Unknown - Douglas_Carole_Nelson_Cat_in_a_Jeweled_Jumpsuit_Bo

“Sorry, folks.” He laid down the law with an in-character smirk that wasn’t at all obsequious. “This is off limits.”

“We’re here to see Quincey Conrad,” Temple said briskly. Brisk always sounded businesslike and, more important, legitimate.

The guard’s head shook.

“Perhaps I should say ‘Priscilla.’ “

“You may be here to see her, but she’s not ready to see you. We don’t let in tourists, only people connected to the performers.”

“We’re connected. Check with Crawford Buchanan, the emcee. He knows the value of publicity.”

The sunglasses kept her from reading any loosening of presumably narrowed eyes, but the guy extracted a cell phone from the suit and punched in a predialed number.

“Yeah. Fiorello here. You know a—” During a long pause the impenetrable sunglasses so reminiscent of the latest fashion in alien eyes seemed to wordlessly interrogate them. Then the guard extended the phone so Temple could speak into it.

“Temple Barr with Matt Devine from WCOO radio.”

The guard clamped the phone to his ear for the reply.

In a moment he nodded grudgingly and stepped aside, but barely enough to let them pass.

They brushed by itchy-scratchy mohair into the same claustrophobic stairwell Temple had used the day before.

“This is so much nicer without the sound effects,” she told Matt.

“You mean Quincey’s screams.”

Temple nodded, surprised to find the hallway that had been so empty yesterday full of colorful foot traffic. Elvi in various stages of development (Young, Comeback, and Jumpsuit) and undress (no shirt, open shirt, navel-reaching jumpsuit vee) hustled by, too busy to give them a glance. Matt rubbernecked like someone at a tennis match

“They sure have the look down,” Matt said. “No wonder rumors started that Elvis was alive and well and imitating himself.”

Temple darted toward an open dressing room door. “Quincey is expecting us. I told her that I was bringing media and needed an Elvis tour.”

She vanished, and Matt hesitated before following her. This place looked like a rabbit hole of the first water. Entering such illogical Wonderland worlds had put Alice through a lot of trauma as well as adventure. He wasn’t eager to disappear into another unreal world like talk radio. Investigating Elvis gave the man who had called him more legitimacy. It put Matt in the business of dealing with the lunatic fringe. It meant he was making money off other people’s weaknesses. But so was every Elvis imitator in the hotel, and so Elvis himself had done.

Matt shrugged and followed Temple into the room. She was a much more reliable guide than the White Rabbit, not to mention more attractive.

Then there she was, Miss Teenage America, a petite female figure dwarfed by a full bridal-veil fall of jet-black hair. Her eyes played hide-and-seek in a blur of furred lashes, painted eyebrows, and kohl liner. A black Madonna. Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra without the aura of seduction. She also reminded Matt of another teasingly familiar image from the sixties, or even the fifties, but he couldn’t quite place it. Certainly she was a revenant of the orchestrated image Priscilla Beaulieu had donned when she had lived at Graceland with Elvis from the ages of seventeen to twenty-six, more than half the time without benefit of marriage.

“Quincey Conrad,” Temple introduced this apparition. “Matt Devine.”

If the eyes beneath the awning of lashes could have narrowed further, they did. “He’d never pass as Elvis,”

she commented as if Matt weren’t there, or were hearing impaired.

Obviously, her current assignment had narrowed her world to the Elvis and the not-Elvis.

“I’d never want to,” Matt said. “Elvis had a very troubled life, and death.”

“I’m not so sure.” Quincey sat back down at the dressing table mirror to fine-tune her mask of makeup. “That he was troubled?”

“That he’s dead.”

“Really?” Temple interjected. “What makes you question that?”

“It’d be so cool, that’s all.” Quincey blotted her tearose-pale lipstick. “Okay. You guys ready to go on an Elvis tour?” She stood up and eyed Matt again. “What’s his cover?”

“It’s no cover,” Matt said a little indignantly. “I’ve got a radio show. I might be interested in having some of the Elvis imitators on.”

“Local?” Quincey’s tone dripped boredom.

“Syndicated.” Temple sounded like someone laying down a royal flush on a poker table.

“Ohhhh.” The exaggerated eyes gave Matt new respect. “National exposure. That’s what these guys all dream of.” As if she didn’t. She rolled her eyes, an athletic feat under the circumstances. “Like A Current Affair is the big time.”

“Well,” Matt said, “they’re not likely to get Sixty Minutes.”

“Not unless Elvis really is alive and well in Las Vegas,” Temple pointed out. “Let’s go find out.”

Matt’s few glimpses of life behind stage, accomplished only since he had moved to Las Vegas and in Temple’s presence, still hadn’t accustomed him to people running around in states of undress.

Here, at least, there were no leggy chorus girls fleeting through like mobile Venus de Milos. No, there were justincarnations of Elvis, elbowing past each other as if encountering mirrored images of oneself in disguise were the most normal thing in their world. And it probably was.

Matt’s recent fast-forward skitter through a raft of picture books of Elvis’s career helped him identify every imitator’s place on the Elvis spectrum. None mimicked the “dirty-blond” natural-born Elvis of the mid-fifties. All were black and beautiful to a degree, depending on age and physical fitness and actual resemblance to the King.

“Ooof!” Even the stage-savvy Temple seemed awed by the proliferation of Elvi. “Where do we begin?”

“These are the community dressing rooms,” Quincey said. “Us few girls get separate rooms.”

“ ‘Us’?” Temple jumped on the word. “There are more Priscillas down here?”

“No. I’m the only one. But there are three female Elvises.”

Temple’s eyes wordlessly questioned Matt.

“I just want to meet the men,” he said hastily. “I mean, the voice—”

Temple got his message, so she nodded at Quincey. “Let’s start at the end of the hall and work our way back. Show us to the first dressing room and we’ll take it from there. I’d love to know whose jumpsuit got axed.”

“It’s been the talk of rehearsals,” Quincey agreed. “Some hotel security guy finally came after you left and took it away, so someone should have noticed it was missing by now. And—” She paused outside an open door before leaving them, suddenly dead serious. “I should warn you. These are nice guys, mostly, but a little bent. I mean, they, like, worship the dead guy. So don’t say anything anti-Elvis. Somebody might stick his ringed fist into your teeth, and these guys wear Godzillasize rings, let me tell you.”

With that word of warning, they entered the first dressing room.

A miasma of hair spray hung in the hot air along with a multiscented wave of deodorant. Heavyset, bluecollar-muscled guys were primping everywhere, patting down sideburns as big as tarantulas, arranging crosses and lightning bolt pendants on springy cushions of chest hair, smoothing shocks of black hair into place, some teasing a few fitful locks down onto the forehead, like the little girl who had a little curl of nursery rhymes. When she was good, she was very, very good. And when she was bad, she was horrid.

That was certainly true of the real Elvis, Matt thought.

The round yellow bulbs that framed the chain of mirrors lining both sides of the long room made the assembled colored stones and gold studs on the various costumes glitter like neon miniatures of Las Vegas hotel signs. Matt recognized several versions of the famous American eagle jumpsuit, the denim-blue and silver-studded model, the Native American motifs. Most were white, or the occasional black version.