Losing Graceland (15 page)

Ben stared at the photo. “We need money.”

“Then find money.”

“I have two hundred bucks in my account.”

“I don’t even have an account,” Ginger said.

The old man squeezed his eyes shut and tried to order his thoughts. Think. Think of something.

Jet rides and round beds covered in purple velvet. Those sweet twins in their little pink panties giving him a rubdown after that show in Buffalo. Then there was the time he and Lamar broke into the Embassy Hotel kitchen and ate an entire twenty-four-pack of kosher dogs. Washed it down with a handful of ludes and spent the next day puking up processed meat.

Used to be he needed money and one tour sufficed. Three hundred thousand a week in 1973. Money always in his pocket. Grab a thick fold and yank it out. Fifties. Hundreds. Stack of dead presidents six feet high. Unfathomable now. Made his living selling memorabilia on eBay. One thousand for a signed scarf. Two hundred for a backstage pass.

Then he remembered the poster.

“I got an idea,” the old man said. “But first get me in the shower.”

He made Ben stand in the bathroom while he showered, standing in his soaked red sweatsuit with his eyes shut, water pattering against the velvety nap like rain on moss. His bandaged hand soaked through and blood dripped from the gauze, snaking down the drain in a winding tendril.

“It’s two hours to Little Valley,” the old man said. “Hundred bucks should get us a room for the night. Tomorrow I’ll clean up, enter that contest and do my thing. Then with cash prize in hand, we’ll head off to Shake and take care of business.”

“What about clothes?” Ben asked. “Don’t you need an outfit of some kind?”

“One-fifty should get us a decent pair of slacks, decent shirt, decent shoes, and decent belt repair. I’ll have them sew up my lion’s head buckle. Sight of that sonofabitch alone should land first prize.”

He soaped his armpits through the red sweatshirt and spit water like a Greek fountain. Then he laughed and spit again, and Ben thought about Ginger squeezing his hand when the doctor said dementia.

Ben sorted through the clothing racks, the scrape of hangers on metal rails reminding him of school shopping with his mom. He shifted his cell to his other ear.

“We’re going to the Allentown Art Festival tomorrow,” Patrick said. “Eric’s meeting us at Pano’s and we’ll probably walk there.”

“I can’t make it.”

“Art chicks, Ben. Easy art chicks as far as the eye can see. Nothing but nipples and pierced belly buttons.”

Ben lifted a pair of pants and held them up for Ginger, who shook her head. “Sorry, man,” Ben said. “I won’t be home until next week.”

“Where are you?” Patrick said.

“At a Wal-Mart in Tennessee.”

“Awesome. Are you shopping?”

“Uh-huh.”

“For the old man?”

“Who else.”

“What happened to Memphis?”

“Long story.” Ben lifted another pair of pants, and again Ginger shook her head.

“Do you still think he’s Elvis?” Patrick said.

“Get serious,” Ben said. “I’m not an idiot.”

“What about that hot girl who wanted to fuck? You said no, which is something only an idiot—”

Ben winked at Ginger and she stuck out her ass and slapped it. “I got someone else,” he said.

“Let me say hi,” Ginger said, and Ben tossed her the phone.

“Hello? Is this Patrick?”

“Yeah, this is Patrick. Who’s this?”

“Ginger.”

“Well, hello, Ginger. Are you Ben’s new girlfriend?”

“No. Ben’s my new pimp.”

“Excuse me?”

Ben went to grab the phone but Ginger pulled away. “You heard me,” she said. “Pimp. P-I-M-P.”

Patrick laughed. “Pimp as in hookers and pimps, or pimp as in hip-hop parlance—”

“Pimp as in a man who owns my ass and rents it out.”

“You’re
serious,
” Patrick said.

“Totally. Ben bought me from my old pimp. Clarence. Dude had one eye.”

“Let me talk to Ben.”

“Don’t you like talking to me?”

Ben grabbed Ginger’s arm and pulled her close. With his other hand he grabbed his cell but she kept listening, rising up on her toes and craning her neck.

“I do like talking to you,” Patrick said. “But this is just fucking unbeliev—”

Ben closed the cell. It twittered moments later. He stuffed it in his pocket and kissed Ginger long and hard. They stood in the middle of the men’s clothing aisle, under high fluorescent lights with Muzak playing “Burning Love.”

When they gave the old man the pants they’d chosen, he slung them over his shoulder and gazed across the store, eyes narrowed, mouth tight. “You got good taste,” he said. “I’m going to find a pair of boots. Think you could get me a shirt with a dragon on it? Or any kind of predator? Something powerful. Like a lion or tiger.”

“What about an elephant?” Ginger said. “They’re powerful.”

“They’re not a predator.”

“And a dragon is?”

“Sure.”

“What do they eat, then?”

The old man thought for a moment. “People, I guess. Ben?”

“People,” Ben said.

Ginger and Ben searched the racks for a shirt, and she told him stories about her childhood—how she’d lived with her mom in a small town in Wisconsin, in her grandparents’ farmhouse with a rickety porch and grapevines curled up the siding. There were only one hundred students in her elementary school, ice-cream cones only cost a dollar, and the town doctor wore a hat and bow tie. Ben thought the sound track to her childhood should’ve been the music that played during those “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner” commercials with Sam Elliot sounding like his throat was stuffed with gravel and you could almost hear the bristles of his mustache scratching against the studio mic.

Ginger said she’d never known her father, and a succession of her mother’s boyfriends always hurt them both in some way. Some were drunks, some were meth fiends, some touched Ginger when she was a little girl, and even though she squeezed her legs shut they touched her anyway. There was one, Ginger said, the most normal of the bunch, who carried a Bible and spoke of Jesus and forgiveness, until Ginger came home early from school and found him in the living room standing behind her friend Susan’s dad with his suit pants down around his ankles and the TV showing Matthew Modine’s
E! True Hollywood Story
.

Then there was the year of panic attacks, her mother holed up in her room with a box of tissues, a mumbling TV, and a steady supply of pills. Ginger said she’d tried the pills a few times but they made her dizzy and gave her nightmares, and the one time she came to school high, the teacher called child services. Soon after that her mother started dating the child services investigations worker.

Ben didn’t believe Ginger’s stories but he didn’t care because the telling of stories had always been his favorite part. Sometimes
he wished for a new girlfriend just so he could hear new stories and tell his own stories to fresh ears. It was like the slow unveiling of a painting, slipping off the white sheet inch by inch and discovering every new brush stroke and splash of color. He’d honed his own stories for maximum effect—the dramatic pauses, the ironic twists, the hand-to-your-mouth betrayals and sly admissions of bedroom prowess mixed in with self-deprecating asides of neuroses and obsessions. In his tales he was the perfect rogue, a victim of self-destruction and poor judgment, but there was potential in there, his stories promised, if only he could find the right woman.

And while he knew Ginger wasn’t that woman—he couldn’t imagine bringing her home, with her mid-nineties-style tight jeans and overdone makeup and possibly fucked-up childhood—he was content to pretend for a little while. One week ago he’d been contemplating a retail job, a drive to visit Jessica at college, and his Amsterdam fantasy. None of them were particularly realistic. None of them were close to what he had going on now—shopping for Elvis clothes with a hooker in a twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart.

If this isn’t anthropology, Ben thought, I don’t know what is.

They found a silky button-down shirt with a rattlesnake sewn over the breast. A desert landscape printed on the back showed a milky blue moon high above a mountain ridge. They brought it to the old man, who sat in the shoe aisle on a small stool and labored to squeeze his foot into a shiny black boot. Sweat dripped from his high forehead, making dark spots on his red sweatpants. Shoppers shuffled past, zombie eyes staring straight ahead.

Ben held up the shirt.

“That a rattler?” the old man said.

“It is.”

“I like it, man. Kinda looks like a small dragon. What do you think of these boots?”

Ben nodded. “Shiny.”

“I like the heels,” Ginger said.

In the checkout line the old woman working the register did a double take, life flaring into her tired eyes. Her hair was blue, the same shade as her Wal-Mart apron. She wore rose-colored glasses, thick as windshields.

She scanned the first item.
Silky button-down. Bad to the Bone collection
.

“Looks like you’re going to that tribute contest,” she said.

The old man nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Aren’t you a little old?”

“I’m a lot old.”

“You sort of look like him,” she said. “If he’d made it out of Graceland alive.”

She scanned the second item.
White poly slacks. Elasti-comfort waistband
.

“I remember when Elvis first came out,” she said, grabbing the boots. “My parents were scared of him. What he did with those hips …”

E-Z Slide gaucho boots. Genuine Leatherine
.

“Then he went to the Army. Cut off that gorgeous hair and took the rebel right out of him, like Delilah did with Samson. He wasn’t the same after that with all those silly movies.” She shook her head and counted the cash. “It only got worse from there. The gospel songs, the Vegas years. And the way he treated his wife.” She pursed her lips and folded the pants. “I never understood what she saw in him. A pretty woman like that, putting up with all his cheating and drug abuse. I tell you what
I
would have done—”

“Not a goddamn thing,” the old man said.

The old woman looked up. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” the old man said. Ben shot Ginger a worried look and he gently took the old man’s arm.

“We really should get to the hotel—”

“You wouldn’t’ve done a goddamn
thing,
” the old man said. “You don’t think Priscilla had her own toys to play with? You don’t think she made secret phone calls and told me she was going to lunch when she was really lying on her back while some GODDAMN HANGER-ON LAID PIPE?”

“Priscilla was a faithful wife!” the old woman shouted. “Everything I read—”

The old man pounded his fist on the counter. “
Lies
. Every one of them. Gossip rags and traitors threw me into the fire. Made me into the
bad guy
. Fuck them, and fuck you for believing it.”

Shoppers turned and stared. Out of the corner of his eye Ben saw a tall, heavy man lumbering toward them, dressed in white short-sleeve shirt and tie. His Wal-Mart name tag read
Bill Sawyers, Manager
.

“This gentleman cursed at me,” the old woman said. Her voice shook and Ben saw spittle collecting in the corners of her mouth. “He cursed at me and physically intimidated me—”

The old man hammered the counter with his fist again. He didn’t like the way it sounded, so he hammered it once more. “She’s goddamn right I cursed at her. Nosy old cooze sticking her business where it isn’t welcome. Don’t say a goddamn word, Bill Sawyers. Thirty years ago I’d have my boys haul your fat ass in the parking lot and whip you like a rented mule—”

Bill Sawyers put his hands on his hips. “Sir, there’s no reason for threats. Now, if you’ve already purchased your items …”

“It’s not his fault,” Ginger said, stuffing the black boots into a bag. “Everything was fine until this cranky bitch started talking smack.”

The old woman put her hand to her chest. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, don’t act all proper like nobody ever called you bitch before.”

“Sir, if you’ve already purchased your items, I’m going to ask you all to leave. I don’t want any trouble but—”

“Then tell that cranky bitch to keep her mouth shut.” Ginger glared at the old woman. “Go on and say something. I’ll knock your dentures the fuck
out.
”

Ben stepped between Ginger and the old woman. The old woman yelled. Ginger yelled back. Bill Sawyers raised his voice.

The old man slung the bag over his shoulder. He looked around the store, at the people who stared. Hazy memories of every place he’d ever been. Jackson. Montgomery. Austin. Vegas.
Vegas
. Like a sponge that sucked everything in and wrung it out dirty. Last bastion of the irrelevant. Corporatized freak show. Dress it up however you want, drizzle it with sex appeal and a heartbreaking tremolo, but it’s always been about the freak show. Suddenly he longed for the dark of his Cheektowaga home. The quiet of his side street in the winter. Snow plowed into dirty mountains, anorexic trees, and
Baywatch
reruns.

Remember Nadine, he told himself. It’s about Nadine. All that matters.

The old man pulled Ginger away and Ben stayed behind, apologizing to the old woman and apologizing to Bill Sawyers, Bill nodding as if he understood that these sorts of things happen with delusional old men.

As they walked through the automatic doors, the old man took a deep breath. “You tell them I was sorry?”

Ben nodded.

“Good. Sometimes I forget my place. I don’t ever mean to be angry.”

The night air was cool and damp, and the quiet of the bare parking lot sounded nice. The old man realized he couldn’t remember what kind of car he owned. Might be a wisteria-on-white Caddy, he thought. Then again, it might not.

hey spent Friday night in a ground-level room at the Take 5 Motel, an engine idling outside the front windows. The Denny’s restaurant sign glowed across the parking lot. Ginger lay asleep in bed and the old man had pulled out the couch, Ben fitting the sheets while the old man tucked the corners of a blanket under the thin mattress. Then the old man sat on a cushy chair in the corner, feet flat on the dark green carpet with legs apart, hands on the armrest. He was slightly stoned from the Percocet and a couple tabs of codeine he kept in his pocket. That old feeling of floating felt good, warm and easy like a bath on a summer night.