Unknown - Douglas_Carole_Nelson_Cat_in_a_Jeweled_Jumpsuit_Bo

Temple absently watched the flood of Elvi in the hall ebb and flow. “No one ever claimed the suit that was trashed either, right?”

“I haven’t heard that anyone did.”

“Heard what happened to it?”

Mike shook his head. “Remember. Hot Heads. Probably tomorrow night. I should be on.”

He waved and dove back into the multitude, the jewels on the back of his jumpsuit flashing like a semaphore that turned red, yellow, and green all at once.

“Mine eyes dazzle,” Temple muttered.

Elvis had died young, but he certainly hadn’t stayed that way.

She wandered among the many faces of Elvis. Most of them didn’t look like they had started out resembling Elvis. No, first had come the admiration, then the imitation.

She would bet that most of them hadn’t done any more performing than at a local karaoke bar before donning sideburns and low-slung belts like glitzy holsters.

A slight Asian man danced through the crowd, on his way somewhere in a hurry. Five-feet-three, lean as stir-fried chicken, he caught the look of the young, mercurial Elvis better than the heavyset Caucasian men who outnumbered him forty to one.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder. Temple spun around, ready to snarl.

“Electra! What are you doing here?”

“I got invited back,” Electra said smugly, shaking her shoulders. “By Today Elvis.”

“Today Elvis?”

“You must have seen him around. The only guy with white hair, like Elvis’s father Vernon had before he died. He’s the same age Elvis would be today: sixty-four. Poor Elvis, he won’t have to wonder if we’ll still need and feed him at sixty-four. Anyway, Today Elvis was pretty impressed by my Elvis collection. Course, you don’t know with these guys if it’s you or your sweat-stained scarf, but I never could resist a younger man.”

“Elvis would be sixty-four?”

“Don’t look so amazed. He’s still pretty young. Clint Eastwood is pushing seventy.”

“It’s just that I’ve been looking at the photo-bios and you get to thinking that’s reality. So you have a, like, date with Today Elvis?”

“He invited me to watch the rehearsals.”

“Really. I should do that.”

“I’m sure you can hide behind my muumuu when I present my pass. If anyone spots you, I can say you’remy twelve-year-old granddaughter. Just wear your hair in pigtails.”

“And ditch the high heels. I know, Granny. Did you hear anything from Today Elvis about the identity of the dead man?”

“No one here has a clue. They counted noses and they know it’s not one of them, that’s all.”

“So when’s the rehearsal?”

Electra checked the hot-pink patent leather watch on her chubby, freckled wrist.

“Is that an—?”

“Elvis watch from the fifties. Yeah. My mother screamed at me for a week for spending my money on junk. I don’t wanta tell you what it’s worth today. Even you might mug me for it.”

“You’ve never worn it when I’ve been around before.”

“I don’t wear my souvenirs. But these guys appreciate this stuff. Makes me the queen of the hop again.” Electra primped her hair, which had been rinsed a tasteful lavender. “The rehearsal is in twenty minutes, and only the media is allowed in. Besides friends and family of the performers, of course. Which is we. Us?”

“Whatever. I can’t be grammatical without a pencil or a keyboard in my hands. Let’s duck into Priscilla’s dressing room so I can change into my tennies, and then it’s off to see the weird wolves, Granny.”

Quincey was absent from the room, so Temple did a shoe-change, and in forty seconds flat her feet were level instead of inclined.

“You do look awfully young,” Electra commented, “without those high heels.”

“Don’t even need pigtails, huh?”

“A bow on one side of your head would help.” “Argh! I don’t do bows.”

On that declaration of independence, they left the dressing room and climbed the backstage stairs. At the top stood a man in black, legs spread, hands clasped in front, poker face shaded by a snap-brim early-sixties fedora.

“You okayed for the rehearsal area?” he asked. Electra flashed her yellow pass card. Temple flashed what she hoped was an eager teenage grin.

With a grunt, the guard nodded them past.

“This reminds me of the security the real Elvis had,” Electra grumbled as Temple led her through the clutter of the wings to the steps leading down into the vast theater’s house.

“I can’t believe you actually lined up and screamed. Those girls in the photos look so—”

“So uncool. Sweaters and bobby socks, and those circle skirts that swept the floor when you sat and that everybody stepped on. That’s what Elvis should have sang, ‘Don’t Step on My Pink Poodle Skirt.’ “

“Hardly suitable for Elvis.”

“He did love pink, though. Had teddy bears all over his bedroom to the end, and his first bedroom before Graceland had pink bedclothes. Black and pink were high-fifties-chic colors.”

“Teddy bears. He was just a big overgrown kid, wasn’t he?”

“In some ways. In some, not. You know, not all us teen fans were pimply and awkward. The good-looking ones got invited to meet Elvis. He had his pick, believe me.”

“Groupies.” Temple made a face. “Why do those young girls sell themselves so cheaply to a bunch of egocentric drunk and/or drugged guys old enough to know better and not much worth bragging about as human beings?”

“It’s obvious, my dear girl, that you have never seen an authentic sex symbol in action.” Electra’s face assumed a beatific look as she pulled down a plush fold-up seat and plunked her middled-aged heft on it.

“From what I read, Elvis wasn’t born bad and beautiful; he deliberately modeled himself on his favoriteactors, those urban bad boys Marlon Brando and James Dean and Tony Curtis. And he started putting those bumps and grinds into his act when he saw the girls’ reaction to the moves he probably picked up from black performers he saw on Beale Street.”

“That’s the thing. Underneath the act was this shy guy our age who was acting out what we all wanted to be: independent and bold, and rebellious and, hey, even rich and famous. Teen dream. Didn’t your generation have something like that?”

“We had a choice between satanist rockers and TV-show family sitcom guys who sang a little. Elvis’s bad-boy act was minor-league compared to the decadent rock that came along after.”

“It was a time. It was a place. It brought city and country together, white hillbilly music and black blues. It brought black and white together before the Civil Rights movement made it official. Elvis usually had black groups in his band.” Electra looked at Temple over her reading glasses. “But then you don’t know a thing about the Civil Rights movement either, do you, whippersnapper?”

“I know, I know! I’m just a shallow yuppie. I missed all the major social upheavals of the sixties. I couldn’t help it. I was just a baby.”

Mollified that Temple had admitted total ignorance of her life and times, Electra settled down and gazed happily toward the huge empty stage. “The Colonel always sent Elvis to the funniest out-of-the-way arenas when he was on tour, even after he became a megastar. Places like Portland and Buffalo and Baton Rouge and Wichita.”

“Maybe it was a strategy to make Elvis available to more than his big-city fans. Where did you see Elvis?”

“Carlsbad, New Mexico, February fourteenth, nineteen fifty-five. I weighed a hundred-and-eighteen pounds for probably the last time in my life. The waist of that circle skirt I wore would hardly fit my thigh nowadays.

They dis Elvis for getting fat, but who doesn’t?”