Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit (58 page)

So Chatter, using its obnoxious jointed fingers and rot
ten opposable thumbs, is soon free as a bird on helium. I
hear the creature working to turn the doorknob and ad
mit
me.

Despite the fancy forelimb appendages, it is a good
three minutes before the door is cracked and I eel in.
"Shut
it, quick!" I order.

“Why
shut? Just open."

“
Because I want it shut! Took you long
enough."
"The hair got caught under my nails."

“
Braggart!" Just because my nails are not broad
enough to entrap much of anything . . . I hate one-up-ape
ship.

I
pace, because I am getting worried. "Did you see your so-called master
today?”

Chatter sits back on his obscenely hairless rear and
rocks happily. "Oh, yes. We had kiwi and
banana."
"How terrific. How is your master?"

“
Busy.
No time. Brings and is bye-bye."

“
I bet. Listen, I know you are not a dog, and that
you
do not have the brains of a cat.
But do you think you can
sniff, see,
find your master in a place crowded with
strange people and smells and
sounds?”

Chatter lives up to his name and begins gibbering. He
goes
so far as to bite his nails.

“
Idon'tknow.
Idon'tknow. Been in dark so long. Scared,
Louie.
Chatter do tricks. Look up skirts. Can look up
skirts."

“
There will be no skirts on this scene, except one,
and
it goes all the way to the ground, and then some. You willhave to
forget the vulgar tricks you were taught and concentrate on one, very important
thing."

“Yes?
What?”

The hairy little ape is agitated. Personally, I would not
keep anything I was
devoted to in the dark like this, no
matter what
I was up to.

“Now,
now. Smooth that savage brow. Nothing to worry
about. Uncle Louie is here. All you have to do is clear
your mind of all confusion. Just go where I say and
find
your master."

“No
trick? Master like trick."

“
No trick. Just find your master. He, she, or it
will like
that trick plenty.”

Chatter hop-slides over to me and puts a big hairless
mitt on my paw. His long fingers curl around it as if we
were
holding hands, had we hands. I control my aversion.

“
Scared, Louie. Big place. Noise. People. Like . .
. zoo.
Like lab."

“Lab?
You were in an experimental lab?"

“
Big lab. Small cage. Dark like this half the
time." Chat
ter frowns. I am
beginning to find his almost-human ex
pressions creepy. "Master take
away.”

I shift my weight from forelimb to forelimb and do it
again. "That is good. You owe master a big kiss for
that
one.
That is all you have to do: find master. I will be there
to
protect you." Too bad I cannot protect his master.

“
Okay." Chatter leaps up and down. "It is
game. Fun.
Find master. Louie say find master."

“
Louie say find master. But first we wait until
there is a lot of thump-thumping on the stage upstairs. Then we
go,
quietly, up."

“Game.
Trick. Chatter love trick.”

Yeah. I was hoping that Chatter's master would just
love
this trick to death.

Chapter 56

Who Are
You
(Who
Am
I)

(From 1968's
Speedway)

"Boys," said
Temple in her second-best Mae West voice, "you are the finest fairy
godmothers a girl ever had." "Watch it!" Karate Elvis glowered.

Her hand dropped its instinctive caress of the new
wedding gown, a column of shining white fabric and
iridescent beads that hung from the otherwise empty rod
in Quincey's dressing room. "How did Minnie make this
up
so fast?"

“
Minnie made the first gown," said Oversized.
"She
loves a challenge, and you
and Quincey are the same
petite size as Priscilla.”

Temple lifted a swath of empire skirt. "Priscilla
picked this style herself, off a rack. So much had been
decided for her. I think the simple act of buying some
thing ready-made was a statement. After she left Elvis,
she
ran a boutique with a friend. Picking and choosing,she who had so much picked
and chosen for her."

“
Elvis
could be a little overbearing," Tuxedo admit
ted, clearing his throat.
"Especially with women."

“
Elvis could be a lot overcontrolling," Temple said.
"Just
like his mother. To them, it was a sign of caring."

“
I haven't seen Miss
Quincey about today," Motor
cycle put in.

“
She's coming along later. I'll help her get
dressed.
Now you guys, shoo! You've
got wardrobes and makeup
and lyrics and moves to tend to. I'll help
Quincey.”

They scattered, excited despite themselves. Elvis had
a
way of doing that to people.

Temple confronted herself in the mirror. It awaited
her, the impersonation of a career that never was. She
went to shut the door, then dragged an ice cream chair
from the dressing table and tucked its upper rung under
the
doorknob.

“
Give a girl a little privacy on her wedding
night,"
she whispered to the empty hall.

She
went back to the mirror and began assembling her
weapons: false eyelashes, false nails, white lipstick,
black wig. She couldn't totally say why she was
doing
this, except that she agreed
with Velvet Elvis: someone
owed it to
Elvis, or to Lyle Pervisse, or even to whoever
had so hated to stop the
music, but had to do it anyway, despite himself.

There's something about a show just about to go on.
You
can feel it in the air, all around.

You can sense it in your lonely dressing room, the
thumps and stutters of preparations on the stage above,
like a dead body being dragged out of a trunk and into
the
center spotlight.

The audience is sifting into their seats, chattering in
the soft illumination of the house lights, deciding
whether their location is good or bad, eyeing the other
audience
members' position and clothes, glancing at the naked, empty stage, almost
afraid of catching some lowly set technician doing something overt.

They are listening for the first sounds of the low-
profile
backup musicians creeping into place one by one.
Picking up and adjusting their instruments even though
no one is supposed to notice them, these
Rumplestil
tskins of the gold about to
be woven by the main at
traction.

Elvis
to the hundreth power.

Rich
man, poor man, beggarman, thief.

Doctor,
lawyer, Indian chief.

Poor
man, rich man, beggared by a thief.

Doctored
and lawyered, and left to grief.

Victim,
hit man, bridegroom, bride.

Singer,
survivor, sweetheart, suicide.

Temple finished installing the fountain of illusion veil
ing
over the high, illusory helmet of hair beneath it. Steel within smoke.

She looked as much like Priscilla as Quincey had, as
any
woman would who erected the same cage of artifice around herself.

Poor
Priscilla, who could only free Elvis once she had
freed herself from the gilded cage he had made her; only
when he
was dead, and none of it mattered but the trademarks.

Temple's fingertips trembled as she adjusted the veil
ing. This was a foolhardy thing to do. She had even
deceived her stalwart defenders, but they had their own
stage
roles to play, and she feared their presence would
intimidate the killer. Besides, she had Bucek's profes
sionals
looking out for her, promise.

The hair pick so essential to an evenly balanced bee
hive was clenched in her hand: six inches of pointed
metal.
Not much of a weapon, but easily concealed.

Bucek
was out there.

And
the Fontana boys.

And maybe even Agent Mulder, this being a natural
X-Files
case,
but Temple didn't believe in that last no
tion
as much as she believed in Elvis.

Because
he, the original dead man, had driven every
incident
that had haunted this hotel opening, and had
even impinged on the
grounds of the Crystal Phoenix.

He meant something different to every person who
thought he or she knew him, or loved him, or betrayed
him. Sometimes a legend is so large he cannot be
counted
out.

This Priscilla outfit was made for entangling. Temple
stood,
arranged the folds, and floated to the door like a gorgeous ghost.

She was
so totally retro. In the spirit, so to speak.
Ready to meet a ghost on a parapet.

Ready to exact revenge.
Extract justice.

Hopefully,
the villain of the piece would cooperate.
A knock sounded on her door.

She
unjammed the chair, swept it aside, threw open
the door.

“
Quincey! Hey, kid, I'm glad you escaped the JD
types to come back
to do your part."

“
Forget it,
Crawf," Temple said, sneering delicately.
"I didn't want to
waste the neck tattoo for nothing.”

She
swept past him, heading for the stairs to the stage.
"You gonna help me galumph up these stairs in this too-
dead outfit? You owe me for this one. I hope you
break
a leg," she added nastily.

Nothing
like family solidarity, right, Elvis?
The
heavy hair, the cataracts of veiling, dulled the
sounds pounding off the
stage. The show was underway.

As Crawford trumpeted the impersonators' names be
tween acts, Elvis after Elvis attacked the ebony wood
with
his feet and voice and soul.

Temple watched from the wings, impressed, but not
moved.
All were mostly good. None shook the world.

Then Velvet Elvis came on, her holographic black
jumpsuit crawling with phosphorescent constellations as
the special lighting gels kicked in. Her voice was high,
but
clear, her angular moves impeccable.

The
crowd roared as she finished her three-minute set
and eeled off, tensile as a guitar
string tuned to high E.

All the performers nodded to Temple waiting alone in
the wings as they exited. She was the prize. The High
Princess
who would award the Sacred Belt.

It lay near her in an open box long enough to hold
roses: a five-inch-wide length of inscribed metal that
would
look heavy even around Mr. T's 24-karat neck.