Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit (24 page)

“
Well . . . I got kinda
sick there. Real sick. Collapsed,
you
might say. It's pretty . . . fuzzy. I was takin' these
sleepin' pills, see, could never sleep. Had too
much en
ergy when I was a kid and it
carried over. And I'd sleep
walk, you
know. People had to be there to watch me.
That's why I needed 'em there for me, once Mama was gone. I'd just
stroll out the door of the house and walk
on down the road and Mama and Daddy would get all
upset. That's why I had to sleep with Mama all
those
years, so I wouldn't wander outa
the house, get run over
or something.”

Matt hesitated. Here was an opening, should he take
it?
What was he, a counselor or a coward?

“
You had a special relationship with your mother,
didn't
you, Elvis?"

“
Yes, sir, I did. I didn't know it at the time, I
guess.
It just seemed natural. But we
were real close. Never
had no one
close as her again. She was my best girl.
Not that she was perfect. Kinda tried to hold me back
when I got out on the road and ran into all those
pretty
girls. But mamas are like
that. They want you be upright
and
clean, and, man, that's hard with all those pretty
little things screamin' and carrying on. She liked
some
of my early girlfriends, though. June. And Anita. Just
warned me about the blue-eyed ones. She had real
dark
eyes, my mama. Dark eyes. Dark hair.”

A pause lasted so long Matt thought they had lost him.
He made a shrugging gesture at Leticia, who shook her
head
in mystification.

“
'Course my mama's hair was dark later on because
I got her to dye it black like mine. I figured we should match, you know. Like
me and Cilia. My mama's eyes
got real
dark towards the end there. She had these black
circles around her eyes. Like bull's-eyes. Poor little
Mama, it like to have killed her when I was
drafted and sent off to Germany. I think she died before I went so's
she
wouldn't have to see it."

“
But she would have gone with you. Your father did,
and your grandmother, and Red."

“
Yeah, but . . . she hadn't been well, my little
Satnin'.
To tell you the truth,
though she wanted my success
more
than anybody and was tellin' me I could do any
thing, she hadn't figured on me bein' gone so much. I'd
never slept away from home until I had to go on
the
road with Scotty and Bill. And
then I could afford to get
a car or
two, even my first Cadillac .. .man, was that a
charge! And then I could
take out girls, and Mama, she'd
never
figured on all that screaming stuff and girls tearin'
off my clothes and rioting and comin' to my motel
room
doors. So she kinda felt she lost
me, I guess. And I guess
I was like
any young guy, everythin' was tumbling my
way like apples off a tree, and I was gonna pick up a
few and bite 'em, you know what I mean? Mamas don't
like to think of things like that.
They're on a higher
plane."

“You
mean in heaven?"

“
Oh, yeah, my mama's in heaven. If I hadn'ta be
lieved that, I could never have gone on without
her as
long as I did."

“And
how long was that?"

“Well,
my whole life."

“
And how old are you
now?"

“Uh, oh, I don't like to
think about them things. When
you're a
performer, you're supposed to stay the same as
you always were forever. Forever Young. It's the name
of a song. Just not my song, I guess. Never
recorded it.
Never sang it in concert.
By that Dylan guy. Did a few
of his.
Pretty good songwriter. Couldn't sing worth a
rat's ass, though. Nobody
can nowadays.
Elvis, What
Happened?
shit! What happened to the music world,
huh? I had almost a three-octave range, and I used
it. I
did all those ballads. I sang
good, like Lanza. And all
of us guys
who could sing, we're history. These so-
called singers today, they rasp, they screech, they shout,
but they don't sing, man. That's the book they
should
have written:
Elvis, What
Happened to Good Singers?
Makes
you want to ... well, that's the problem these
days. Isn't anything much I want to do. I was getting
that way
before I, um, retired."

“
And what made you come out of retirement?" "Huh? What's that
you said? Mr., uh, Midnight, isn't
it?"

“
That's right. Mr. Midnight. And I asked why you
came out of
retirement.”

The
laughter came then, long and trailing off into
weary, high-pitched
sounds, like he'd laughed until he'd
cried.

“
I dunno. I just can't sleep. Never could. It gets old.
And the pills don't help anymore. Finally, the
pills don't
help. I don't know why,
Mr. Midnight. I don't know if
I ever
really retired, or if I'm coming out of it. I'm just
all alone in this hotel room and it's dark so I
can't tell
if it's day or night, and
no one's out in the other room, I guess, but there's a phone in here, and a
radio and an
alarm clock, and I heard
you talkin' and thought I'd call.
That's
all right, isn't it? You got the time to talk to me,
don't you? They're finally all gone, Mr. Midnight.
You're the only one I can reach anymore. It's all
right,
isn't it?"

“Yes. It's all right, Elvis.”

But the line was also,
finally, dead.

Chapter 23

Stranger in
the
Crowd

(Winfield Scott wrote this for Elvis, who
recorded
it in 1970 and was seen rehearsing the
song
in the documentary
Elvis—That's the Way
It Is)

Pools of lamplight lay on the pavement like the
spot
lights Hercule Poirot walks through during the
opening
credits for his series on PBS's
Mystery!
Matt enjoyed
the various characters, particularly Miss Lemon, Poirot's tart
spinsterish assistant, who reminded him of many an efficient parish secretary.

The opening sequence always stirred memories of a cane-carrying
Charlie Chaplin jerk-stepping out of the frame of some black-and-white silent
film.

Matt felt he was moving under the stop-motion influence of a strobe
light too. He always felt stiff and tired leaving the radio station, as if he'd
been doing physical, instead of psychic work.

When someone appeared from the dark in front of
him
like a ghost, he stopped, alarmed.

“Mr. Midnight?”

She was young enough that his first instinct was
to
ask what she was doing out alone at this hour.

But she wasn't alone. Another figure edged into the puddle of light
ahead of him. Another young girl.

“Can we have your autograph?" the second curfew-violator asked.

“
On what? And I
haven't got a pen.”

 
The first girl mutely extended
a rectangular sheet.

Matt was shocked to gaze at his own image, a blackand-white version
of the color photograph used for the single billboard the station had mounted
in his honor.

“
Where'd you get
this?

“
We called here earlier today to ask about autographs, and they said
they were having some photos made up." Oh, they did, did they? Since when?
 
But here was a
rollerball pen extended by fan number one. Matt looked around, finally spotting
a newspaper
vending machine. He went over
and placed the photo on
its slightly
corroded metal top. Barely enough light
spilled from the parking lot to show where the photo
was pale
enough to write on.

And what would he say?
He looked up, smiling uneasily at the sober-faced
girls ... they had become three.

He felt surrounded, as if they were the brides of Dracula and he had
stumbled into their grim, encompassing midst.

What would he say? Write, rather. Uh . . . best wishes.
Dull. Ah . . . good listening, regards ... ah, Mr.
Mid
night? Or Matt Devine. No, Matt
Devine wanted nothing
to do with this charade. The pen took over for his
vac
illating mind. "Good Listening, Mr.
Midnight." What did
that mean? Who knew?

“
Could you put my
name on it?"

“Name?"

“Up there, over your shoulder. "To
Cheryl Baker." "Cheryl Baker." He began writing it.

“Uh, no. With two r's."

“
Huh?"

“There are
two r's in Cherryl."

“
Oh. Well, I'll make the upper part of the 'y' into
an
`r' and ... how's that?"

“Great!
Thanks, Mr. Midnight. You were really super with that poor girl. Is she
okay?"

“As okay as
she can be at the moment. I think she'll get better with time."

“That was so
awesome." Fan number two crowded closer to extend a second photo.

He knew
right where to sign this time. "And what's your name?"

“Xandra with
an 'X.' "

“You'll have
to spell that.”

She did, letter by letter, as if she'd done this before.
Fan number
three advanced in turn.

This was no
slip of a girl, but a heavy-set woman in
the
whimsical cat-print scrub-clothes that nurses wore
nowadays. She must
have come on her way to—or from—the night shift at a hospital.

This
fifty-something veteran of such interchanges
knew
exactly what he was supposed to write. "From Mr.
Midnight and
Elvis, to Diane."

“I don't
know if I'm entitled to sign Elvis's name." "You've talked to him,
haven't you?"

“I'm not
sure. Are you?"

“
Oh, yeah. I have listened to everything Elvis for
years. I've been to Graceland three times for the
August
memorial."

“
Wouldn't it be . . . pretty amazing if Elvis
really were
alive, and after all these years started calling some
obscure radio show in Las Vegas?”

She shook her shoulder-length hair, which had once
been springy and black but now was frosted with broad
brush
strokes of white. Matt guessed she'd worn the
same
haircut for three decades, and had worshipped El
vis through every one of
them.

“Nope,"
she said matter of factly. "I mean, not that
it's not amazing,
but Elvis was pretty amazing himself.
He wouldn't give up on his fans. And
if he did get too
tired and sick to go on, he might have arranged to dis
appear.
He had the money to go anywhere or be any
body."

“
So why would he come
back via live radio, over
twenty years later?"

“He
knew how to make an entrance." She smiled and snapped the gum she was
chewing. Matt caught a faint,
nostalgic whiff
of Juicy Fruit. "You can just never tell
what Elvis might do.”

Matt recognized pure faith when he saw it. He had
never seen it shown to anything other than a religious
figure. Maybe the shrinks who identified Elvis as a sha
man, a primitive holy man, weren't all wet. Didn't the
faithful visit the burial shrine at Graceland every
August,
and every day of
the year, making it second only to the
White
House in annual visitor count?

“
From Mr. Midnight, who listens to Elvis,"
Matt
wrote. Anyone with a stereo could listen to Elvis.
"Happy-ever-after listening.”

She
read the inscription, pulling the photo close to her lenses. "That's all
right," she said, grinning and nodding. "Elvis would have liked that.”