Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

He knew deep in his heart that his mama just feared for him out in that big, funky, weird world. She grieved for him so. And it killed her. He knew that. In some ways she was right. It was way more dangerous out there than he had thought. But it was dangerous in here, too, Mama, he told her for the hundredth time. He talked to her sometimes, yeah, but it was like talkin' to a dead twin. Kinda natural, after all, to talk to someone who was that close for that long. You'd think people could understand his losses. Uncles and aunts and cousins dyin' left and right. He always said please and thank you, like she taught him, and sir and ma'am. These were words of respect, and you got to respect other people no matter who you are. Or were.

Ma'am is just Mama moved around.

The King sighed. Mama had moved around plenty in her lifetime. From Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee. From one mean little house to another. There was no phone or running water in the house where he was born and Jesse Garon had died, or maybe had been born dead. He wasn't sure which. He just knew that he sometimes could hear Jesse's voice, so far away it sometimes seemed inside himself. He had a lot more inside himself than anyone gave him credit for, even when they were heaping praise or blame on him.

There were many times when he got tired of it all, when the music seemed the farthest thing from the center of his life.

First they couldn't say enough good things about him. Then they couldn't say enough bad. He just never really got taken seriously. They even made fun of his fans. And it was worst after his ... collapse, when he had to leave his world and disappear.

Then all the books came out saying how strange he had been, from what he ate to how he slept with girls to how he played, even his spiritual aspirations. He was the butt of the whole world. And they never saw, never could or would see that everything he did, everything he became, came about because of the life he lived, because his fans loved him so much they could have almost torn him apart. And, in the end, maybe they had.

But they were keepin' the legend alive now, for good or ill. Whether he wanted to get up, get dressed up, and go out and do it again, or not. Whether he could carry around this ole body anymore, or not.

They kept him movin', that's the truth.

The King got up from the bed, went to the wall of closetsand began sliding mirrors away from his own image, until he confronted racks of pale ghosts: an endless row of empty, glittering jumpsuits.

Which one tonight? Which one was fit for a King? Which one was fit for a King to go out and die in?

Chapter 28

Don't Be Cruel (to a Heart That's True)

(Elvis fell in love with this 1955 Otis Blackwell song; it was the first of three of his recordings that were number one on all three charts: country, pop, and rhythm and blues)

Matt was beginning to hate his new job.

Every Midnight Hour was now a suspense show: Would "Elvis" call or not? And when? Matt couldn't help bracing himself for each new caller, breathing relief when it was just some ordinary person on the line, yet feeling a frisson of disappointment deep within. Was he becoming hooked on celebrity too? Or was something else going on here? He understood that he had a cohost now. A ghost cohost. Everyone in the studio mimicked his own cool excitement. Pros under pressure, loving and hating it. All performance was a two-edged sword that way, and Elvis's weapon of choice had been particularly sharp because of his extreme fame and fans.

Matt now kept a cheat sheet in front of him. A list ofquestions for Elvis, with names attached. His fingertips spun it on the tabletop. This move turned the counseling game into a quiz show. How could he claim any pretenses to serious counseling when his client had to play games to prove he was who he implied he was? Of course, Elvis had always loved games, arrested adolescent that he was. Still, Matt's ministerial past demanded that he do more than play media games. Was this bizarre charade damaging or helping the man who called on him for help? Maybe, Matt hoped and prayed, exposing Elvis's dysfunctionalism via a voice in the night would help everybody: the caller, Matt himself, the audience. Everybody, of course, except the dead man talking.

Poor Elvis! The weight of his family history and his fame had become as massive and ungainly as his dying body. Elvis had stood on a slippery mountain of uppers and downers, thousands of pills, and ultimately hypodermic injections, a year. His favorite reading was books on spirituality and medical textbooks. He knew the Physician's Desk Reference better than most doctors; armed with erroneous authority, he hooked his entourage on the same pharmaceutical seesaw of manic depression that he rode.

Another call was waiting.