Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

I do lack E's flair and passion for dressing up, and I do not need the services of his later, ever-present sunglasses. My sunglasses, like my concealed weapons, are built in. I have these laser-fast pupils that contract to shut out too much light. I bet Elvis would have really grooved on my eyes, could he have begged, borrowed, or bought them.

And he would have tried

Chapter 15

Heartbreak Hotel

(Written by Tommy Durden and Hoyt Axton's mother Mae, snapped up by Elvis in November 1955, and recorded in January 1956; Elvis's first million-seller)

"Temple," Matt said to Temple over the phone, "can I presume on your expertise again?"

“Something to do with talk shows?"

“Just my radio show. Could you come up and hear my new tape player?"

“Now?"

“Today would be good. Before I have to do another show."

“That urgent? Well, sure.”

Temple hung up, looking through her closet for some visiting outfit more appropriate than a sweat suit.

As she hopped on one foot hunting the matching shoe on the closet floor, she did wonder how Max would like all this semiprofessional hobnobbing between his former rival and herself. Darn him, anyway! Why did he have to be off on one of his mysterious missions, which had gotten mysteriouser after the recent murder of the stripper he had tried to help? Temple froze, transfixed by a stab of real worry. Max ran on an exaggerated sense of responsibility for every ill in the world. His teenaged cousin's tragic death in Ireland had started the cycle so long ago ... who would end it? Of course, it was ludicrous to consider Matt anyone's rival. A less competitive personality she had never met, or maybe she'd just never seen him want anything he had difficulty getting. Like her.

Had she been drawn into this help-Matt campaign as a clever way of entangling her emotionally? Matt had shown signs of being seriously interested, also confessing that he had a lot of personal issues to resolve first. She sighed. Ex-priests were so hard to read. She only knew one, admittedly.

By the time she'd worried the pros and cons of both men to shreds in her mind, she was dressed and ready to visit the apartment directly overhead. What Max might think of such neighborliness was none of his business, so long as it was just neighborly.

When Matt answered her knock, he seemed too excited to notice her appearance. "What do you know about Elvis Presley?" he demanded before the door had even closed behind her.

“Elvis Presley?" The weird coincidence knocked her out. "Strange that you should ask, but virtually nothing." "As little as I'm likely to know about him?" "Probably not that little."

“Then listen to this." Matt grabbed her wristgrabbed!—to hustle her into the living room. There he positioned her dead center on his red suede couch.

He then grabbed (grabbed again) the stereo remote control from one of the modest gray coffee table cubes. He pointed it at the shelf unit stereo, which squatted like a technological god on a primitive islander's makeshift altar: a board across two brick pillars.

“Listen!" Matt ordered.Ordered? Matt? He didn't even sit beside her, but paced behind the sinuous fifties-style sofa, so she couldn't crane her neck to read his face for some clue to this charade.

A moment later Matt's voice came over the tape, mel- low yet intense, that nice combo of styles he brought to electronic media so naturally that seasoned on-air per- sonalities would spit to hear it.

A young girl's voice, vacant and unformed, was fad- ing off.

On came a man's voice, a little mushy but also mel- low in its own way.

Temple listened for a few moments, then planted her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists and listened harder. Behind her Matt paced, his footsteps making the fifty-year-old wood parquet floor creak at intervals, like a scratch in an obsolete vinyl record.

“ 'Son,' " she repeated the caller once. "That's an old Southernism."

“Speaking of old . . . how old do you think he sounds?"

“Ummm. Mature. Middle-aged. But with a mischie- vous, maybe even melancholy boyish quality ... no, not quite that, maybe a little self-mocking.”

Matt aimed the remote and suddenly shot the sound off, either pausing or muting the recording. "So? What do you think?”

She finally turned to confront him. "I think if you hadn't mentioned Elvis, I'd never be thinking what I'm thinking."

“Which is?"

“That it's supposed to be Elvis.”

Matt made a noise behind her, then came around the sofa end to perch uneasily on a curve. "What do you mean 'supposed'?"

“I mean the man is stone dead. Been that way since nineteen seventy-seven."

“Is that when he died? That long ago?"

“Yes. Don't tell me you don't remember? I thought it was a Crucial Twentieth-Century Date, like when Ken- nedy was assassinated, or Martin Luther King, or Bobby Kennedy, or when Marilyn Monroe died."

“We're too young to have lived through or remember much about those other deaths, but I was around for Elvis's death and I don't remember it. I do remember when Pope John Paul the First died."