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And then the performer suddenly stilled, and clasped his mike like a sinner would a cross, and sang a sweet, aching version of “Love Me Tender” that had the hysterics in silent tears.

Some people wanted to see Venice and die. This crowd only had to glimpse Elvis to go to heaven.

Chapter 38

Jailhouse Rock

(A Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller song for the 1957 movie of the same name, a hit on several U.S. charts and the first single in the history of British music charts to debut at number one)

It is a good thing that every dressing room door in the backstage area is open, and that every dressing room wall is lined with mirrors.

This is how, despite the fact that the floor is full of milling boots and blue suede shoes, I can make my discreet way along the crowded hall. These Elvis impersonators are always checking out their hair and clothes in the nearest mirror.

A crocodile could be twining through their ankles, and they would never notice.

And I am far less noticeable than the average croc, especially when I am not snapping my incisors and growling.

So I slink on my belly like a snake of my great and good acquaintance along the joining of floor and wall, hoping that the one person who could spot me in a coal cellar (my devoted roommate Miss Temple Barr) is not in the vicinity.

You can bet I breathe a huge sigh of relief when I arrive at the end dressing room occupied solo by Miss Quincey Conrad. I almost sound like a dog. (Have you ever noticed that dogs are very big sighers, especially when they are settling down to sleep? My kind, however, avoids the extravagant gestures, especially overt begging. You will not hear huge happy—or unhappy—heaves from us. Just another of the many little ways in which we differ from the inferior species.) I cannot resist peeking in. I have never seen a human hairstyle that reaches the height and hubris of Miss Quincey’s Priscilla-do. I believe that I could curl up in it and remain unseen for some time. As well as keep quite toasty-warm, if a bit tipsy on all that hair spray.

She is at the dressing table, doing her fingernails and looking very bored indeed, despite the handsome gentleman in a caped white jumpsuit who has one foot up on an empty chair and a guitar in hand and is serenading the lady fair with “Love Me Tender.”

I have to admire the dude’s courting technique. You cannot beat a good melancholy howl for making points with the ladies. Sometimes, if you are lucky, they will howl right back.

But Elvis, despite all the onscreen lovelies he serenaded in his thirty-two movies, was better off singing to them, as he continued to do with great results up to the bitter end.

So I slink away down the hall to the pleasant strains of song and story.

I am hoping that the object of my quest is a little easier to reach this time. When I arrive at the door, it is shut. Since it is made out of painted steel this is a severe setback, although not unexpected. Here my native ingenuity leaps to the four. I mean, fore. And to the four-on-thefloor I am equipped with.

Since there is nothing so formal as a threshold, I amable to thrust a mitt under the steel door, pads and shivs up. First I move my limb to the left and to the right, then I stretch and strain, and stretch and strain with all my might. I do the pokey hokey and turn my leg around, and that is what breaking in is all about.

Naturally, I feel nothing but air, empty air. No one has considerately dropped a key on the other side of the door that I can paw onto this side (so then I can go get Miss Temple and get her to open the door for me, which is the last thing I wish to do, because my investigation is not yet ready for another operative’s messing with it).

I am so exasperated it almost crosses my mind to sigh, although that is entirely too doglike a thing for any self-respecting dude of my sort to do.

And then … I feel a flutter light as a moth in the palm of my pads. Eek! It tickles! I do not do giggles either.

So I steel myself against the teasing sensation and keep my mitt still. Smooth pad leather strokes mine. Playing footsie through the door might be a toothsome experience were the Divine Yvette or some other lissome lady on the other side, but I know what is on the other side, and I do not want it getting overfriendly with my pads.

So I pull my questing limb back under the door. Sometimes what is denied is what is most desired. Face it: what is denied is always what is most desired, a fact which accounts for the success of several crime families all over the globe.

I hear a soft pressure on the door’s other side and fix my gaze on the locked doorknob above me.

I know the Stare will not be sufficient to get me to the other side of this door, given the circumstance, but I also know that Someone on the Other Side Likes Me.

The silver steel knob jerks. Then jerks the other way. I heard the sweet snick of a deadbolt being drawn. The knob rattles.

And then the door cracks inward, and I am again al-most overwhelmed by the fruit-salad odor that sweeps out the open door.

I hold my breath, drag the cracked door open just enough to admit my svelte form, and dart into the darkness within.

I am welcomed with a raucous chatter and a crushing embrace

Chapter 39

Guitar Man

(Featured in the ‘68 Comeback Special, this Jerry Reed song was given a new Reed instrumental background by Felton Jarvis in 1980, and become Elvis’s last number one song on any Billboard chart)

It was as if Elvis had risen from the dead.

All the other Elvi’s nearest and dearest stood in tribute, applauding wildly. They left their seats and stormed the orchestra pit, reaching up to this sudden embodiment of what the Kingdome was created to memorialize.

He stayed down on one knee near the stage rim, shining with the holy sheen of effort, head bowed, both the humble knight-to-be awaiting the icy touch of the naked sword, and the prideful acolyte accepting richly deserved acclaim.

Only the fact that Temple sat on the aisle kept Electra from charging out of her seat and doing likewise. “That was incredible,” Temple said. “This guy is good!”

Electra flashed Temple a glance. “He’s only about a tenth as good as the real Elvis.” She sat back, and her voice shook a little. “But he’s the best make-do I’ve ever seen.”

“He must be KOK, and that means that the dead guy isn’t.”

“KOK?”

“The King of Kings. The other impersonators were talking about him like he carried the Holy Grail. I can almost see this guy justifying rumors that Elvis is alive and masquerading as one of his own imitators. How old do you think he is?”

“Does it matter? Temple, we just glimpsed something that no one has seen for over twenty years. It’s like breathing the air of a pyramid that hasn’t been opened since the time of the pharaohs.”

“Electra, I know you’re a fan, but breathe deeply. Think. Elvis isn’t a pharaoh. He isn’t eternal. Maybe he had extraordinary performing charisma, but … we all die, and he lasted longer than Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, the other rock-star drug casualties of the seventies.”

“Elvis wasn’t like them. He didn’t get into the drug culture from that disaffected counterculture. He was like us. He got into it because no one told him it was dangerous; it was prescribed.”

The degrees of difference in drug addiction didn’t cut any cocaine with Temple. She was impressed by good theater, by how totally a performer could absorb the persona of another. She was thinking how perfectly playing a dead man might challenge the gods, how it might seem to demand death as its perfect, true-to-life ending. One thing had really struck her about the performance, besides the impersonater’s passionate perfection, his own true compelling charisma.