Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

Matt interjected, goaded into feeling some of Temple's indignation. "When she left Elvis in seventy-two at age twenty-six, she didn't even know how to write a check. All of her spending money had been parceled out, and stingily too, by Vernon."

“Maybe there was reason to keep her on a short leash," muttered an Elvis wearing the "claw" jumpsuit featuring Native American designs, dabbing some stuff Matt recognized as concealer under his black-lashed eyes.

“She wasn't kept on one short enough," another man put in with a bawdy laugh.

Matt found his blood pressure rising. He'd read enough about these people, bizarre as their lifestyle was, to feel he knew them somewhat. "Elvis never stopped seeing his rotating harem of women. Priscilla wasn't unfaithful until Elvis stopped having sexual relations with her after Lisa Marie was born."

“Elvis was the King," announced a stocky man with a wig that resembled a nesting duck-billed platypus. "He didn't live by the rules everybody else does. She didn't understand him. She tried to domesticate him. He was born to be wild and free."

“And screwed up," Temple muttered so only Matt could hear her.

“The women who really cared about him," said a quiet voice from a corner, where a man apparently had heard her comment, "they couldn't stay. It wasn't the infidelity so much as his downward slide with the drugs. They couldn't stand to watch him sinking.”

Matt was struck by the voice. It wasn't the one on the call-in phone, really, but closer to a genuine Southern accent than any of the Elvis impersonators' natural voices so far. When his searching eyes found the speaker, he wasn't surprised, given his conversation with Temple not long before. Something of Elvis lurked in the bone structure beneath the baby face.

This guy was not primping, just sitting jiggling hisdark-booted foot enough so that the forelock curlicued onto his forehead trembled like it was caught in a fan draft. Something about his relaxed, pensive posture reminded Matt of some of the moody black-and-white photos of Elvis in his early and mid career.

Matt didn't know much about performers, but this guy's very sobriety suggested he could uncoil as hard and fast as a rattlesnake onstage.

A dark horse in the glittery Elvis sweepstakes, but who knows? Temple was trolling for more obvious prey than potential winners.

“So," she said more loudly into the lingering silence the distant Elvis's comment had caused, "does anybody here have it in for the Priscilla clone?"

“Us?" A yip of indignation from an Elvis in the opposite corner. "We don't have to like the real one, but this girl's part of the grand finale. She hands out the authentic imitation gold belt from when Elvis broke the Las Vegas attendance record at the Hotel International in nineteen sixty-nine to whoever wins the competition. No way we're gonna short-circuit a moment of glory for one of us."

“Only one of you can win," Matt pointed out. "Maybe the other ninety-nine wouldn't mind a sour ending note."

“Nah. We're not like that. We compete, sure, but we know you're up one time and down another."

“You mean there are no leading candidates for the grand prize?" Temple asked.

Silence and shrugs infected the room. A wife, or girlfriend, paused in teasing a pompadour, then one finally spoke.

“Oh, there are guys who've won before, and might again. El Vez always has a good act, and other guys are tops too. But we've been at dozens of these competitions, and there's always some upset, or some new guy winning out of the blue. You can't count on winning, no matter who you are, and you sure can't do anything about it except to do your best when it's your time onstage.

“But surely," Temple persisted, Matt feeling almost embarrassed by her dogged pursuit of a point of view so strongly denied, "some one contender is particularly strong, someone who won last time, or whatever.”

Again, the silence, during which blue eyes courtesy of Bausch and Lomb consulted each other. The fragile wooden ice-cream chairs creaked under the shifting posteriors of nervous Elvi.

“There's KOK, of course," said a fellow so diminutive only his voice could be heard.

“KOK?" Temple was perplexed, and Matt had never seen the initials in all the Elvis books he had skimmed, including those on impersonators.

A huge Elvis stood, and it wasn't hard to look huge in those white, flared-bottom jumpsuits.

“KOK," he repeated. "The King of Kings. Guy named . . . what? David something.”

How appropriate, Matt thought.

“No, no, no. His name was Ken-something. Peebles maybe," another Elvis suggested.

“No, Perkins."

“Purvis. Ken or Kyle—something Purvis," the Elvis in the corner contributed again, warily.

“Perkins," the second Elvis said firmly. "Man, he was something. Didn't think he was Elvis, mind you. But he played the part like a reincarnation of Elvis. Eerie, that guy was. In fact, that's what some of us nicknamed him. Eerie Elvis. That's with two Es at the beginning, not like in Erie, Pennsylvania.”