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At 48, Walking My Baby Past the Voodoo Lounge “A few children for me of my own, is that excessive? No, . . . It is the right moment, just right.” -Edgar Degas, letter from New Orleans to Henri Rouart I wheel his stroller across Bienville, turn left on Chartres, pause at the house where Napoleon planned to brood his final years. Carlos doesn’t care–– napping under a blanket I’ve spread to keep him from the sun. The sidewalks are sticky, the air––roiling with booze and boiled shrimp, and the music won’t stop–– at every door, the chank-a-chank of zydeco, or drum machines rat-tatting into the street. I light a cigar. We are men-about-town, me pointing out the gaslights and balconies, the walls brushed aquamarine, chiffon, or a sweet sun-ripened pink. On Toulouse, he spots two beagles, who, scampering round their tiny yard, make him laugh, as they tumble against an iron fence. I prop Carlos at the gate and snap a picture, in which he looks straight at the camera, smiling slyly, like the smallest child in Degas’s painting Children on a Doorstep––the light, that same goldenrod––with a beagle posed at a distance. You say it’s crazy to have this new child. You think even worse. 82 I only know that under the sign “Famous Live Love Acts of New Orleans,” I look at Carlos and smile. And passing the Voodoo Lounge, I know that no bad luck can touch us now. 83 ...

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