“On St. Ann, honey. Just a few blocks.”

“You left your hat in the bar.”

“Oh, I sold it to that young man.”

“You sold it? Why? Did you ask me whether I wanted it to be sold? I was very attached to that hat.”

“I’m sorry, Ignatius. I didn’t know you liked it so much. You never said nothing about it.”

“I had an unspoken attachment to it. It was a contact with my childhood, a link with the past.”

“But he gave me fifteen dollars, Ignatius.”

“Please. Don’t talk about it anymore. The whole business is sacrilegious. Goodness knows what degenerate uses he will find for that hat. Do you have the fifteen dollars on you?”

“I still got seven left.”

“Then why don’t we stop and eat something?” Ignatius pointed to the cart at the corner. It was shaped like a hot dog on wheels. “I believe that they vend foot-long hot dogs.”

“Hot dogs? Honey, in all this rain and cold we gonna stand outside and eat weenies?”

“It’s a thought.”

“No,” Mrs. Reilly said with somewhat beery courage. “Let’s get home. I wouldn’t eat nothing outta one of them dirty wagons anyway. They all operated by a bunch of bums.”

“If you insist,” Ignatius said, pouting. “Although I am rather hungry, and you have, after all, just sold a memento of my childhood for thirty pieces of silver, so to speak.”

They continued their little pattern of steps along the wet flagstones of Bourbon Street. On St. Ann they found the old Plymouth easily. Its high roof stood above all the other cars, its best feature. The Plymouth was always easy to find in supermarket parking lots. Mrs. Reilly climbed the curb twice trying to force the car out of the parking place and left the impression of a 1946 Plymouth bumper in the hood of the Volkswagen in the rear.

“My nerves!” Ignatius said. He was slumped down in the seat so that just the top of his green hunting cap appeared in the window, looking like the tip of a promising watermelon.