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Temple had to admit that the notion of Lieutenant C. R. Molina contemplating an AWOL anaconda, a slightly larcenous corpse of no importance, and a soggy Elvis jumpsuit of original design might be a sight for sore eyes.

Hers.

Chapter 46

Today, Tomorrow, and Forever

(Elvis sang this song based on Liszt’s “Liebestraume” in Viva Las Vegas in 1964)

Temple turned the glass canning jar in her hand, worrying about the ring its condensation-dewed sides were leaving on the wooden tabletop.

It wouldn’t be the only dark circle on a surface that sported more rings than the planet Saturn.

The dark brew inside was Pepsi-Cola, of course, Elvis’s favorite beverage.

You could get anything you want, except Coca-Cola, here at Gladys’s Restaurant.

The wooden, high-backed chair was hard on Temple’s bony derriere. She fidgeted, slicking her palm with dew drops, and glanced at the long chromed lunch counter with its dotted line of swiveling stools, upholstered alternately in black and pink vinyl.

The jukebox was playing “Johnny B. Goode.” Hokey as the environment was, it made it easy to imagine a teenage Elvis sitting here, drinking pop and dreaming the dreams harbored by pimply kids with no money and less self-confidence everywhere.

“Hey!”

Temple turned. Electra was waving at her from the door.

Temple blinked.

Electra wasn’t wearing a muumuu.

Electra’s hair wasn’t sprayed a wild and wacky color. Electra’s hair was sprayed brown.

B-r-o-w-n. The one color no female influenced by Media America would ever want to own up to. Plain brown.

It was up in a saucy ponytail, and a hot-pink chiffon scarf was knotted around her throat. She was wearing a blackand-white checked circle skirt and a black sweater. A hot-pink patent-leather belt, wide, circled her lessthan-svelte waist.

She looked as cute as a bug in a rug. A jitterbug in a rug.

Next to her towered this tall old guy with snowy, thick hair and one of those elaborately billowing guts atop thin hips and legs that made him an excellent Santa Claus candidate.

He was wearing boots, jeans, and a nylon windbreaker. And Frosty the Snowman sideburns as fluffy as cotton balls.

The two sashayed over to Temple’s booth like Saturday-night square-dancing partners: in tune and dressed to charm.

“Temple,” Electra said, gesturing to her escort, “this is Today Elvis!”

For a bizarre moment Temple thought she was on a TV show, like Today from NBC, or This Is Your Life (but It Shouldn’t Be).

The old guy stuck out a callused hand that took Temple’s and shook. Hard. “Howdy. Nice to meetcha. Call me Israel.”

She blinked again. “I beg your pardon?”

“Or my younger friends call me `Izzy.’ Israel Feinberg. I, ah, am in the show. I do Today Elvis.”

“You do ‘Today Elvis.’ Elvis Today. What else?”

While Temple babbled, Electra slid into her side of the booth first, on the power of her unseen crinolines—mercy, but those fifties skirts had Puff Power! Israel slid in after her.

Aside from the gut, he was a handsome old boy with a self-denigrating charm that could either go country or populous urban.

“So you’re the legendary Temple Barr,” he said, nodding sagely. “Electra here says you’re a mean gal to cross.”

“Um, I don’t know. Nobody bothers to cross me much. So how’d you become Today Elvis?”

He chuckled, a rich, operatic sound. A singer, Temple twanged.

“Born in the USA, the same year as E. Nineteen thirty-five. Heart of the Depression. Up north. Philadelphia. Wouldn’t know a guitar from a sitar. But I sang a little. Did a lot of Neil Simon on the amateur circuit in the sixties. You ever see Come. Blow Your Horn? Ah, it’s old, cold stuff now. I was the playboy son in that. Kept my hair. Liked to sing. Suddenly occurred to me: if Elvis were alive today, he might not look, or sound, too different from me. Can you believe it? Elvis had Jewish blood, you know.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, he thought so. Wore a Star of David and a cross together, to hedge his bets. Put a Star of David on his mother’s headstone. Gotta love a guy like that, and him studying all those Eastern gurus too. Omni-Elvis. I can dig it.”

“So, now you do—?”

“Ordinary Elvis.” His arms spread wide to display his middle-class, middle-aged spread. “Unadorned Elvis. How he might have been had he lived to his father’s age. His hair was already white at forty-two. Maybe hishealth problems made his weight worse, but it’s the burden male flesh is heir to. He was wearing girdles in his last months. The black hair dye wasn’t cosmetic then, it was necessary. Johnny Carson said it: old, fat, and forty. Johnny was blessed with thin genes. Me, I wear jeans, and I’m old, fat, and sixty”—he glanced at Electra—“something. Elvis would be sixty-four today. I figure I’ve aged and saged and sagged enough to do him justice. So, I ‘do’ him.” He leaned over the table to wink at Temple. “Most fun I ever had in my whole life.”

Temple put her hands to her … temples and leaned back in the booth. “Thank you. ‘Fun.’ That’s what everyone forgot. Elvis had fun. Even if it was just an escape—”

“Especially if it was an escape! Let the man have a little fun, young lady! He didn’t have much while he was growing up poor. He didn’t have much after the Colonel got his claws into him. He didn’t have as much fun as his fans got out of him. The fun was short and the shit was deep. I play Elvis as if he had outlived and outloved and outlawed them all.”

“That’s neat,” Temple said.

Across the table from her, Electra beamed.

“That’s right. That’s all right, Mama.” Izzy winked.

Temple felt as if she had entered an Alice-in-Wonderland set.

They dined on fried-banana-peanut-butter sandwiches, with burned bacon on the side. She and Electra had cherry Pepsis and turtle sundaes with pecans, butterscotch, and hot fudge sauce. Yummmm! All she needed was a dormouse and a caterpillar. No Red Queen, though. Skip the Red Queen. Come to think of it, where was Molina? They discussed the buried Jumpsuit.

“Right,” Izzy said, munching on a burger. He had skipped the burned bacon. “It’s Freudian. Symbolic. If there’s any one symbol of Elvis, it’s those damn jumpsuits. We impersonators—pardon, according to the estate, we’re now ‘tribute performers.’ La-di-dah! La-didah-dah. La-di-dah-dah.” He was jiving in the booth, drumming his fingertips on the mint-green Formica tabletop and Temple was thinking Elvis would be sixty-four … when I’m sixty-four. Need me, feed me. Fried bananas and peanut butter. Comfort foods, every last one of them.

“Izzy?”

“Yeah, kid?” Drum, drum, drum-drum-drum. Doowap, doo-wap.

He was like some uncle she had never had, the one you could ask about anything. He was cool for an old dude.

“Izzy? Would Elvis really be exactly like you today?”

“I hope not, honey.” He leaned toward her, his dark eyes set in baggy, wrinkled bezels like elephant knees. “I hope Elvis today would be sleek and toned, flat-bellied, and that his coiffure would be dark and smooth as semi-sweet chocolate. I hope he’d be everything that I’m not. Eternal almost-youth at no more than … urn, fifty-six, a well-preserved, hale and healthy fifty-six. With lots of plastic surgery and hair transplants and maybe Viagra; you think?”

She laughed. “If he isn’t like you, he should be so lucky.”

He inclined his snowy head. Like a king. “Thank you.”

“Izzy. Could Elvis still be around? If he was, what would … could he look like? Really?”

Izzy sighed deeply. “If he didn’t look quite like me? What are you asking?”