Black Elvis (2 page)

He watched Butch's face and saw the enjoyment there. He'd never seen the crowd at Slab's be so quiet or attentive to a performer. Robert Johnson
did
feel the music, even if he was Chinese. It was strange. Black Elvis glanced toward the front door and wondered if there was any way at all he might slip unnoticed through the crowded tables and out.

When Robert Johnson finished his set, people applauded for what seemed like hours. He stood and bowed, antique guitar tucked under one arm. Black Elvis felt he was watching the future, and it was one that did not include him. But that was negative thinking. You couldn't let yourself fall into that. He'd seen it happen to other people his age, the shadows who walked around his neighborhood, vacant eyed, waiting to die. Esther, who lived in 2-
C
, just below him, who watched television with the volume all the way up and only opened the door once a week for the woman from Catholic Social Services to come deliver her groceries. That woman had stopped up to see Black Elvis, but he'd sent her away. Ain't no Catholic, he'd said. That's not really necessary, she told him. So he told her he carried his own groceries, and got a discount on them, too. Then he shut the door.

They were talking to him again, those people at the next table. He shook his head and wondered where he'd gone. His mind was like a bird these days.

"You're up," they told him. "They want you."

He brought his guitar up onto the stage. Robert Johnson had taken a seat with Butch, and they were talking intently about something. Butch had out a datebook and was writing in it. Butch booked the music for Slab's, on the other nights, the ones where the performers got paid. Robert Johnson's Chinese eyes squinted tight as pistachio nuts when he smiled.

"Black Elvis," someone shouted. He heard laughter.

"I'm going to do something a little different," he said into the microphone. "A good person passed last night. Some of you probably heard about it by now. Juanita—" he struggled to find her last name, then heard himself say "Williams," which he was certain was wrong, but was the only name he could come up with. "Juanita was, you know, family for us here at Slab's, and we loved her. So I'd like to dedicate this song to Juanita. This one's for you, baby."

He played a chord and was not surprised when his fourth string snapped like an angry snake striking. Ignoring this, he began to sing.

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound . . ."

He didn't know if the next chord should be the same, or different, so he just played E again. It wasn't right, but it wasn't that wrong.

"That saved a wretch like me . . ."

He remembered his mother singing this. He could see her on the porch, stroking his sister Mae's head, sitting in the red metal chair with the flaking paint, the smell of chicken cooking in the kitchen flowing out through the patched window screen. His own voice sounded to him like something he was hearing at a great distance.

"I once was lost, but now I'm found . . ."

The people were staring at him. Even A. J. had stopped ringing up sales and was watching, the fires continuing to dance behind him.

"Was blind, but now I see."

He lowered his head and hit a few more chords. He felt like he was in church, leading a congregation. He looked up, then nodded somberly and went back to his chair.

"That was beautiful, man," said Butch, coming over to him. "Just fucking beautiful."

Robert Johnson offered to buy him a beer.

"All right," said Black Elvis. "Molson's."

"Molson's it is." He was gone a few minutes, then returned with a pitcher and two glasses. "I like a beer with flavor," he said. "Microbrews and such."

"I like beer that's cold," said Black Elvis. "I like it even better if it's free."

"Hard to argue with that, my man." He filled the glasses. "I'm sorry to hear about your friend."

Black Elvis stared at him.

"Juanita?"

"That's right. Tragedy. They say she had a bad ticker. She
was
a little overweight, now." He thought again about her. She'd had a lot of facial hair, he remembered that. And she used to wear this chef's hat.

"This is a nice place," said Robert Johnson, looking around. The next group was setting up on stage. "Real homey."

"This is the best place for ribs and blues in Atlanta. Don't let no one tell you different." He peered at Robert Johnson's round, white face. "So, you from Memphis, huh?"

"That's right."

"Memphis, China?"

Robert Johnson laughed. "I'm Korean, not Chinese. Well, my parents are. I was born here. But I've always loved black music. I grew up around it, you know."

"What kind of guitar that is you play?"

"Martin. 1924 00-28 Herringbone. I wish I could tell you I found it in an attic or something, but it's not that good a story. I paid a whole lot for it. But it's got a nice sound, and it fits with the whole Robert Johnson act, you know?" He adjusted his tie. "I've learned that it's not enough to just be good at what you do, you have to have a marketing angle, too."

"Marketing, you say."

"I've got me a gig here already for next weekend."

Black Elvis was quiet for a moment. "You been to Graceland?"

He laughed. "Graceland! Well of course I've been to Graceland. Everyone in Memphis has been to Graceland."

"What's it like?"

"What's it like?" He gave a silver ring on his middle finger a half turn. "Tacky. In some ways, it feels like holy ground, but at the same time, you also feel like you're at an amusement park. The Jungle Room is pretty cool, I guess."

"Sun Studio?"

"They have tours, but I've never done one. If you're so interested, you ought to go."

"You think so?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"You got connections there? Like who could get me a gig?"

Robert Johnson considered this. Black Elvis realized that he'd done exactly what he'd wanted not to do, which was to put this person in a position where he had power over him. But he couldn't get it out of his head that there was something about this meeting that was more than chance. He had a feeling Robert Johnson was someone he was
supposed
to meet, if only he could determine why.

"I don't think so. I mean, if you're going to do an Elvis thing, you're probably better off just about any place but Memphis. Of course, that's just my opinion."

"I'll bet they don't have no black Elvises."

"Are you kidding? Black, Chinese, Irish, Jewish, you name it. You think fat white men in hairpieces have the market cornered on Elvis impersonation? I know a place where they have a dwarf who sings 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' every evening at ten while two strippers give each other a bath, right on stage."

For a moment, he imagined a big stage—an opera house—with hundreds of Elvises of all shapes and colors pushing and shoving each other to get to the front. The thought made him shiver. "Don't matter. I'm an original."

"No doubt. If you don't mind my asking, what made you decide to start doing this?" He looked at Black Elvis with admiration. "I love your hair, incidentally. I mean, if I looked like you, Jesus. I'd be working all the time. You just have that natural, blues-man look. You could be John Lee Hooker's cousin or something."

"I don't care much for blues music," said Black Elvis. He sniffed. "Never have."

"Really?"

"I like that rock and roll."

"Well, whatever makes you happy." Robert Johnson made a move to get up.

"No, wait," said Black Elvis, suddenly anxious. "Tell me something. Is that what you think? Have I gotten it wrong all this time? Should I be doing something else? You play good, you sing good, you know about marketing. Just tell me and I'll listen. I don't have that much time left."

Robert Johnson stood up and adjusted his fedora. He looked slightly embarrassed. "I gotta go talk to a young woman over there," he said. "She's been staring at me ever since I got here. I'm sure you understand." He picked up a napkin and held it out. "You got a little nosebleed going there."

Black Elvis took the napkin and held it tight against his nose.

When he got home, Juanita was waiting for him in the living room, wearing her chef's hat and a stained serving apron, her wide body taking up half the sofa.

"You late," she said. "Did you have a good time?"

"Good time?" he said. He thought about this. He didn't really go to the blues jam for a good time. He went because it gave him a purpose, a place to be, and because by now it just seemed that if he didn't go, all hell might break loose. The sun might not come up in the morning. "I sang you a song," he said.

"That right? What you sing? One of them Elvis songs?"

"'Amazing Grace.'"

"Well, that's nice. You've got blood on your shirt, you know."

"Mmmm hmmmm." He pulled up a chair and sat opposite her. He had not turned on any lights, and her figure was shadowy and evanescent, like a glimpse of a fish below the surface of a fast stream. "You supposed to be dead, now."

"Supposed to be."

"Bad ticker, huh?"

"Just stopped on me."

"Hurt?"

"Shit yes. For a second it felt like someone hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer. Now, tell me the truth, how come you singing songs for me? You know I don't care for you much at all. I'd have thought the feeling was mutual."

"Let me turn on a light."

"Don't do that. I like it better in the dark. Come on, now, what's with the song?"

Black Elvis closed his eyes for a moment. "There was a man there, a Chinese man. He took my spot."

"And so you go all churchy? You just nothing but a hypocrite. Just a big old faker."

"I don't believe in you," said Black Elvis. "And I'm turning on the light."

"I don't believe in you, either," said Juanita. "Go ahead."

He cut on the light and she was gone, as he'd suspected she would be. From the street below, he heard shouting and laughter. He went over to the window and pulled back the curtains just far enough to see.

The two boys he'd seen earlier were out in the middle of the street. One had a spray can of paint and was walking slowly back and forth, while the other, the bigger one, watched and occasionally shouted encouragement. At first, he couldn't tell what the image was, but then the lines began to come together and he realized that it was him the boy was painting, Black Elvis, spray-painted twenty feet high and glowing against the asphalt. He watched in amazement as the details took shape, his pompadour, the serious eyes, sideburns, pouting lips.

"Believe in me," he said. "Stupid woman."

Back in May, about the time that Larry's fiancée, Gwen, was coming clean to him about the professor she had been sleeping with—apparently there was no book group or yoga class—his aunt Julia's boyfriend, Frank Packard, had run his Alfa Romeo right off the side of the autostrada. Frank, whom Larry had never met, was now in a coma. "I'm just sort of waiting to see," Julia told him over the phone, her three-thousand-mile-distant voice as clear as if it were next door. "But in the meantime, there's lots of room here. You're totally invited." That night at Loch Raven Liquors, as Larry shelved case after case of Italian wines, the names began to stir music inside him. Abruzzi, Montepulciano, Veneto, Valpolicella. When he got back to his apartment—empty now, of all of Gwen's soft things—he got online and bought a ticket, charging it to his already overburdened Citicard. Pot smoke and the sound of bad guitar strumming drifted up from the apartment downstairs; in the street, a man was shouting at his wife. "I tole you," he said. "I tole you."

Julia was an occasional actress, in her forties, his mother's youngest sister, and the oddball of the family, particularly in her choice of men. She had once brought a guy to Thanksgiving whose entire face was covered in Maori tattoos, even the eyelids. She'd been married, briefly, but no one had ever met the man, and she never spoke of it. Frank Packard was a different kind of choice.

"He has Alzheimer's," she told Larry his first night at the apartment, which was on the fourth floor of a sixteenth-century palazzo, with a view of the Boboli Gardens off the tiny back terrace. Frank, who'd had a successful dental practice in Buffalo, New York, had some years ago moved to Italy with the intention of writing mystery novels. But he'd started to suspect that there was something going wrong with him. "It's not too bad, yet," Julia said. "He's, like, sixty, seventy percent. I guess. I mean, I didn't know him before, so I can't be sure. Our deal is that I take care of him, help him spend his money and enjoy himself and, you know, not get lost. Then, later, he leaves it all to me."

"You have this in writing?" asked Larry, who was still jet-lagged.

"I guess that would have been smart," she admitted.

He asked if she was working and found out that she was spending her days in front of the Uffizi spray-painted gold and posed as an Egyptian sarcophagus, although it was becoming increasingly clear that she'd have to go home soon. Also, Packard's ex-wife was in town. "Buzzard," she said. "Just circling, you know?"

Larry spent his first few days drinking way too much, staring cynically at tourists, and copping poses with cigarettes that he hoped would be noticed by attractive women, but weren't. He imagined Gwen locked in a summer-long coital embrace with her new lover, taking breaks only long enough for him to explain the finer points of Marxist philosophy. Larry needed something to occupy his time, some sort of a project—otherwise his head was going to blow up. The town was full of art history graduate students giving private tours.

"Performance art!" Julia cried delightedly when he ran the idea by her. "I can help you find customers. I meet people all the time. I'll look for the dumbest faces and the nicest shoes. People with money always have good shoes."

"Let's not call it art," he said. "Let's call it theft."

He doubted he'd be able to pull off the deception for long, if at all. Perhaps it would lead to a fistfight. Secretly, though, he hoped he might meet a girl, someone to take his mind off his broken heart.