The New Elvis (4 page)

Ryan had brought his guitar over and wanted to cook up a new song for the Christmas talent show at Page.
Cuckoo…hours…minutes…seconds…
He thought maybe something about Bea’s growing obsession with clocks would inspire him.

“Talk about time,” he prompted.

“Time is all we’ve got.” She raised her butt and tried to lift her legs back over her head, being goofy. She was dressed in leggings and a black top with tiny rosettes.

“I read
Barlett’s Quotations
for inspiration, but those dead guys all say the same things. Don’t waste time, seize the moment, one day at a time, and time changes everything.”

Finally, the blue, wooden cuckoo bird popped out of his door and cuckooed four times. Bea jumped up. “Let’s stroll the neighborhood.”

She ran to her closet, pulled a heavy sweatshirt off a hanger, and struggled to tug it over her tangle of sandy blond curls.

Ryan got up and reached for his jacket. “I like flower imagery, how time unfolds like petals.”

Bea grabbed her brush and ran it through her hair. “Me, too.”

Ryan scanned the room while buttoning his jacket. “You have about a dozen clocks now. Why?”

Bea placed her brush back on top of her vanity next to her collection of empty perfume bottles she’d gathered from neighborhood trashcans and cleaned. She only liked ones she considered pretty, and over the past three years, she’d found eight. “Come on. We have to be back in time for dinner.”

Ryan wanted an answer, so he sat on the edge of her canopied bed and waited.

Restless, Bea paced as she looked around her room. “I got my first clock from my dad when he came back from Amsterdam four years ago. It’s that one.” She pointed to a small silver clock on her dresser. “I thought he would be gone forever, but so much was happening at school, it felt like he was only gone a day or two before he was back. So I started thinking about time and how it goes quickly sometimes, especially when you’re happy, and how it just about kills you by dragging along when you’re not. I like the perception of it and our inability to stop it. It’s all we have. It’s relentless, and we have to make the most of it.”

“Relentless,” Ryan reiterated. “And we have to make the most of it.”

Bea was emphatic. “We do.”

“So let’s go and see how the neighbors decorated their homes for the holidays.”

“Let’s,” she agreed, grabbing his hand, pulling him toward the door.

The night Manny drove Elvis southbound on Paradise Road, took a right onto Harmon, and stopped at the curb before they reached the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard, Ramona Johns was smoking a cigarette on the porch of the condo unit she shared with her mother and her brother, Wendall. The front door to Wendall’s practice, Las Vegas Fertility Associates, was within shouting distance, and it was clear to her that her brother, the good doctor, was about to meet a very special client, because limousines seldom stopped there.

Ramona was too far away to hear the muffled exchange between the man and the driver, who spoke with him before the man got out and shut the door on the passenger side facing the sidewalk. Wendall turned on the light in his office and disappeared from Ramona’s view as he headed down the hallway to the front door, then reappeared to unlock the entrance. He stepped halfway out and waved.

Ramona took a deep drag on her cigarette and moved closer. She bumped the card table her ashtray was stationed on, and red and white plastic chips from an earlier card game with MawMaw slid across the laminated surface of the table and splattered onto the second-story porch. The client did not look up, and Ramona watched him walk. With every step he took, amazement and increasing recognition blossomed in her heart until it fluttered as rapidly as a hummingbird’s wings. She knew, from his trademark rings to his aquiline nose, from his full lips to his glistening black hair that shone in the dim security lights along the side of the condominium complex that Elvis was in the parking lot. Her squeal overlapped with her brother’s question, so she never heard what Wendall asked him. Wendall locked the front door after letting him in, and the men disappeared down the hallway. When they reappeared in Wendall’s office, the doctor went to the window and drew the shades.

Ramona finished her cigarette and picked up the plastic poker chips, returning them to the wooden carousel on the table. Then she went inside the three-bedroom condo to get her Polaroid camera, buried beneath her oversize lingerie in the bottom drawer of her bureau. The door to MawMaw’s bedroom was closed—Ramona dared not wake her mother, who was generally good-natured except when being disturbed from a sound slumber. She returned to the porch and sat down on one of the heavy-duty folding chairs before she dumped her full ashtray over the balcony railing and lit a fresh cigarette.

By the time she was on the eighth cigarette of her wait, her eyes flew open. Perfectly balanced upright between the index and middle fingers of her right hand, resting on the card table, her cigarette had burned down to an inch of ash and stopped at the filter. Wendall’s office building was now completely dark, and the limousine parked by the curb was gone.

The school was decorated with holiday lights shaped like chili peppers, and the pre-show buffet in the dining hall was authentic Mexican, with celebrity chef, Judd Smith, running a kitchen filled with his students.

While most parents had arrived early with their kids to eat beforehand, Gene had a late meeting, so he and Zella planned only to attend the show at eight. Glad for the extra practice time before curtain, Ryan sat in a corner of the dance classroom on a foam mat and scrutinized his reflection in the wall of mirrors as he pulled out his guitar. Bea promised to meet him there at seven thirty, and it was now seven fifteen.

Aretha Franklin got respect, and Gaye wished it would rain, Presley had amazing grace, and Sam Cooke promised change. Lennon smoked Norwegian wood, Ray Charles—What’d I Say, Dylan dreamt of a drifter’s escape, and Redding loved the bay. Stevie Wonder lit a roaring fire, James Brown was a prisoner of love, Paul McCartney could easily carry that weight, Little Richard drew strength from above. A wop bop a loo mop a lop bam boom, time is fast a-fleeting while we’re sitting in this room, a wop bop a loo mop, don’t like a thing, a wop bop a loo mop, go and jump for that ring
.

Roy Orbison heard distant drums, Green had a broken heart, Robert Plant knew cities don’t cry, with Jagger alone from the start. Tina Turner was an acid queen and Freddie the great pretender, Marley knew three little birds, and Smokey sang songs of surrender. Johnny Cash was the man in black, Etta James would rather go blind, Bowie mulled over life on Mars, Van Morrison mystic eyes. A wop bop a loo mop a lop bam boom, time is quickly ticking, go and put your lens on zoom, a wop bop a loo mop, don’t win spit, a wop bop a loo mop, try again and never quit
.

Ryan rang through the song once and glanced at his watch. Three minutes had passed. He repeated the song twice more and then put his guitar back into its case. Closing his eyes, he imagined the audience cheering for him as he finished his original composition. He would graduate to cool rocker status, and people would know his name.

He straightened the sleeves on his jacket and shook out his pant legs. Maybe Bea misheard him and thought they were meeting somewhere else. Wandering down the hallways, he checked the classrooms and listened at the girls’ bathroom door for any activity within. The only noise resonating throughout the building emanated from the cafeteria. Most people had finished their meals, but in the far corner of the room near the fire exit, three boys from his homeroom were pelting each other with hard taco shells.

It was almost eight. Ryan hurried toward the auditorium, passing a friend from math class who wished him good luck. Then he turned the corner, where the choir and band rooms were, and finally found Bea. She was leaning against the wall near the water fountain, and Kincaid Cochrane was pressed against her. She giggled as he kissed her neck and nibbled her ear. He stepped back and raised his hand to his mouth.

“Look at that. I got your earring,” he mumbled, taking the golden hoop from his clenched teeth and inserting it back into her left lobe.

Ryan felt sick. He backed away from them, but his movement caught their attention. Bea’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. Kincaid looked sheepish but said nothing. Ryan continued to back up until he made it around the corner.

Stunned, he tried to gather his wits. The show was about to start, and only one thing was clear: he needed to find a different route to the auditorium.

Ramona Johns stared down at her brother’s fertility clinic, willing the lights to come back on, willing the limousine by the curb to reappear, but she had missed the final act of the meeting. Dropping her finished cigarette in the ashtray, she left the porch and went into the second-story condo with the purpose of changing into her standard garb of elastic-waisted black pants, a floral smocked top, and clogs. It was warm enough not to need a jacket. She peeked in on her mother, asleep in her double bed, and resisted the impulse to cover her bare legs with the blanket she’d kicked aside. She shut the door, left the condo, and headed downstairs to the parking lot, running a comb through her waist-length dark hair as she walked.

Her Impala was a mobile garbage dump, with food wrappers, plastic bags, and cups littering the front and back seats. She cleared an uneaten, brown-bagged lunch that contained an old peanut butter sandwich and a spotted, rotting banana off the driver’s seat before she lowered herself into the car and settled into the seat as though it were a nest. She knew where to find her brother.

Cruising down the strip, she turned down a small street near the Hacienda Hotel and pulled into the parking lot of the Dippy Dive. Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade” blasted out through the open front door, held in place with concrete blocks. No need for a bouncer at this bar. It was classic seventies basement, game room chic with a glittery laminated bar, red stools, and a checkered floor. The unadorned, dimly lit back room was where Ramona would find the good doctor.

MawMaw had taken a fifteen-year break from childbearing between Wendall and Ramona, who had turned nineteen on August first. With such an age gap between Wendall and his baby sister, Wendall often thought of himself as her caretaker, and in all actuality, he had been. MawMaw had him change her diapers and watch her at a time when Wendall would have preferred hanging out with his friends, skateboarding back alleys, and sneaking into the pool area at Caesars, where they could watch girls sunbathe. There were times when Wendall resented his little charge, but there were other times when he saw how much joy Ramona brought their ailing mother. It was at these times he knew Ramona was a blessing, and it directly influenced Wendall’s decision to go into the field of fertility when he finished medical school.

The jukebox was playing Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” when Ramona stepped into the back room, where the poker game was in progress. Wendall sat with three of his friends, all of whom Ramona recognized.

Chris looked up when he saw her. “Hey, Ramona, join us.”

Wendall looked up, and his face fell. She was the last person he wanted to see at the Dive.

Years shy of becoming the doctor who would someday meet Zella, Wendall’s thick head of hair was untouched by gray, and his long face was unlined. He did not yet need glasses to see the cards in his hand.

Ramona leaned over her big brother, causing him to shift uncomfortably in his chair.

Travis gave a cursory glance at Ramona’s ample derrierre and couldn’t hide his smile. “What brings you by?”

Ramona ignored Travis. She didn’t like his acne and was horrified by his interest in her. She poked her finger at her brother’s cards. “That’s good, right? What are you playing?”

“No-limit hold ‘em,” Bill told her.

Wendall glared up at her. “Why don’t you tell everyone what I’ve got?”

“I won’t, if you confirm that Elvis was at the clinic tonight.”

Chris whistled low and guffawed. “Elvis at the sperm bank. Right.”

Wendall shot him a look, then put his hand facedown on the table. “I think you need to stop drinking, Ramona.”

“I haven’t been drinking.”

“Then stop smoking.”

“Stop smoking what?” Both hands were on her hips now.

The men laughed.

Wendall picked his cards back up and pushed seven twenties toward the center of the table. “I’ll open the pot for a hundred-forty.”

“I call,” Chris said.

On the button, Travis looked down at his hand. He made the call and then Bill raised it to six hundred and ninety. Wendall folded, Chris made the call, and Travis decided to move. He grabbed a handful of chips and a stack of cash and re-raised three hundred. Bill moved all-in.

Wendall got up and steered his sister toward the door. “Do you know how late it is?”

Ramona was defiant. “Of course.”

“And you left MawMaw home alone?”

“She’s sleeping. She’s fine. Tell me about Elvis.”

A wry smile formed on Wendall’s lips. “He’s the King of Rock and Roll.”

“And he was at your clinic tonight.”

Wendall was firm. “No. Stop imagining things and go home.”

“Fine,” Ramona pouted. “Lie about it. But I know what I saw.”

“You shut up about my clinic, and stay away from my card games.”

Ramona pushed him aside and looked at the guys. “He had a ten of spades, a jack of diamonds, two ducks, and a five of clubs.”

A cheer went up from the table. They hadn’t even heard her.

Bill’s cards were down—he had a ten-to-ace straight, all spades. He raked the pile of twenties toward him, ready to count to his fortune.

Ramona gave her brother one last dirty look, turned on her heel, and marched out of the room. Silent for a moment, Wendall watched her go. Then he looked back at the table, where a new hand was being dealt.

Ryan stood in the wings offstage and wanted to throw up, not because he was nervous to perform but because he’d seen Kincaid kiss Bea. He buried his face in the folds of the heavy velvet curtains and was sure his knees were about to buckle. The show’s emcee, Steve, an eighth grader ready to make the leap to Pace High School for the Performing Arts in the coming year, warmed up the audience with a few off-colored jokes, which were booed. Then he welcomed Ryan to the stage, prefacing his entrance with warm words.