So I wiped my face on her shirt without seeming to and pulled back to look at her. “It’s okay, Mom,” I told her. “We’ll get by. Let’s go home and figure things out.”

But she wasn’t even listening to me. She was focused on the Skoags, actually on the one with the big crest, listening to “Moon over Bourbon Street” like she’d never heard it before. It sounded the same as always to me, and I tugged at her hand. But it was just like I wasn’t there, like she had gone off somewhere. So I just stood there and waited.

My mom listened until they were done. The big purple-crested Skoag watched her listen to them. His big flat eye spots were pointed toward her all the time, calm and dead and unfocused like all Skoag eyes are. He was looking over the heads of the tourists and hecklers, straight at her.

When the song was finished, they didn’t go right into another song like usual. Purple stood there, watching my mother and letting the air leak out of his puffers. The other Skoags looked at him, and they seemed puzzled, shifting around, and one made a flat squawk. But then they let their air out, too, and pretty soon they were all empty and bony, their puffer things tight against their bodies again. My mom kept staring at the Skoag, like she was still hearing music, until I shook her arm.

“I’m coming,” she said, but she didn’t. She didn’t even move, until I shook her arm again and said, “I’m hungry.”

Then she jerked and looked down at me finally. “Oh, my poor little kid,” she said. She really meant it.