Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

“Elvis struck me as both pretentious and unpretentious, and the ways he was pretentious were the ways we all might go overboard if we had the opportunities he did. That's what's wrong with some people making him into a god. He had such predictably human failings. The same ones teenage sports stars show today. It's more instructive to regard him as a man gone wrong, not a god betrayed."

“ 'Instructive.' Gee whiz, Mr. Midnight, do you know how odd it is to hear that word on talk radio?" "Sorry."

“Don't be. Elvis would like that word. That's what his spiritual quest was, to find some way he could inspire people beyond moving them with his music. Some way to use that remarkable power."

“I have to say that the Rolling Stones don't seem too concerned about using their remarkable drawing power for anything other than what was the darker side of Elvis: sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll."

“No, Elvis was peculiarly American, both idealistic and egotistical."

“Do you know how_, rarely the word 'peculiarly' is heard on talk radio?”

She chuckled. "Bingo! I'd better get back to my Elvis-channeling sessions. Say hi to the King for me.”

Matt was happy that the audience was mellowing, accepting that the caller, whoever he was, could go as suddenly as he had come. Whatever the so-called Elvis had done or not done, he had certainly kept the phone lines ringing at WCOO.

“Mr. Midnight? Are you still on? I kinda lost track of time. Sometimes I do that.”

That familiar easygoing voice made Matt sit up ramrod straight, as if he were on television and had to look alert. "I figured you weren't going to call again."

“Heck, man. Who else am I gonna call? Ghostbusters?”

The caller's hearty laughter faded into worn-out wheezes. He sounded like a punch-drunk kid who'd stayed up late for too many pizza nights in a row.

“Give it up, man," Matt urged. "You're not a ghost. There's not even a ghost of a chance that you're who you claim to be. You don't have to be Elvis."

“Yeah, I do." Rage drove a baritone-deep spike into the soft, Southern underbelly of the tenor voice Matt was used to hearing. "I can't help who I was born as. Can't help that God chose me to be Elvis Presley."

“Being Elvis could be dangerous right now," Matt warned, back-peddling. "You heard about the man who died at the Kingdome?"

“Yeah. Terrible thing. But that don't scare me. I used to get death threats all the time.”

Maybe, Matt thought, he could use the facts of Elvis's life to force this deluded man to confront his own fictions. "Isn't that why you were forced into that isolated lifestyle, why you kept an entourage between you and everything else?"

“What do you mean 'lifestyle'? It was my life, man. I guess I gave it some style. That's all."

“Everybody thought you lived a lavish and isolated life because that was what stars did, but most of it was due to the fans. They just couldn't leave you alone. One of your guys says when you made those cross-country train trips to and from Memphis, you had crowds waiting at every stop, like nothing anybody had seen since Lincoln's funeral train."

“Yeah, the fans were always there for me. And I didn't even have to die to do it. At first. At the end—" Laughter again, forced laughter.

“Elvis ... you don't mind if I call you that?"

“No, sir. They used to think it was a funny name, in the beginning, made fun of it. Now it's all they know me by."

“And they know you all over the world."

“That's right. We're a trinity: Jesus, Elvis, and Coca-cola. I only drank Pepsi, though. They always get something wrong. I got a few things wrong myself." A pause. "Wish I coulda toured the world. Kept getting invited, but Colonel, he always managed to hex any trips like that. Guess he had reasons."

“He wasn't a U.S. citizen. He was afraid if he put a foreign tour in motion, that would come out."

“Yeah, but it would have given me new worlds to conquer, right? I needed that. The old one was getting stale. It's always more interesting getting somewhere than being there, you know?"

“I know. And you got there so fast. You stayed there for a long time."

“A long time. Almost lived to be my mama's age. Now that was a miracle. I never missed no one or nothing so much as I did her. Still do."

“Don't you ... see her now?"

“Naw, what do you think, man? Think I'm Superman or something? Think I'm a swami? I'm just trying to figure out the world and God and stuff, and why I was chosen to be Elvis Presley. There must have been a reason."

“There's always a reason." Matt looked down at the lists on the tabletop, feeling like Judas Iscariot, or like a chief prosecutor, he didn't know which. "There was a reason you got a guitar for your eleventh birthday. Your mother took you and you got a used one ... how much did it cost?"

“Eleven ninety-five. Shoot! I wanted a gun! But my mama said no, so I got the guitar."

“And that was the beginning."