Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

Electra checked the hot-pink patent leather watch on her chubby, freckled wrist.

“Is that an—?"

“Elvis watch from the fifties. Yeah. My mother screamed at me for a week for spending my money on junk. I don't wanta tell you what it's worth today. Even you might mug me for it."

“You've never worn it when I've been around before."

“I don't wear my souvenirs. But these guys appreciate this stuff. Makes me the queen of the hop again." Electra primped her hair, which had been rinsed a tasteful lavender. "The rehearsal is in twenty minutes, and only the media is allowed in. Besides friends and family of the performers, of course. Which is we. Us?"

“Whatever. I can't be grammatical without a pencil or a keyboard in my hands. Let's duck into Priscilla's dressing room so I can change into my tennies, and then it's off to see the weird wolves, Granny.”

Quincey was absent from the room, so Temple did a shoe-change, and in forty seconds flat her feet were level instead of inclined.

“You do look awfully young," Electra commented, "without those high heels."

“Don't even need pigtails, huh?"

“A bow on one side of your head would help." "Argh! I don't do bows.”

On that declaration of independence, they left the dressing room and climbed the backstage stairs. At the top stood a man in black, legs spread, hands clasped in front, poker face shaded by a snap-brim early-sixties fedora.

“You okayed for the rehearsal area?" he asked. Electra flashed her yellow pass card. Temple flashed what she hoped was an eager teenage grin.

With a grunt, the guard nodded them past.

“This reminds me of the security the real Elvis had," Electra grumbled as Temple led her through the clutter of the wings to the steps leading down into the vast theater's house.

“I can't believe you actually lined up and screamed. Those girls in the photos look so—"

“So uncool. Sweaters and bobby socks, and those circle skirts that swept the floor when you sat and that everybody stepped on. That's what Elvis should have sang, 'Don't Step on My Pink Poodle Skirt.' "

“Hardly suitable for Elvis."

“He did love pink, though. Had teddy bears all over his bedroom to the end, and his first bedroom before Graceland had pink bedclothes. Black and pink were high-fifties-chic colors."

“Teddy bears. He was just a big overgrown kid, wasn't he?"

“In some ways. In some, not. You know, not all us teen fans were pimply and awkward. The good-looking ones got invited to meet Elvis. He had his pick, believe me."

“Groupies." Temple made a face. "Why do those young girls sell themselves so cheaply to a bunch of egocentric drunk and/or drugged guys old enough to know better and not much worth bragging about as human beings?"

“It's obvious, my dear girl, that you have never seen an authentic sex symbol in action." Electra's face assumed a beatific look as she pulled down a plush fold-up seat and plunked her middled-aged heft on it.

“From what I read, Elvis wasn't born bad and beautiful; he deliberately modeled himself on his favoriteactors, those urban bad boys Marlon Brando and James Dean and Tony Curtis. And he started putting those bumps and grinds into his act when he saw the girls' reaction to the moves he probably picked up from black performers he saw on Beale Street."

“That's the thing. Underneath the act was this shy guy our age who was acting out what we all wanted to be: independent and bold, and rebellious and, hey, even rich and famous. Teen dream. Didn't your generation have something like that?"

“We had a choice between satanist rockers and TV-show family sitcom guys who sang a little. Elvis's bad-boy act was minor-league compared to the decadent rock that came along after."

“It was a time. It was a place. It brought city and country together, white hillbilly music and black blues. It brought black and white together before the Civil Rights movement made it official. Elvis usually had black groups in his band." Electra looked at Temple over her reading glasses. "But then you don't know a thing about the Civil Rights movement either, do you, whippersnapper?"

“I know, I know! I'm just a shallow yuppie. I missed all the major social upheavals of the sixties. I couldn't help it. I was just a baby.”

Mollified that Temple had admitted total ignorance of her life and times, Electra settled down and gazed happily toward the huge empty stage. "The Colonel always sent Elvis to the funniest out-of-the-way arenas when he was on tour, even after he became a megastar. Places like Portland and Buffalo and Baton Rouge and Wichita."

“Maybe it was a strategy to make Elvis available to more than his big-city fans. Where did you see Elvis?"

“Carlsbad, New Mexico, February fourteenth, nineteen fifty-five. I weighed a hundred-and-eighteen pounds for probably the last time in my life. The waist of that circle skirt I wore would hardly fit my thigh nowadays.

They dis Elvis for getting fat, but who doesn't?"

“Gods, supermodels, and rock stars aren't supposed to. And maybe they take all those drugs to make sure they don't."