T. Boyle - Greasy Lake and Other Stories

“First time I heard Elvis, first time I remember, anyway,” Joey was saying now, “was in December of ’68 when he did that TV concert — the Singer Special? It blew me away. I just couldn’t believe it.”

“Sixty-eight?” I echoed. “What were you, four?”

Cindy giggled. I turned to look at her, a sloppy grin on my face. I was drunk.

Joey didn’t bat an eye. “I was seven,” he said. And then: “That was the day I stopped being a kid.” He’d tucked a napkin under his collar to protect his pink shirt, and strands of hair hung loose over his forehead. “Next day my mom picked up a copy of Elvis’s Greatest Hits, Volume One, and a week later she got me my first guitar. I’ve been at it ever since.”

Joey was looking hard at me. He was trying to impress me; that much was clear. That’s why he’d worn the suit, dabbed his lids with green eye shadow, greased his hair, and hammered out his repertoire from the next room so I couldn’t help but catch every lick. Somehow, though, I wasn’t impressed. Whether it was the booze, my indifference to Elvis, or the fear and loathing that had gripped me since Judy’s defection, I couldn’t say. All I knew was that I didn’t give a shit. For Elvis, for Joey, for Fred, Judy, Little Richard, or Leonard Bernstein. For anybody. I sipped my wine in silence.

“My agent’s trying to book me into the Catskills — some of the resorts and all, you know? He says my act’s really hot.” Joey patted his napkin, raised a glass of milk to his lips, and took a quick swallow. “I’ll be auditioning up there at Brown’s in about a week. Meanwhile, Friday night I got this warm-up gig — no big deal, just some dump out in the sticks. It’s over in Brewster — you ever heard of it?”

“The sticks, or Brewster?” I said.

“No, really, why not drop by?”

Cindy was watching me. Earlier, over the chopping board, she’d given me the rundown on this and other matters. She was twenty, Joey was twenty-one. Her father owned a contracting company in Putnam Valley and had set them up with the house. She’d met Joey in Brooklyn the summer before, when she was staying with her cousin. He was in a band then. Now he did Elvis. Nothing but. He’d had gigs in the City and out on the Island, but he wasn’t making anything and he refused to take a day job: nobody but hacks did that. So they’d come to the hinterlands, where her father could see they didn’t starve to death and Cindy could work as a secretary in his office. They were hoping the Brewster thing would catch on — nobody was doing much with Elvis up here.

I chewed, swallowed, washed it down with a swig of wine. “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

Later, after Joey had gone to bed, Cindy and I sat side by side on the plaid sofa and listened to a tape of Swan Lake I’d gone next door to fetch (“Something soft,” she’d said. “Have you got something soft?”). We were drinking coffee, and a sweet yellowish cordial she’d dug out of one of the boxes of kitchen things. We’d been talking. I’d told her about Judy. And Fred. Told her I’d been feeling pretty rotten and that I was glad she’d moved in. “Really,” I said, “I mean it. And I really appreciate you inviting me over too. ”

She was right beside me, her arms bare in the peasant dress, legs folded under her yoga-style. “No problem,” she said, looking me in the eye.

I glanced away and saw Elvis. Crouching, dipping, leering, humping the microphone, and spraying musk over the first three rows, Elvis in full rut. “So how do you feel about all this”—I waved my arm to take in the posters, the guitar and amp, the undefined space above us where Joey lay sleeping—“I mean, living with the King?” I laughed and held my cupped hand under her chin. “Go ahead, dear — speak right into the mike.”

She surprised me then. Her expression was dead serious, no time for levity. Slowly, deliberately, she set down the coffee cup and leaned forward to swing round so that she was kneeling beside me on the couch; then she kicked her leg out as if mounting a horse and brought her knee softly down between my legs until I could feel the pressure lighting up my groin. From the stereo, I could hear the swan maidens bursting into flight. “It’s like being married to a clone,” she whispered.

When I got home, the phone was ringing. I slammed through the front door, stumbled over something in the dark, and took the stairs to the bedroom two at a time. “Yeah?” I said breathlessly as I snatched up the receiver.

“Pat?”

It was Judy. Before I could react, her voice was coming at me, soft and passionate, syllables kneading me like fingers. “Pat, listen,” she said. “I want to explain something—”

I hung up.

The club was called Delvecchio’s, and it sat amid an expanse of blacktop like a cruise ship on a flat, dark sea. It was a big place, with two separate stages, a disco, three bars, and a game room. I recognized it instantly: teen nirvana. Neon pulsed, raked Chevys rumbled out front, guys in Hawaiian shirts and girls in spike heels stood outside the door, smoking joints and cigarettes and examining one another with frozen eyes. The parking lot was already beginning to fill up when Cindy and I pulled in around nine.

“Big on the sixteen-year-old crowd tonight,” I said. “Want me to gun the engine?”

Cindy was wearing a sleeveless blouse, pedal pushers, and heels. She’d made herself up to look like a cover girl for Slash magazine, and she smelled like a candy store. “Come on, Pat,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Don’t be that way.”

“What way?” I said, but I knew what she meant. We were out to have a good time, to hear Joey on his big night, and there was no reason to kill it with cynicism.

Joey had gone on ahead in the van to set up his equipment and do a sound check. Earlier, he’d made a special trip over to my place to ask if I’d mind taking Cindy to the club. He stood just inside the door, working the toe of his patent-leather boot and gazing beyond me to the wreckage wrought by Judy’s absence: the cardboard containers of takeout Chinese stacked atop the TV, the beer bottles and Devil Dog wrappers on the coffee table, the clothes scattered about like the leavings of a river in flood. I looked him in the eye, wondering just how much he knew of the passionate groping Cindy and I had engaged in while he was getting his beauty rest the other night, wondering if he had even the faintest notion that I felt evil and betrayed and wanted his wife because I had wounds to salve and because she was there, wanted her like forbidden fruit, wanted her like I’d wanted half the knocked-up, washed-out, defiant little twits that paraded through my office each year. He held my gaze until I looked away. “Sure,” I murmured, playing Tristan to his Mark. “Be happy to.”

And so, come eight o’clock, I’d showered and shaved, slicked back my hair, turned up the collar of my favorite gigolo shirt, and strolled across the lawn to pick her up. The baby (her name was Gladys, after Elvis’s mother) was left in the care of one of the legions of pubescent girls I knew from school, Cindy emerged from the bedroom on brisk heels to peck my cheek with a kiss, and we strolled back across the lawn to my car.

There was an awkward silence. Though we’d talked two or three times since the night of the braciola and the couch, neither of us had referred to it. We’d done some pretty heavy petting and fondling, we’d got the feel of each other’s dentition and a taste of abandon. I was the one who backed off. I had a vision of Joey standing in the doorway in his pajamas, head bowed under the weight of his pompadour. “What about Joey,” I whispered, and we both swiveled our heads to gaze up at the flat, unrevealing surface of the ceiling. Then I got up and went home to bed.