finger tips, the way you do with your image in a mirror. She sensed electric impulses transfer instantaneously from his hands to hers and then up her arms and around her torso. Suddenly she felt uncomfortably warm with prickly heat. He looked deep into her eyes. A bright light shown from them, piercing deep through her pupils and blazing his image onto her retinas. Monique bolted upright on the bed with her mouth wide open in an unsounded scream. She breathed an immense sigh of relief, "Only a night mare, or a morning mare, whatever you call it, thank God."

"What IS that bright light?" she said out loud, only now beginning to realize that it wasn't part of the dream. A pane of glass in an open French door to the balcony was at just the right angle to reflect the morning sun onto the bed.

"Stefan, where are you?" No response. "What time is it anyway?" she thought while holding her head with both hands. Monique gathered the bed sheet around herself like a robe and scuffled barefoot over to the open doors of the balcony. She squinted and leaned out, peering through her disheveled hair to see if he was there. Off in the distance, about three blocks away she could see a menagerie of animals and cages, people, boxes and trucks moving across the intersection toward the train yard. Some faint memories of the night before began to dance in the dim light of her recollection. "Damn this headache."

She looked back in the bedroom to see if she had missed seeing him there the way you go back several times to the same place when you have misplaced something and can't find it.

"A nice shower pouring over my head might help." she thought as she made her way slowly to the bathroom through the obstacles left on the floor the night before. NOW she remembered, the Midway . . . and the bearded lady. "Where IS that bastard?" She had a feeling Stefan wasn't just downstairs at the bakery getting her a cup of coffee and a Danish.

Stefan slowed down as he caught up with the elephant girl. His feet were cold and stung from the pavement. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the rising sun. Her sillouette itself seemed to blind him, her perfect waist and hips that swung so easily as she led the young pachederm. The sun rim lit her dark hair, giving the edges a deep auburn glow. The elephant heard him first. She turned to look at her charge, then turned all the way around to face Stefan. Now he saw she was older than a girl. She was one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen. Her pale perfect skin accented her dark eyes and lashes. The exersion and cool air lent a pink glow to her cheeks. Her lips parted to say a few calming words to the elephant.

"Nice elephant." Stefan heard himself say. Dumb dope, he said to himself. It's perfectly obvious I'm not here to ogle the elephant. But she didn't seem to mind. It seemed to him that she was used to men acting dumb around her.

"Thanks, this is Orphan Annie", she smiled. Stefan was completely undone by the smile. A vague thought of Monique, far away now, floated from his mind. Luckily, for Stefan, she kept talking.

"Are you lost?" She looked at his bare feet, tilted her head to one side and laughed. "Just kidding. Hi, my name is Myrna Minkowski. Did you enjoy the carnival?"

"Oh yes. My name is Stefan Simic."

At that moment Stefan heard the unmistakable sound of his Vespa scooter approaching. Puzzled, he spun around. There buzzing toward them, her hair in a cloud around her head, rode Monique. She was wearing nothing but a bedsheet. A corner of the sheet flapped wildly over her shoulder and she had a large Danish pastry held in her teeth. She rode past and away on Stephan's beautiful red scooter, leaving Myrna and Stephan open mouthed with an oblivious elephant swaying from side to side.

"I wonder what that was all about" queried Myrna, her hand stroking Orphan Annie’s shoulder, while looking on as the little scooter disappeared from sight.

"Carnival Time, brings out all sorts of crazy people". He hadn’t even gotten it out of his mouth when Stefan realized how foolish he must have sounded. If there was anywhere craziness was totally accepted it was Carnival Time in New Orleans. Myrna just stood there looking up at him with a big grin. Their eyes met and they read each other’s minds.

Stefan chuckled, "I don’t usually act this dumb."

"It’s Carnival Time" Myrna soothed him, "you're probably just a little out of your element this morning. Stefan laughed with relief as Myrna began once again leading the little elephant down the street using a small baton.

"Sooo...where are you and your friend headed for?" Stefan asked Myrna, feeling his confidence return.

"The animals have to be in their holding pens at the Montegut St. Switching Yard by nine o’clock. The train leaves for Seattle this afternoon."

Stefan kept up the pace feeling somewhat at a disadvantage as if this dreamlike adventure was about to fall apart if he didn’t keep up the pursuit. "Are you going on the train with them or will you be staying on here for a while"? His question sounded more like a plea than curiosity. "What I really mean is, is there any chance that you might join me for brunch later on this morning?"

Myrna slowed her pace contemplating Stefan’s question. She turned to Orphan Annie, wrapping her arm around the elephant's trunk and slowing her to a stop. "The Fat Tuesday Celebration in Seattle begins this Thursday. Most of us are flying out there Wednesday morning; so yes, I’d love to meet you for brunch. Anyplace special in mind?"

Stefan was suddenly aware of his barefeet."PJ’s Café on Royal and Magazine serves great omelets or there’s Café Beiguet on the corner of Canal and Royal if you like the local flavor."

Myrna was contemplating, "I don’t usually eat anyplace that I can’t pronounce the name of...so, PJ’s it is...eleven o’clock ok?"

Rocking on the outsides of his feet Stefan waved to Myrna, "Sounds great to me. Then I’ll see you there".

Myrna turned on her heel and prodded Annie with the little baton. Looking back over her shoulder she gave Stefan a wink. "Eleven o’clock".

As she walked on with her charge Myrna couldn’t help thinking that she could use a holiday from Agency duties.

The quarter was beginning to wake up, painfully, like a drunk the morning after. Stefan wandered home, kicking up little heaps of confetti and whistling tunelessly.

Back at the rapidly dissolving circus, Myrna fed and watered Annie and left her being packed onto the semi with the other elephants. She made her report from the rented VW's cell phone, then headed toward the ferry and her rendezvous with Monique. It would be a bit tight, getting back from the Westbank in time for brunch with Stefan, but the serendipity of finally meeting him, today of all days, was just too delicious. Monique could sure pick 'em.

Luncheon at the Luckless Duck:

"Chinese," moaned Myrna. "Not exactly what I had in mind."

"How were we to know there was no corner of Royal and Magazine? Besides, I seem to recall that New Orleans is famous for its Asian cuisine."

"Sure," said Myrna. He was farther gone than she thought. The effects of the Forgetting Virus had not faded completely yet. At least he had regained enough of his memory to take an interest in her when their paths had finally crossed.

"We might have eaten at K-Pasa," she groused.

"It was full, with a line. Big tourist attraction, apparently. Must be Asian."

Myrna looked out the window. Monique hadn’t shown up for their rendezvous at Float World in Gretna. Maybe she’d decided against the weasel deal after all. Now the Circus was leaving town. Myrna would have to stay on with the elephant act for yet another encampment while she pressed Monique to part with the weasels. When she joined the agency it was her understanding she’d be able to shoot her way out of fixes like this.

Several months ago, the FBI’s extra-legal experimental biotechnical laboratory (F.E.E.B.L) had finally completed development of a man-made organism expected to be of immense value in the agency’s work: a memory-eating virus. Actually, it did not eat memory, it just chewed on it a while, then coughed it up again a few days later, none the worse for wear.

Like anyone, a virus needs a home, and this one lived in a large family of weasels kept carefully penned at FEEBL’s sprawling compound in Washington, the Feebagon. Unfortunately, one weasel became a favorite of the Chief’s nine-year-old grandson, and late one night, while Grandpa was busy catching up on congressional blackmail, the child had sneaked into the weaselry, popped the cage lock and stuffed the animal into his Ollie North pencil box. Later that night, the two little weasels left the premises in the Chief’s limo.

The kid took the animal with him everywhere he went for a few days. Then he went to the circus, where he came upon Monique’s pint-sized tent show. Monique Mandelbaum’s Wonder Weasels! Come One Come All, Let Miss Mandelbaum’s Amazing Minks of Mystery Dance their way into your Heart! These Mindboggling Mustelinoids have Performed before the Crowned Heads, etc. Anyway, the kid paid his quarter and went in. While he’s watching the Wonder Weasels perform a pas de deux, the agency’s animal, since dubbed by the child "Slick Willy", smells sweet lady weasel and departs his pants-pocket pad, trading up for a life on the wicked stage. Two days later, the circus leaves town, and a few people begin turning up at precincts here and there inquiring in popcorn-scented tones as to their own home addresses.

It was several hours after the appearance on his computer screen of the "Weasel Count Mismatch" message that the Brit-accented night shift wrangler alerted Herr Doktor Professor Stoatstikker of the missing animal. "The message is the same as the name of my garage band, sir. I thought my girlfriend had sent it. She’s a huge fan."

"So has my wife, but I hardly see the relevance," snapped the professor. "If we do not recover that weasel, our careers will not be worth a paper pengo. Get me Minkowski."

"Why her, sir?"

"They are minks, so Minkowski. Had they been cows, again Minkowski. If rats, Rattigan. If guinea pigs, the Italian agent Pignatelli, and so on. Get her. And that man Simic."

"Why him, sir?"

"I hope to borrow his Orioles pass."

It had taken Myrna a few days to connect the weasel to the absent-minded circus-goers. She immediately went undercover at the circus as an elephant girl, an undemanding job that included an attractive two-piece sequinned costume. Stefan had joined too, working the straw-strewn byways of the tent town as Simic the Mimic, in which guise he ridiculed passing attendees with impromptu impressions, desisting only after they had surrendered spare change. The job was risky, since the ethics of his adopted craft dictated that he target mainly the larger, more aggressive male customers. He avoided serious injury until the day a stout, bowlegged motorcycle gypsy propelled him, with a single abrupt extension of his tattoo-blackened forearm, through the stagedoor tentflap of the Weaselmania exhibit and into the plump mink-juggling arms of Monique Mandelbaum.

"Nice weasels," said Stefan, picking himself up off Monique.

"You want to hold one?" she said. "They feel really good."