Losing Graceland (19 page)

“Mr. Rickey is asleep. He is expecting you?”

“He’ll know my name.”

“What is your name?”

“Elvis, ma’am. Elvis Presley.”

“Who is this boy with you?”

“Ben Fish,” Ben said. “I’m his driver.”

The woman took another puff, staring at the two of them. The old man looked down at his ripped shirt. He smiled sheepishly. “Fell down some stairs,” he said. “My back isn’t what it used to be.”

“Okay.” She dropped the cigarette and ground it out on the porch with her bare foot.

She led them through a small living room with dark wooden furniture and heavy drapes. Photos were everywhere—portraits of families standing in front of giant Christmas trees, children with Easter bunnies, handsome couples on the decks of cruise ships; they all looked alike, that wealthy-family vibe that Ben couldn’t describe but knew it when he saw it. The complete opposite of Ben’s family photos; small, nervous people visibly uncomfortable standing so close to one another.

The house was quiet, just the sound of their feet padding across the floor. The Russian woman walked upstairs and they followed, the old man with his hand resting on his waist under his shirt. Ben saw sweat drip down his temples and bead off his jaw.

“Where’s Nadine?” the old man said. “She out getting groceries or something?”

“Nadine, the little bitch.” The Russian woman stopped at the beginning of a hallway papered in floral prints. “Nadine only cares about money. But Hank’s family knows this, so they send her away. Are you her family?”

“I’m her grandfather.”

“Okay. So I am sorry for calling her a bitch. But she was never nice to me. Never once. I clean up Mr. Rickey’s shit. I clip his fingernails. What does Nadine do? Sits on porch and talks to friends. Eats food I make, watches television. Three months she stays here, until I call Mr. Rickey’s family. They come, they fight with her.” She wiped her hands together. “
Pfft
, she is gone. Back to Memphis.”

“Where’s Hank?” the old man said.

“In his room. He is sleeping, but if you want—”

“I want.” He turned to Ben. “Son, wait for me downstairs.”

Ben sat in the kitchen with the Russian woman. A single window looked over the sloping yard, the outline of the willow darkening in the sunset. The kitchen was spotless, clean white walls and the plank floor waxed to a shine. Photos covered the fridge, the same faces Ben had seen throughout the house. It looked to Ben like the kind of kitchen where iced tea was always brewing, with jade-green mint leaves floating among perfect ice cubes.

The Russian woman told Ben her name was Alina, and she was from St. Petersburg. She’d been Mr. Rickey’s maid and cook for ten years; before that she’d been his sometimes-lover, a young twenty-something working as a secretary in a youth ministry office that Mr. Rickey lent his singing services to. Four months ago she’d found him on the living-room floor, whispering that his face was numb and his left leg wouldn’t work. He’d been with Nadine two months when he had his first stroke. They’d met in Memphis at a club that Mr. Rickey liked to frequent. Alina said that even at eighty-three years old he still liked to watch the girls dance. Nadine became his favorite girl, giving him lap dances without touching his lap because his bones were brittle.

Alina poured hot water into a pitcher and dropped in several
tea bags. “Even with stroke he still liked to watch Nadine dance. Before second stroke last month I tell Mr. Rickey Nadine only does this for money. I tell him I can do the same for free. My body is not so old. What do you think?”

Ben paused, unsure of what to say.

“I was a dancer,” she continued. She went up on her toes effortlessly, arms held low and graceful. Ben could see the hard edges of her calves peeking out from the hem of her red dress.

“A real dancer,” she said. “Vaganova Theater in St. Petersburg, five nights a week. Not sleaze dancer like Nadine. You want iced tea?”

“Please.”

“So.” Alina leaned against the kitchen counter and folded her slender arms across her chest. “What is your story, Ben Fish? Are you high-school student?”

“College.”

“Sorry. I am not so good with ages. What do you study?”

“Anthropology. I just graduated.”

“I do not know anthropology.”

“It’s the study of human cultures.”

“And that is your job now?”

“There aren’t any jobs in anthropology. I could find some tribe and live with them, but I don’t know of any that haven’t already been picked over.”

“So what is your job?”

“Right now I’m that old man’s driver.”

“Yes. The old man. He looks like Elvis, but not as handsome. Is he, you know …” Alina pointed to her head, twirled her finger and crossed her eyes.

“I’m still trying to figure that out,” Ben said.

“So how much is he paying you?”

“Ten thousand. But I’m not getting it. It’s all gone.”

“That is terrible.”

“It is terrible. I was planning to use that money for an apartment in Amsterdam. Have you ever been?”

She nodded. “I danced at the Het Muziektheater. Seven nights. Baryshnikov was in the audience for one show, and after he gives me single white flower. He is a short man. Onstage he looks like giant, but in person he is tall as you.”

“You think I’m short?”

Alina shrugged. “Well, you are not tall.”

Hank Rickey sat in a leather chair near the window with the drapes tied back. His room was large compared to the rest of the house—enough space for a king-size bed, and a walk-in closet that held his singing outfits: multicolored capes, bell-bottom white pants with garnets running down the seams, glittering silver and turquoise beads sewn in the shape of eagles, coati, and jaguars.

The old man stood in the doorway. He kept his hand on the butt of his pistol as he walked into Hank’s room. Scents of menthol and baby powder. An early-evening breeze blew in through the open window, rippling Hank’s brown bathrobe.

“Hank,” the old man said, and Hank looked up slowly, unsteadily, his eyes clouded and his lower lip trembling.

“Hank, I’ve come for Nadine.”

Hank smiled, his toothless mouth rimmed with jiggling flesh. His hands opened and closed, fresh-cut nails gliding over the
fabric of his brown bathrobe. His features were lost in the slack and droop of age and multiple strokes. Wisps of white hair floated atop his head. Spittle collected in the corners of his lips.

“That Russian maid told me Nadine’s back in Memphis,” the old man said. “But you and I know the truth.”

Hank blinked.

The old man pulled out the pistol and clicked back the hammer, hand trembling. He lowered it at Hank. “Tell me where she is, goddammit. And don’t say nothing about Memphis. No way I’m going back there, so don’t even try.”

Hank turned to the window, slowly, inexorably, like the movement of a glacier. His shoulders dropped and he closed his eyes.

“Hank.

“
Hank.
”

Hank’s chest rose and fell. His left hand twitched.

“Nadine Emma Brown,” the old man said. His voice cracked and he blinked to clear his eyes. “I know she’s here. I’ll tear this goddamn house apart.”

Hank began to snore, a sputtering wheeze as quiet as the wind that ruffled the drapes and the edges of his robe. The old man stumbled forward, knocked his foot on the bed and fell to his knees, gun clattering from his sweating hand, spinning on the plank floor. He scrambled for it and clutched the edge of Hank’s chair.

“Now, you listen to me,” the old man said. “Sitting there like you think you’re something better. Never had the pussy I had. Never had the screams so loud you’d think a thousand jets took off at the same time. Made my ears ring after every show; doctors said it was hypertension but I know it was worship. Screaming my
name like I’m a Greek god come down to fuck each and every one of them.”

Hank’s breathing slowed.

“They screamed, ‘Fuck me, Elvis,’ and I fucked as hard as I could. Would’ve made you proud to see the women I fucked. Like visions come out of the ocean on a bed of pearls, tucked in one of them giant seashells. What’s the word? Sirens, is it? Or mermaids. I don’t know. Something wet and hot with seaweed covering their nipples so they get past the censors. You remember the censors, Hank. Remember that night I came to you crying after that motherfucker made me sing to a dog? Remember that? Remember what you told me? Come on now. Let me hear you say it.”

Hank’s head dropped, chin resting on his sunken chest.

The old man wiped his eyes with the hand he held the gun in. “You said to be great is to be misunderstood.”

Hank snored.

The old man sat on the floor with his legs out in front of him, head leaning against the side of the chair. The breeze cooled the back of his neck. Downstairs he heard Ben laughing. He looked into the gun barrel and let a lazy smile curl his lip.

“Look at us,” he said. “We slept through the end of the world.”

“Yes, I see it is beginning to bruise.”

Ben touched his eye. “Like a good bruise?”

“What do you mean, good bruise?” Alina sat at the kitchen table, sipping iced tea, cigarette scissored between index and middle finger. Late dusk fell outside the kitchen window, a blue-black horizon and the last flash of a cloud’s edge above the willow, slowly closing in on the dark.

“I mean does it look like someone punched me?”

“Someone did punch you. In both eyes. You look like raccoon.”

Ben drummed his fingers on the table. “I should have told Ginger I loved her. A little white lie wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”

Alina rested her chin in her hand and stared at Ben with her wide blue eyes. “Young women always talk about love.
Do you love me? I love you. He does not love me. I do not love him
. Love, love, love. Why? We do not need love to fuck. Or to have good times. If I only go with men who I love, my list is very short. Worry about love later, when excitement is gone. Then love is everything. Before that?
Pfft
. Love is a pest.”

“I don’t think I liked her anyway,” Ben said. “I practically bought her—no, not practically. I did buy her. I paid a pimp five thousand dollars. It was the tattoo, you know. I fell for it. She has these Chinese characters across her lower back, and she doesn’t even know what they mean.…”

Alina puffed contentedly.

“All I’m saying is I couldn’t pull it off,” Ben continued. “I can’t date a hooker. I’m not a hooker-dating guy. Can you imagine what my mom would do? She’s been through enough, and I’ve been useless. I’m not nearly as brave as I thought I was. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t even care that I don’t know where I’m going. I just graduated with a degree that will make me the smartest guy working at Burger King, I feel like I’m still in high school, and all I want to do is go back in time and call my dad and ask him just what the fuck I’m supposed to do with my life—”

Ben cupped his face in his hands. He clenched his teeth but the tears started anyway. He tightened his stomach and dug his fingers into his scalp, but they didn’t stop.

Oh, please not here, he thought. Not in front of this hot Russian woman.

“I’m sorry.” Ben forced a laugh and felt his palms wet. Colors blossomed in the dark of his shut eyes. Alina’s hand touched his back.

“You can call your dad from here,” she said. “Do not worry about long-distance charges.”

Ben rested his head on the kitchen table. Alina rubbed his back and hummed.

Hank slept in his chair, summer breeze stroking his face and shadows coiling around his thin leg. The old man sat on the floor, eyes half-lidded, wrinkled hands flat on the worn planks, watching an ant move from finger to finger. The old man wished he had a crumb for the little fella. He marveled at its unwavering faith, its tireless quest for something sweet to feed its little ants back home, and soon the old man found himself tearing up. He’d felt lonely most of his life, as if only he understood the true meaning of ambition above everything else, and yet here was his companion all along: an ant. Trillions of the little bastards just like him. Amazing, he thought. Lord, thank you for sending this ant to me.

Hank snored.

“I couldn’t see them even if I wanted to,” the old man said to Hank. “How would they deal with a shock like that? Hey, little Lisa, it’s your daddy. I been gone a long time and you stood over my grave and said sweet things, but now I got to tell you you were only talking to dirt.”

But there’s still time
, the old man imagined Hank would say.
There’s always time until there isn’t
.

“I ran out of time thirty years ago,” the old man said. “World sat on a hill and watched me burn, and nobody did a goddamn thing except warm themselves by the fire.”

Nobody in the history of man had as much as you
.

“I know. But I never asked for any of it. I didn’t want it anymore.”

Wasn’t your decision
.

“I didn’t know who I was. Only saw myself through everyone else.”

Last chance, then. To make it right
.

“I know.”

To do what’s got to be done
.

“All right already.” The old man stood, slowly, painfully, easing around the protests in his back and warning shots firing down his leg. The gun felt heavy in his waistband, cold metal against his skin reminding him of that dark day in ’86. He got lucky that day, or unlucky, depending on how you looked at it. He’d awakened in a pool of his own blood, bullet stuck into the wall over his couch.

The old man pushed his hair back and fingered the scar on his temple. He looked at Hank.

“What do you say?” He drummed his fingers on the butt end of the pistol. “Do we end it here, or do I get one last chance?”

Hank opened his eyes. His voice was wind from a cave.
Nothing for us to fight over except table scraps and memories
.

“Then can I have one of your jumpsuits?”

Take them all
, the old man imagined Hank answered.
Don’t you know I always loved you?

itter dreams. Fire and ruin. What do you do when your enemies have shriveled and curled like old leaves at the bottom of a hedge? When the whispers stop, the sheets are yanked off the chair and you realize there’s no monster beneath the dusty folds?