It was Mardi Gras again and Danny O’Reilly was on the parade route for the third year in a row. Danny was really tired of standing on the parade route watching one parade after another pass day after day. It was day eight of the season and there were four more to go. After a while all the tourists and float riders looked alike. They were standing in the street waiting for that night’s parade to arrive. Danny saw the street was beginning to fill up with people and because they were working the block on St. Charles Ave. where there were several hotels and bars he figured most of the people were tourists in town for the Mardi Gras.
Then he saw five women standing behind the barricade. One called him over. She was a very pretty dark haired lady who looked to be in her mid to late thirties. She had a low cut outfit that showed her ample breasts and long legs. “Officer,” she said, “Do you know when the parade will pass here?” He had heard the question a million times over the years but he knew he was supposed to answer it politely.
“It should be here in about twenty minutes, Ma’am,” he said.
“Ma’am?” she said, “My name is Carole. What’s yours?”
‘OK I’ll play the game,’ Danny thought. “They call me Danny Boy,” he said, “Where yall from?”
Carole was very attractive when you got up close and she batted her eyes at Danny and said, “Chicago. We all work in an office in the Sears Tower and our section won a trip to the Mardi Gras in a productivity contest our company sponsored.” Danny could see she had fantastic breasts and knew she was proud of them from the way she was dressed. “We were all thinking about going to the French Quarter later. Is it true that women there flash their boobs and people throw beads to them?”
Danny smiled at her and said, “Yes but you can get arrested for lewd conduct if you do that. We are supposed to enforce that law but I’ve never arrested anyone for doing it. If you look on the internet there are lots of sites that have pictures of people doing it in the French Quarter. If you want to do that you’d be better off wearing just a T-shirt and jeans. You might have a problem in that outfit. Yall don’t have to do that to catch beads from this parade. I’ll help you when the parade comes.”
A half an hour later the parade was passing and Danny showed the girls how to catch lots of beads. He would let them run up to the floats when the parade stopped from time to time and he would point them out to the riders and they always threw lots of beads and other junk to them. As the last float passed the girls had more beads than they could carry. Carole put her arms around him and kissed him. “Thanks Danny,” she said, “When do you get off?”
Danny said, “In about two hours.”
