Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

“Ohhhh." The exaggerated eyes gave Matt new respect. "National exposure. That's what these guys all dream of." As if she didn't. She rolled her eyes, an ath- letic feat under the circumstances. "Like A Current Affair is the big time."

“Well," Matt said, "they're not likely to get Sixty Minutes."

“Not unless Elvis really is alive and well in Las Vegas," Temple pointed out. "Let's go find out.”

Matt's few glimpses of life behind stage, accomplished only since he had moved to Las Vegas and in Temple's presence, still hadn't accustomed him to people running around in states of undress.

Here, at least, there were no leggy chorus girls fleeting through like mobile Venus de Milos. No, there were justincarnations of Elvis, elbowing past each other as if encountering mirrored images of oneself in disguise were the most normal thing in their world. And it probably was.

Matt's recent fast-forward skitter through a raft of picture books of Elvis's career helped him identify every imitator's place on the Elvis spectrum. None mimicked the "dirty-blond" natural-born Elvis of the mid-fifties. All were black and beautiful to a degree, depending on age and physical fitness and actual resemblance to the King.

“Ooof!" Even the stage-savvy Temple seemed awed by the proliferation of Elvi. "Where do we begin?"

“These are the community dressing rooms," Quincey said. "Us few girls get separate rooms."

“ 'Us'?" Temple jumped on the word. "There are more Priscillas down here?"

“No. I'm the only one. But there are three female Elvises.”

Temple's eyes wordlessly questioned Matt.

“I just want to meet the men," he said hastily. "I mean, the voice—”

Temple got his message, so she nodded at Quincey. "Let's start at the end of the hall and work our way back. Show us to the first dressing room and we'll take it from there. I'd love to know whose jumpsuit got axed."

“It's been the talk of rehearsals," Quincey agreed. "Some hotel security guy finally came after you left and took it away, so someone should have noticed it was missing by now. And—" She paused outside an open door before leaving them, suddenly dead serious. "I should warn you. These are nice guys, mostly, but a little bent. I mean, they, like, worship the dead guy. So don't say anything anti-Elvis. Somebody might stick his ringed fist into your teeth, and these guys wear Godzillasize rings, let me tell you.”

With that word of warning, they entered the first dressing room.

A miasma of hair spray hung in the hot air along with a multiscented wave of deodorant. Heavy-set, blue^collar-muscled guys were primping everywhere, patting down sideburns as big as tarantulas, arranging crosses and lightning bolt pendants on springy cushions of chest hair, smoothing shocks of black hair into place, some teasing a few fitful locks down onto the forehead, like the little girl who had a little curl of nursery rhymes. When she was good, she was very, very good. And when she was bad, she was horrid.

That was certainly true of the real Elvis, Matt thought.

The round yellow bulbs that framed the chain of mirrors lining both sides of the long room made the assembled colored stones and gold studs on the various costumes glitter like neon miniatures of Las Vegas hotel signs. Matt recognized several versions of the famous American eagle jumpsuit, the denim-blue and silver-studded model, the Native American motifs. Most were white, or the occasional black version.

For a while during the sixties, he had read, Elvis had dressed in black pants, white shirts: street clothes, but already mirroring the sharp opposites his jumpsuits would embody. The jumpsuits themselves were the pin- nacle of Elvis's transference of boyhood needs and loves into popular culture icons. Inspired by Elvis's early love for comic-book superheroes in fancy jumpsuits and capes, they had been tailored to the sixties and seventies fashion explosion of innovations in normally staid men's clothing, like bell-bottom trousers and necklaces for men. Although they looked excessive to the modern eye, they had merely been a show-biz version of the new male peacock emerging. Matt recalled that even Nehru jackets and vaguely priestlike white collars had been popular then, along with crosses of every description.