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“I’m sorry,” Matt said. “Didn’t mean to stare. I’m just studying everything. I’m new to all this.”

Mike stripped off his modern-day frames. “Yeah, well, we’re used to people thinking we’re nuts. We don’t start out anything like Elvis, most of us. That’s the challenge.”

“You mean, the greater stretch the impersonation is, the more accomplishment?”

“Something like that,” Mike agreed.

Jerry leaned forward, intent. He had a TV sitcom Jersey accent, and fire in his eye.

“The thing is, you gotta love the King, or you got no business even trying to do this. You gotta respect the man.”

“A lot of people don’t,” Matt pointed out. “Didn’t they really put him down at the beginning of his career? Call him a white-trash, no-talent hick who had nothing to offer but dirty dancing?”

“Yeah.”

Mike was getting pugnacious, twirling his nerdish glasses by one earpiece. He’d be a good on-air interview, Matt was horrified to find himself thinking. Was Temple right? Was he being corrupted by his new media role?

“Yeah. They said all that at the beginning, and it was better than what they said at the end, that he was a drugged-out, used-up fat fool who threw his life away. It’s just kinda funny that in between all that bad press the guy reinvented pop music in this country—in the world! He put it all together and brought it on home: rhythm and blues, gospel, country, pop. Man, the Beatles, that Dylan guy, they all were big cheeses after Elvis, and they all said they owed him a lot.”

“Yeah,” Jerry added. “Elvis grew up poor, but those church folk in the South, they knew how to sing. He heard it at church, he heard it in the bars on Beale Street, on the black radio. No one had put it all together like he did. It was never the same after Elvis. He’s the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

The present tense was not lost on Matt. Elvis lives: an eerie anagram of the performer’s name that even he had noticed. And now it had come true.

“Are there any black Elvises?” Matt asked. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Temple making a startled motion after sitting statue-still and letting him conduct the interview.

He had been thinking of the black churches he had used to drop in on, and the glorious use of music in the liturgy, the most inspired blending of music and worship since the Middle Ages, he would bet.

But Jerry and Mike were bristling.

“We ain’t prejudiced,” Mike said. “It’s just that Elvis mostly isn’t a black thing. They got their Johnny Mathis and the old blues guys and gals. They were great, don’t get me wrong. But Elvis just isn’t a black thing.”

“But,” Matt mentally riffled through his previous night’s reading, “wasn’t Elvis accused later of ripping off the black musicians? And didn’t he dress black in high school? He was hanging around Lansky’s on Beale Street, which outfitted black guys and musicians. He was put down for it then.”

“Yeah, yeah. That stuff was there. That’s why he was a friggin’ genius. But … what can I say? We don’t get many black Elvises. We don’t keep ‘em out. They just don’t show up.”

“What kind of Elvises do you get?”

“We got a Mexican Elvis,” Jerry said. “El Vez. One of the top veterans in the business. We got Oriental Elvises. We even got a broad or two. But we don’t get black Elvises.” He shrugged. “It’s just a cultural thing.”

“Why do Elvis when you can do Ray Charles?”

Matt nodded. Elvis had been a musical, stylistic bridge from black to white, but it still wasn’t necessarily a two-way street, for either race.

“What other specialty Elvises are there?”

The two men exchanged another of their insiders’ glances: should we tell him? Jerry decided to do exactly that. “It’s a riot. The Elvises we got. Just when you think you’ve seen ‘em all, along comes a whole new act. Like Velvet Elvis.”

“Velvet Elvis?”

“Yeah, man. Very cool. Wears this black velvet jumpsuit with these neon decorations, just like a velvet painting.”

“Beeeeau-ti-ful,” Mike said, nodding and curling his lower lip instead of the Elvis upper one. “You should see that one under the stage lights. And it’s a woman.”

“You mean a dyke,” Jerry corrected.

“Well, the jury is out on that one, but not the outfit.First class. Original. There’s always room for originality in an Elvis competition.”

“But not too original,” Jerry said. “There’s a certain ranking for the songs and stuff. You got to deliver on the classics. Can’t go too far off the path.”

“But Velvet Elvis is pretty impressive. Great shoulders.”

“Yeah. Velvet Elvis is okay. I don’t think she’ll win shit. I mean, a woman …”

“And then there’s Velveeta Elvis.”

“Yeah. Cheesy!”

Their raw crescendoes of laughter threatened to split jumpsuit seams. Matt had read that the overweight Elvis had actually done that.

“Styles his hair with Cheese Whiz!” Jerry got out between guffaws. “Dude from Dallas, where I guess Velveeta is the local, you know, cure-all.”

“Yeah, they probably use it instead of Viagra there!” Both men were laughing themselves almost off their chairs.

“Anyhow, Velveeta Elvis is no lightweight. Must go two-seventy. And he has a white jumpsuit and all the stones are this yellow-orange—”

“Like those yellow bulbs they embed in streets. We call him ‘Warning Light Elvis’ too.”

“That guy just won’t give up.”

Matt hated to interrupt the laugh fest. “Anybody get so serious about impersonating Elvis that they don’t give it up—ever? They won’t go—” He glanced at Temple. She knew the phrase for what he was trying to say.

“They don’t ever go out of character,” she supplied.

The two guys barely blinked at her interjection, though they responded to it.

“Oh, yeah,” Jerry said. “The Ever-Elvises. These are not professional-caliber impersonators. They never walk away from a gig. They are the gig.”

“These yoyos show up at Graceland in costume! Tacky, tacky, tacky. We are talking wannabe wannabes.

See, we don’t have any delusions. We know we aren’t Elvis. We are performers. These guys, they are head cases. They gotta walk like Elvis, talk like Elvis, dress like Elvis, sing like Elvis out there in the real world. Among the public. On the street.”

“Sad,” Jerry put in for the coda.

“So … you don’t approve of people like that?” Matt wanted to be sure.

Mike had no doubt. “They give us all a bad name.” “They should be taken out and shot,” Jerry said. “Or stabbed?” Temple suddenly suggested.

The men were too deep in their disdainful duet to notice her, or the sharp relevancy of her question.

“Just drowned, maybe,” Jerry conceded, as if one mode of murder were less violent than another.

“Yeah. Elvis is dead.” Mike shook his dyed, lacquered head. “It’s too bad that creeps like those aren’t.”

“Amen, brother.”

Mike and Jeff, Elvises of one mind under the skin, grinned absolute agreement at each other.

Chapter 17

Turn Me Loose

(Written for Elvis in 1959 when he was in the army; Fabian recorded it first, and it hit the Top Ten)

This is one occasion when I do not have to worry about keeping a low profile while working undercover. I mean, this Kingdome place is a zoo.

Flrst of all, you figure on dozens of performers milling around in the dressing room area. Not just chorus members, mind you, but all solo acts. (If you can ever consider impersonating someone else as a solo act.) Then you have the costumes, which are stiff enough with glittering gewgaws to stand on their own, like a space suit. I am beginning to think that these fancy jumpsuits are capable of going out and doing a show on their own power. I mean, in this case it is a very close call as to whether the man makes the clothes or the clothes make the man. Or, in this case, the King.