Losing Graceland (23 page)

“Ben?”

She stood in the doorway, wearing white Keds and an electric-blue T-shirt. Her blond hair was shorter than he remembered. She was prettier than he remembered; her cheeks flushed, like they always did when she got nervous. It all came back. He thought it was funny how he’d forgotten the little things. He’d always believed you remembered the little things and forgot the rest.

“Hey, Jess.”

“Hey. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“My cell died.”

“I figured it was something like that. I got back a few days ago.” She smiled. “I see you still haven’t cleaned that aquarium. Do you like my hair?”

“Love it.”

She pushed a strand behind her ear. “So, do you want to get some lunch?”

“How’s Alan?”

“I don’t care. It’s a long story, and if I never have to talk about him again …”

“That’s cool.”

Silence, then Jessica clapped her hands together. “So, lunch?”

“I can’t.”

“Oh.” She toed the carpet. “I just thought you might be hungry. We can walk around the mall instead, or do whatever.”

“I am hungry,” Ben said. “But I can’t have lunch. You do look great, though. That Alan is missing out.”

Jessica frowned. “I told you I don’t care about Alan. Why are you acting so weird?”

Ben stood and walked up to her. He could smell the cocoa butter scent that always made his mouth water. The raspberry lip gloss was gone, however. She was older now, a college girl with unscented lip gloss. She was more than pretty—she was beautiful. He could pretend and play the cool guy but he still loved her. Fifty years from now he’d love her. Maybe one day he’d wax nostalgic to some young man about his first love, and it would seem better than it actually was.

But so what, Ben thought, and he kissed her. Jessica kissed him back. Cherry lip balm; he’d been wrong about the unscented lip gloss. She squeezed his arms. He pulled away and she took a breath, looking up at him. The youngest girl he’d ever seen, pretending just like him.

“Honey, one hundred years ago you’d break my heart,” Ben said. He pushed her gently into the hall and shut the door.

He stood in the middle of his living room and waited until he heard her footsteps echoing down the stairs, then the slam of a car door and the roar of an engine. He grabbed the box and pulled out the newspaper.

At the bottom lay a gold lion’s head belt buckle.

“So you never saw Ginger again?” Patrick waved his arms. “That was
it
?”

Ben missed his layup. He let the ball bounce and roll across the court. They played in a park across the street from his apartment,
with netless rims and a chain-link fence that sliced the sun into yellow diamonds. He’d been gone a little more than a week but it was already mid-summer hot, that smell of warm pavement and exhaust.

“That was it,” Ben said. “I thought she might have run back to her pimp, so I stopped by on my way home, to the bus stop where we first picked her up. You know what I found? Another hooker.”

Patrick laughed. “You should’ve brought her back. I’d fuck a hooker.”

“How hot was Ginger?” Steve asked.

“Pretty hot,” Ben said.

“Scale of one to ten. One being Jim’s mom, ten being that hostess at Applebee’s.”

“The hostess at Jack Astor’s,” Jim said.

Steve waved him off. “Don’t be a douche bag. The Applebee’s hostess is more … what’s the word I’m looking for.”

“Fuckable,” Ben said.

“We’re not rating fuckable,” Jim said. “We’re rating hot.”

Steve frowned. “Same thing.”

“It’s not,” Patrick said. “Ben’s ex Jessica is hotter than Samantha, but I’d much rather fuck Samantha. No offense, Ben.”

“None taken.”

“Whatever,” Steve said. “I want to know about Ginger. Come on, Ben. One to ten.”

“Are we still talking about fuckability?”

“Jesus, who cares?” Steve retrieved the ball. “Just give us a rating.”

“Eight,” Ben said.

“Awesome,” Steve said, and Jim and Patrick jockeyed for position under the hoop as Steve launched a shot. Ben stared past them,
toward the boulevard with its traffic and horizon of low-slung strip malls and plazas. The air smelled like plastic again. This time, Ben knew what it was.

On the way home from the basketball court he stopped at the old man’s house. The lawn was brown from drought and leaves had collected on the steps. Ben pounded on the door and called for the old man but only heard the echoes of his fist. He walked around the back and peered through the windows; he saw a living room with furniture and little else—the stacks of books and papers he’d seen that morning when the old man answered the door with a muffin in one hand and an electric razor in the other were gone. Some dishes sat on the kitchen counter. A recycling bin filled with plastic Coke bottles waited on the linoleum floor.

Ben tried the garage door and it squeaked open. Late-day summer sun washed over the dusty cement floor. A push broom leaned against the wall, next to a bag of mulch and a garden spade with dried dirt pasted to its blade. The cherry red 1958 Ford Fairlane Skyliner was gone. In its place, an outline.

“I would have given you the Lincoln,” Ben said aloud. “That son of a bitch didn’t even have an engine.”

Broome was how he remembered. Quiet and flat, with subdivisions marked by power lines and sound-deflecting fences erected along the highway. His childhood home was a modest ranch with seasonal decorations on the front door; in the winter a wreath, in the fall an inflated vinyl skeleton, and now, in the summer, a plastic penguin wiping sweat from its forehead.

Ben took the key from its usual spot underneath the second piece of slate and rummaged through the front closet until he found his father’s blue-and-white sneakers. He stared at them for a moment, brushed some of the crusted dirt off the stiff laces, and scratched clean the blue Nike swoosh. Then he stuffed them into the kitchen garbage, tied the bag shut, and brought it out to the cans standing near the garage. He watched TV on the couch until his mom came home late from work.

She took off her shoes and sat next to him. Her gray suit looked worn. She undid her hair. “Ben, is that your car?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s nice. Was it expensive?”

“Not really. I bought it used.”

“It looks expensive, though. Do you need any money?”

“I’m okay. I sold some stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“An Elvis belt buckle.”

She yawned. “Oh, well, that explains it. People go crazy for Elvis. I never understood the appeal.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you staying for dinner?”

“Of course.”

“You know, Jessica called a few days ago. She said you weren’t answering your cell phone.”

“I saw her.”

“And are you two getting back together?”

Ben smiled and shook his head.

“Thank God,” his mom said. “You know I never cared for that girl. Too fickle.”

en leaned back with his cell pressed to one ear. He watched the dying sun glint off the water. He listened to the wind and the sounds of people walking below.

“Is this Alex?”

His apartment was clean and spare with a small patio for watching the sun set. He’d bought a canvas and a beginner’s oil painting set but they sat in his room, unopened. Instead he filled his days with wandering. A Dutch language class; a hash bar with bad paintings on the wall; a canal cruise with some fat Americans; a nightclub where he’d met a German girl and they fooled around in the backseat of her car.

“Who’s this?”

“Ben. Ben Fish. Do you remember—”

“Coyote Café. You and Elvis. Of course I remember. That was like a month ago.”

“Thirty-three days.”

“You’ve been counting?”

“Yep.”

Ben was a little surprised there’d been no dramatic transformation, no epiphanies. Just some mild culture shock—he was embarrassed to speak only one language after meeting a Dutch couple who spoke fluent English, German, and French—and the occasional lonely morning, because he’d always felt mornings were lonelier than nights.

“How was Memphis?” Ben said.

“Okay, I guess. Fiona hooked up with a guy in his forties and Heather and I saw a terrible Elvis band. The singer didn’t look anything like him. Not as bad as your grandpa, though.”

“He wasn’t my grandpa.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot. It’s been thirty-three days, you know.”

One afternoon Ben swore he spotted the old man walking past a fountain in the Rijksmuseum Gardens. He ran to catch up with him and saw it was a middle-aged tourist in a white jumpsuit with shiny black boots and thick gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses. Eating popcorn from a paper bag, street map in hand, reading over the top of his sunglasses.

“So,” Alex said. “Did Elvis ever find his granddaughter?”

“He did.”

“Reconciliation, I hope.”

“Not quite.”

A few days earlier in the top floor of an English bookstore Ben heard the cashier singing “Suspicious Minds,” and he expected the old man to walk out of the back room, carrying a stack of books, a trail of employees following close behind. On one of the racks sat a gossip rag, the front page a grainy doctored photo of an old fat man in a white jumpsuit exiting a classic car—maybe
a 1958 Ford Fairlane Skyliner, Ben couldn’t be sure—with a younger woman wearing sunglasses. The headline read:

“Don’t you think this is a little weird?” Alex said. “I mean, I’m not trying to ruin the reunion vibe, but it’s been over a month—”

“I had to make some arrangements. Is that a bad excuse?”

“It’s a terrible excuse.”

“Well, I wanted to let you know that you were right. The Kit Kats are better here.”

Silence. Alex laughed. Then she laughed some more.

They talked while Ben watched the sun set over the Herengracht Canal. The canals weren’t as big as he thought they’d be, little rivers running along city streets with canal boats that looked silly because it seemed so much easier to walk or bike. But sometimes he didn’t want to walk or bike. Sometimes he wanted to get on one of those canal boats and pretend he was headed for parts unknown, to the edge of the map, all the way to the end of the universe and through the keyhole in God’s bathroom door. To a place bigger than his father. Bigger than the world. Bigger than anything he ever knew.

Born during lunch in the backyard of a Cambridge home—DG laughed the longest and hardest at the karaoke scene. I’m indebted to the incomparable Jud Laghi, and to Sarah Self, who pushed when it needed pushing. Steve Trefonides and Brian Jenkins read the early drafts and offered much-needed feedback. Heather Lazare provided better edits than anything I could have come up with. Peter Guralnick’s Elvis bios were an invaluable resource. Jake Halpern was a mensch, as always. Ted Wyman offered his Back Bay apartment as a rock-and-roll sanctuary. Leslie Esptein and Ha Jin filled in the gaps.

Mom, Dad, Sis—gratitude would take up too much space and reader patience. This is yours. It always was. Anything good in these pages is the result of my wife’s encouragement, her careful eyes, and her uncanny ability to get me back to the shed.

Micah Nathan is an award-winning author, screenwriter, and essayist. His debut novel,
Gods of Aberdeen
, became an international bestseller.

Nathan’s short stories have been a finalist for the Tobias Wolff Award for Short Fiction and the Innovative Fiction Award, and his work has appeared in the
Gettysburg Review
, the
Bellingham Review, Boston Globe Magazine, Eclectica, Diagram, Glimmer Train
, and other national publications. He received his MFA from Boston University, where he was awarded the 2010 Saul Bellow Prize in Fiction. He currently lives in the Boston area with his wife, their dog, and an assortment of curiosities.