Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit (16 page)

“
How could she be a happy
camper, with the Crawf
for a father figure? I
recall Buchanan as an obnoxious
combo of bootlicker and egomaniac, and I
don't find that
particularly laughable.
Those people can be dangerous.
That's what some of Elvis's Memphis Mafia
turned into."

“Obsequiously
overbearing?"

“Well, only obsequious to
Elvis; overbearing to every-
one
else."

“Sounds big-time
dysfunctional."

“And what do you call this?”

Temple
lowered her eyes from the circling Elvis stat
ues on high to the
milling crowds, among whom the
Elvis-like black-shag wigs and industrial-strength
sunglasses
materialized here and there. And this was just
the
come-as-you-weren't public; they hadn't even en
countered any genuine imitators yet.

“
You know," she mused, "Las Vegas could be the
world's first theme park for the dysfunctional. I
never
thought of the old town as therapy."

“
Or metropolitan enabler," Matt said. "I'm glad I
skimmed Electra's books. This all should mean a lot
more to me."

“
If it means anything at all," Temple agreed. "I
thought
we'd take advantage of our on-site guide." "On-site guide?"

“The Priscilla impersonator.”

Matt's
pale eyebrows lifted. "The cynical teenager.
Should be interesting. Can I expect
tattooed and pierced flesh?"

“Only razor-burned.”

This
time no screams led the way to Quincey's dress
ing room.

In
fact, a uniformed Kingdome security guard blocked
the backstage route to the dressing
rooms below.

A
Kingdome security guard uniform was the same
Men in Black
outfit Crawford
had affected yesterday:
white shirt, black suit, narrow black tie, fedora, and ul
tradark sunglasses.

“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 num
ber.

“
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 inter
rogate them. Then the guard extended the phone so Tem
ple 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, Come-
back, 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 won
der
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 deal
ing 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 Rab
bit,
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 trou
bled life, and death."

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

“
That he's dead."

“
Really?" Temple interjected. "What makes
you ques
tion 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 re
spect.
"National exposure. That's what these guys all
dream of." As
if she didn't. She rolled her eyes, an ath-
letic feat under the
circumstances. "Like A
Current Af
fair
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 Ve
gas," 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 en
countering 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 pic
ture 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
Godzilla
size 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. Heavy-set, blue
^c
ollar-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 mir
rors lining both sides of the long room made the as
sembled 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.

For
a while during the sixties, he had read, Elvis had dressed in black pants,
white shirts: street clothes, but already mirroring the sharp opposites his
jumpsuits would embody. The jumpsuits themselves were the pin-
nacle of
Elvis's transference of boyhood needs and loves into popular culture icons.
Inspired by Elvis's early love
for
comic-book superheroes in fancy jumpsuits and
capes, they had been
tailored to the sixties and seventies fashion explosion of innovations in
normally staid men's
clothing, like
bell-bottom trousers and necklaces for
men.
Although they looked excessive to the modern eye,
they had merely been a show-biz version of the new
male peacock emerging. Matt recalled that even Nehru
jackets and vaguely priestlike white
collars had been
popular then, along with crosses of every description.