Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit (48 page)

“A
nobody." Rhinestone Lapels.

“Rumor
had it he ran errands for Boss Banana twenty years ago." Oversized.

“
Some old guy. In his sixties." Fifties
Elvis.
"Should have been wiped
years ago, but he slipped
through the cracks." Karate.

Temple interrupted this epitaph for a petty crook.
"Kind of like the dead bodies slipped through the
cracks
of the Goliath and
Crystal Phoenix ceilings in the last
couple years?”

Throats
cleared and cheeks pinked on a ripple of Elvis
visages. Sideburns even shifted, as small cigars were
moved from one side of the mouth to the other. At
least
they were all unlit. So far.

“Kind
of," Cape-and-Cane Elvis finally said after re
moving the small cigar from his mouth. Elvis and his
Tampa Jewel
cigars. C-and-C Elvis resembled a Western novel dude gunslinger and coughed as
discreetly as Doc
Holliday. "This was a
Man Who Did Not Matter, that's
the
main thing. No one would miss him. Not the
police—"

“
Not the criminal element," Oversized gave the
man
his epitaph.

“So
why was he given this really classy sendoff?" Motorcycle Elvis asked excitedly.

Temple
had to clarify things. "You consider an un
determined death in an ersatz Elvis suit in an Elvis
ersatz-garden
classy?"
"For a guy like this?
Yeah." Motorcycle also twitched
his shoulders clad in a black
leather jacket.

Apparently
the brothers Elvis were itchy-twitchy to
day.

“
The snake," Oversized Elvis added, "that was an in
spired touch. Can you imagine what the police are
trying
to make of that?”

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, wor
rying 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, El
vis'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 Me
dia
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
black-and-white checked circle skirt and a black sweater.
A hot-pink patent-leather belt, wide, circled her
less
than-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 wind
breaker.
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 Fein
berg. 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, nod
ding 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.
Philadel
phia. 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 his
health 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 jus
tice. 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-Wonder
land 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, butter
scotch,
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 jump-
suits.
We impersonators—pardon, according to the es
tate, we're now
'tribute performers.' La-di-dah! La-di
dah-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. Doo
wap,
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?"

“Could
he pass as himself? Could he still be out here? Somewhere? What would he really
look like?

“You
tried one of those police department computer imagining things?"

“No,
and I don't have access. I only have access to speculation. To you, Today
Elvis."

“
You're
serious. You think Elvis could be out there.
You . . . have a notion."

“I have a wild idea.”

Electra, who had sat back to luxuriate in Temple's
learning to appreciate Izzy, stared dreamily at the grille
of a fifty-eight Oldsmobile embedded
into the soda foun
tain. "I'm
getting the weirdest feeling. Like Elvis is
everywhere, just like Mojo Nixon said. Just . . . open
your
mind's eye, and see for yourself.”