Losing Graceland (2 page)

Sometimes Ben dreamt of his dad, quiet dreams where no one spoke. They just walked, Ben along a dirt road, his father up ahead. Past dark blue forests, their steps marked by the crunch of gravel and the chants of cicadas hidden deep within the brush. He could never catch up and his father never slowed down. The first few times Ben had tried to shout but found his voice lost. Choked and suffocated; no breath for a whisper. In subsequent dreams he learned to only trudge along, looking for evidence of his dad in footprints.

No one had warned him how frustrating grief was. How it lingered long past its welcome, past the first few months when it cleansed like a fast. At first he’d felt special, almost chosen. Not anymore, Ben realized. In the year since his father’s death, the grief had gone rotten; he could smell its stink everywhere, like foul meat carried in his pocket.

Ben pulled his Honda into Sal’s Used Cars, where hopefuls lined up with balloons whipsawing at the ends of string tied to side-view mirrors and antennas. The old man told Ben to wait in the car. He pulled himself out with a grunt, smoothed back his hair, and tugged at the bottom of his red sweatshirt.

Sal was halfway across the lot before the old man made it to the first row.

“Morning, chief,” Sal said, blue tie flapping in the wind. “You ready to sell that Skyliner?”

“No,” the old man said, “but I need a car.”

Sal eyed the Honda. “Trade-in?”

“Ain’t mine.”

“Then how about that Skyliner.”

“Now listen,” the old man said. “If you ask me again—”

Sal waved him off. “I’m just doing what I do, chief. You know I’d kick myself if I didn’t ask twice.” He flashed his bleached teeth and rubbed the lobe of his plucked ear. “That cherry red gets me hard. Some son of a bitch scientist took the secret to his—”

“I know the story,” the old man said. “I’m looking for something big and fast. Low miles. Good AC.”

Sal turned on his heels and surveyed his lot with a frown. He repeated “big and fast,” over and over.

“How does an ’eighty-six Olds sound?”

The old man shook his head.

“ ’Ninety-eight Pathfinder?”

“That an SUV?”

Sal nodded.

“I’m driving to Memphis,” the old man said. “Not the jungles of Zaire.”

“Well, then, I’m afraid all I got left is a 1965 Cadillac El Dorado
Seville. Custom supercharged V8. Wisteria on white, stainless and chrome.”

The old man thought for a moment.

“All right, Sal. Let’s see the goddamn thing.”

He sat in the driver’s seat, in the far corner of the lot. Sun had warmed the steering wheel; the leather smelled like summer.

“What’s wrong with it?” the old man said.

Sal grinned. “Nothing. Start her up.”

He revved the engine. He closed his eyes and revved again. He knew he was in the back lot of a used-car dealer in Cheektowaga, New York—the kind of town where strip malls were mountains and a puddle of sprinkler water on a suburban sidewalk the ocean—but he saw her anyway. A laughing beauty queen sitting next to him, her long legs dangling out the window and the wind caressing her auburn hair. Pink polish on her pink little toes, a glittering anklet, pink shorts hiked up to the top of her smooth tan thighs. She’d been a dancer; a winner of local pageants; a churchgoing girl. When she sang hymns, her perfect little mouth turned into a tight O and her red lipstick looked like the color of fresh roses after a spring rain. She squeezed his arm and he pressed the pedal, head thrown back, howling.

Back when I rambled, he thought. A rambler roaring through the world, drinking oceans dry and chopping down mountains.

“Hey, chief. Watch the RPMs.”

The old man opened his eyes. He took a deep breath, staring at his hands still gripping the steering wheel. Wrinkled hands the color of sand patched with wet spots. Hands that had once dipped
into the primordial ooze and brought up life leaking from between his fingers, running down his arm, dripping onto his shoes. Life everyone wanted. They’d kill for a teaspoon of that muck. A fistful of that ooze.

“Now, is she a beauty, or is she a beauty,” Sal said.

“The most beautiful thing I ever seen,” the old man said, and he wiped the tears from his cheeks and reached for his wallet.

ou finished?”

Ben nodded, and the old man folded the magazine clipping, delicately slipping it back into a coffee-ring-stained manila envelope. Then he asked the waitress for another vanilla Coke and took a few bites of his apple pie.

They sat in an imitation 1950s diner, in a cracked red booth against a wall marked with penciled graffiti and dried spots of food. The 1965 Cadillac El Dorado Seville waited outside the
front window. Ben watched a steady string of cars zip down the boulevard, stragglers from the morning commute.

He thought about his meeting last month with the college career adviser, a portly middle-aged man wearing a faded pinstripe shirt stretched to its limits. He’d taken one perfunctory look at Ben’s transcript and asked him what sort of career he wanted.

“I don’t know,” Ben said.

“Well, you majored in anthropology. What about graduate school.”

“I’m not ready for a career,” Ben said. “I want to travel, maybe live in Amsterdam for a while.”

“In an anthropological context?”

“What?”

“Isn’t that what anthropologists do? Live in different cultures, take notes …”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to be an anthropologist. I just want to hang out.”

The adviser leaned forward, his chair creaking in protest. “Son, if you don’t want to be an anthropologist, then why did you major in anthropology?”

Ben shrugged. “I liked the professors.”

The waitress set down the vanilla Coke and the old man smiled at her. She blossomed red and walked away, looking over her shoulder, but the old man was focused on Ben.

“I cut that article from a gossip rag,” the old man said. “And I’ve been holding on to it for the past month, trying to figure if it’s true or not. Now, a gossip rag is a gossip rag, and most of what they print I wouldn’t waste on a broke-dick dog. But I always knew I had a granddaughter that never knew me.”

“Nadine,” Ben said.

The old man sipped his Coke and crunched an ice cube. “That’s right. Until last month I thought the days were punishment. Then I was standing in line at the store and on the magazine rack I saw that headline”—he patted the manila envelope—“and I realized that sometimes the days are gods. They bless us with opportunities for redemption, even if we don’t deserve them.
Especially
if we don’t deserve them. Which brings us to now.”

Ben looked down at his cheeseburger, half eaten with a glob of ketchup squirted out the side.

“I’ll pay you ten thousand to drive me to Memphis,” the old man said. “I’d drive myself, but my eyes aren’t what they were, and we can’t take the highways because everyone goes too goddamn fast. We can’t afford an accident. You understand?”

“Ten
thousand
?”

“Five thousand now, five thousand when we get there. Cash. However you want it. Twenties, fifties, hundreds. Nickels, dimes, quarters. In a sack or lined up in a briefcase. I’ll cover all expenses—food, drink, hotel. But we won’t be stopping much because we don’t have the time. If something happened to Nadine, we need to get down there quick before the trail grows cold. If I had to guess, I’d say she got herself mixed up with some amateur gunslinger, some low-rent thug looking for young tail and no commitments. Probably had her dealing drugs on the side, pushing profits to him. I been leaned on pretty goddamn hard by those sons of bitches. Back when I didn’t know any better. Back when low-rent thugs looked like high-rent rollers.”

“Ten thousand is a lot of money,” Ben said.

The old man nodded. “Goddamn right it is. What’s the point of money if you can’t use it for something noble? Something better
than fancy sunglasses and ruby rings? Something more than a gold medallion with a sapphire Jewish star … what’s it called? You know what I’m talking about, man. The Jewish star. What’s it called.”

“Star of David?”

“That’s right.” The old man snapped his fingers. “You Jewish?”

“My father was Jewish.”

“What does that make you?”

“Confused.”

The old man nodded again. “I’ve spent enough money to make Solomon puke. Wasted it on phonies and frauds, con men and cocksuckers looking for a teaspoon of the muck. And at the end of the day—”

He stopped suddenly, pinching the bridge of his nose. He shut his eyes and Ben thought he was going to sneeze. Then the old man choked back a sob, and Ben looked around for the waitress to bring him something. A cup of coffee, a hug from a pretty lady, whatever it would take …

“All I’m saying,” the old man said through a clot of mucus that rattled when he cleared his throat. He opened his eyes. “All I’m saying is the money don’t mean a thing.”

Ben waited as the old man blew his nose into his napkin.

“Ten thousand is a lot of money,” Ben repeated.

The old man sniffled. “Maybe for you.”

“But you can fly to Memphis, first class, for a tenth of what you’d pay me to drive. And if time is important—”

The old man brought his fist down on the table and their glasses rattled. People turned and stared. His upper lip quivered as he spoke. “Son, do you think I’d put my fate and Nadine’s into the hands of some pilot?”

“I don’t—”

“I remember those two fools they pulled off that Boeing 737. Saw it on CNN. They were hopped up on weed and God knows what else. Levorphanol, from the looks of it. Even in the goddamn press conference, when the one with that Clark Kent hair went on about how sorry he was. Christ, he was hopped up then. And even if you get past the pilots, you still got to worry about a hijacking. You can’t tell me they put U.S. Marshals on every goddamn plane. X-ray machines and metal detectors don’t always work. Not with the polymers they use now, and the ceramics, and who the hell knows what else.”

Ben looked out the diner window, across the wide boulevard, to the rows of apartment buildings with parking lots for front lawns. He wanted to give the impression he was thinking it over. Ten grand would solve his problems. Get an apartment in Amsterdam, live like a bohemian. He wouldn’t need much—a bicycle, decent food, a couple cases of cheap wine, and enough spare cash for the occasional date. Ten grand would give him escape. A white board with fresh markers that he could use to draw whatever history he wanted.

Escape
, he realized. The town, the mall, his apartment suddenly became a locked room with cement-gray bars surrounded by the thrum of traffic and the plastic smell of … what? Conformity was too easy a label, mediocrity too elitist. It was something else. Disappointment, maybe. Or tacit acceptance.

Ben stared at the old man. A black lock of hair fell down over his forehead and for a moment he really looked like Elvis. Not that Ben knew what Elvis really looked like—he only knew him from diner clocks and the silly beach movies he’d watched as a kid. But whoever that Elvis was, the old man looked just like him.

“Is this a serious offer?” Ben said.

“Serious as cancer.”

“Ten thousand for me to drive you to Memphis. That’s all I have to do.”

“That’s all.”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

The old man sat back and took a swig of vanilla Coke. He crunched an ice cube. “Shoot.”

“Who are you?”

“It’s not who I am, but who I was.”

“Then who were you.”

The old man swallowed the shards of ice. He smoothed back his hair and his eyes dropped half lid. Heavy eyes, thick lids, dark bags beneath like halved grapes.

“I was the King.”

Their apartment sat above Manchurian House, a Chinese restaurant off the wide boulevard surrounded by treeless flat and the crenellated horizon of low-slung strip malls and plazas. A framed poster of Brando hung above the brick fireplace. Ben’s roommate, Patrick, sat on a three-legged Naugahyde chair, Ben across from him on the couch. An aquarium stood in the corner, green with algae, two fish swimming blind through the murky water. Home theater speakers hung on the walls.

“He didn’t come out and say it,” Ben said. “He didn’t actually
say
he was Elvis.”

Patrick licked his joint closed, spitting a fleck off his lip. He wore jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt, one leg draped over the chair’s arm. He wheeled the lighter. “I doubt he even has the ten grand.”

“He’s got the money,” Ben said. “I watched him buy a classic Caddy with a roll of hundreds.”

“That was probably his entire stash. Last of the Social Security.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Uh-huh. What was it like?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet.”

Patrick exhaled smoke rings. “It sounds kooky.” He laughed. “That’s a good word.
Kooky.
” Another puff, and he shrugged. “You know, you could work with me at city camp. The pay sucks but there’s always a few available high school seniors—”