Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

“You certainly wowed them by showing up on the stage."

“Okay. Maybe I like theatrical entrances. Elvis did too, and that's who we're supposed to be impersonating. These offbeat Elvises oughta be drummed off the stage. The idea is to honor the man and his music, not come up with the funkiest interpretation. Cheese Whiz Elvis. Where's the respect?"

“Didn't Elvis mock himself and even his audience sometimes?"

“Yes, he did." KOK sat forward and fixed Temple with a stern look. "And he was wrong. It was a gesture of surrender to his own vulnerabilities. In the end, his self-esteem was so low he looked on his audience's love for him with contempt. Instead of seeing them as forgiving friends, he saw them as fools and dupes he couldn't force to turn against him."

“You're saying he wanted to be martyred."

“He wanted to end what had become too hard to keep up. He didn't see any honorable way to desert the field. So he performed himself to death."

“What about the Colonel's role in driving Elvis into mediocre movies and debilitating tours?"

“Oh, Colonel Parker. The villain of the piece. Everybody was responsible but Elvis Presley. Did you ever notice how the least likely suspect in a murder case always turns out to be the killer?"

“Who's the least likely suspect in the Elvis saga?”

Lyle's tiny shrug made the gold threads on his gi shimmer and shimmy. His lower lip curled up before he gave a half smile that lifted the left side of his upper lip, just like Elvis's.

“How about the victim himself?"

Chapter 42

Elvis and Evil

(Elvis recorded the song, "Adam and Evil," for the 1966 film, Spinout)

"What a weirdo guy," Temple reported to Electra, after Full-spectrum Elvis had escorted her through the throngs waiting to bedevil Lyle, aka the KOK.

They all made proper farewells—bows, kisses, caressing scarf moves—and left, leaving Electra in an even greater girlish tizzy.

“How can you say that about the Elvis of the nineties?" she demanded of Temple when they were alone.

“What's the Elvis of the next decade going to be: the King of Zeroes?"

“I thought you had seen a bit of the magic that made Elvis the biggest star of the twentieth century. I thought you were becoming converted."

“Converted to a particular impersonator being good, yes; to Elvis, no. Besides, this Lyle guy said something so bizarre at the end of our interview. He implied that another Elvis impersonator killed the Elvis in the pool.' "Professional jealousy?"

“How could that be? The dead Elvis isn't even missed. If it had been Lyle Purvis himself, okay. But a nonentity Elvis isn't worth killing. Besides, Lyle sounded about as clear as Elvis was during one of his spiritual meanderings. It was like he was describing some mystical sort of murder, as if Elvis somehow had killed himself.”

Electra's sweet-sixteen sixties face—today Temple had glimpsed the madcap teenager inside the not-sodignified matron's exterior—grew radiant with inspiration.

“Temple! Elvis could kill an Elvis . . . but only if the real one is out there somewhere."

“ 'Out there' like 'the truth' on the X-Files? Over the edge and into Paranoid Country? I'm sorry, Electra. I will never buy that 'Elvis lives' scenario."

“Oh, you little hard-headed cynic! That notion doesn't have to be taken literally."

“What other way is there to take it?"

“If you need to ask, I don't need to tell you."

“Huh? Oh, that this too, too solid delusion would melt, dissolve into a dew—"

“When you're done spouting, could we meet somebody else?"

“I'm sorry you couldn't go in to meet KOK Elvis. It would have blown my cover."

“Well, I can meet one pseudo-celebrity without blowing your cover." Electra took Temple's arm firmly. "Now. Show me Miss Priscilla.”

Quincey was in and receiving visitors in her dressing room. "Hi," she tossed over her shoulder and around her flowing hair at Temple. "I heard a whole lot of stomping going on upstairs. Did somebody off Elvis onstage?”

Electra stepped around Temple, which was never hard to do. "No, dear. We just saw an Elvis performance thatrocked the roof off the Kingdome. A pity you were confined down here."

“I'll see plenty of Elvis acts at the real show." Quincey's long, pale fingernails poked at her towering hair, which leaned a little to the left, like the edifice at Pisa. "I'll have to sit there for hours and hours, dying of boredom. But my gown arrived, thanks to the hotel. Isn't it cool?”

She led the way to the costume niche, where a white column of silk and lace and beading hung like a frozen fountain.

Temple, who had been known to glance at a bride's magazine gown layout when killing time in front of a magazine stand, was stunned by the high-necked, long-sleeved design of Priscilla's wedding gown, a world away from the strapless bustier styles modern brides preferred.

She was stunned that Quincey, with all her teenage eagerness to equate beautiful with bad, actually liked this virginal froth of fabric.