what I really wanted. I like working for someone else, sort of troubleshooting and coming in with a creative and efficient plan for improvement or expansion. Managing is what I do best."
She waited a beat. "No sarcastic comments to that?"
"Only on the inside. That way I can save them up until you tick me off again."
"I can hardly wait. In any case, it's like, I enjoy planting a garden from scratch—that blank slate. But more, I like taking one that's not planned very well, or needs some shaping up, and turning it around."
She paused, frowned. "Funny, I just remembered. I had a dream about a garden a few nights ago. A really strange dream with ... I don't know, something spooky about it. I can't quite get it back, but there was something ... this huge, gorgeous blue dahlia. Dahlias are a particular favorite of mine, and blue's
my favorite color. Still, it shouldn't have been there, didn't belong there. I hadn't planted it. But there it was. Strange."
"What did you do with it? The dahlia?"
"Can't remember. Luke woke me up, so my garden and the exotic dahlia went poof." And the room,
she thought, the room had been so cold. "He wasn't feeling well, a little tummy distress."
"He okay now?"
"Yeah." Another point for his side, Stella thought. "He's fine, thanks."
"How about the tooth?"
Uh-oh, second point. The man remembered her baby'd had a loose tooth. "Sold to the Tooth Fairy for
a crisp dollar bill. Second one's about to wiggle out. He's got the cutest little lisp going on right now."
"His big brother teach him how to spit through the hole yet?"
She grimaced. "Not to my knowledge."
"What you don't know... I bet it's still there—the magic dahlia—blooming in dreamland."
"That's a nice thought." Kill it. God, where did that come from? she wondered, fighting off a shudder.
"It was pretty spectacular, as I recall."
She glanced around as he pulled into a parking lot. "Is this it?"
"It's across the road. This is like the visitors' center, the staging area. We get our tickets inside, and they take groups over in shuttles."
He turned off the engine, shifted to look at her. "Five bucks says you're a convert when we come back out."
"An Elvis convert? I don't have anything against him now."
"Five bucks. You'll be buying an Elvis CD, minimum, after the tour."
"That's a bet."
* * *
It was so much smaller than she'd imagined. She'd pictured something big and sprawling, something mansionlike, close to the level of Harper House. Instead, it was a relatively modest-sized home, and
the rooms—at least the ones the tour encompassed—rather small.
She shuffled along with the rest of the tourists, listening to Lisa Marie Presley's recorded memories
and observations through the provided headset.
She puzzled over the pleated fabric in shades of curry, blue, and maroon swagged from the ceiling and covering every inch of wall in the cramped, pool-table-dominated game room. Then wondered at the waterfall, the wild-animal prints and tiki-hut accessories all crowned by a ceiling of green shag carpet in the jungle room.
Someone had lived with this, she thought. Not just someone, but an icon—a man of miraculous talent
and fame. And it was sweet to listen to the woman who'd been a child when she'd lost her famous
father, talk about the man she remembered, and loved.
The trophy room was astonishing to her, and immediately replaced her style quibbles with awe. It seemed like miles of walls in the meandering hallways were covered, cheek by jowl, with Elvis's gold and platinum records. All that accomplished, all that earned in fewer years, really, than she'd been alive.
And with Elvis singing through her headset, she admired his accomplishments, marveled over his elaborate, splashy, and myriad stage costumes. Then was charmed by his photographs, his movie
posters, and the snippets of interviews.
* * *
You learned a lot about someone walking through Graceland with her, Logan discovered. Some
snickered over the dated and debatably tacky decor. Some stood glassy-eyed with adoration for the
dead King. Others bopped along, rubbernecking or chatting, moving on through so they could get it
all in and push on to the souvenir shops. Then they could go home and say, been there, done that.
But Stella looked at everything. And listened. He could tell she was listening carefully to the recording,
the way her head would cock just an inch to the right. Listening soberly, he thought, and he'd bet a lot more than five bucks that she followed the instructions on the tape, pressing the correct number for the next segment at exactly the proper time.
It was kind of cute actually.
When they stepped outside to make the short pilgrimage to Elvis's poolside grave, she took off her headphones for the first time.
"I didn't know all that," she began. "Nothing more than the bare basics, really. Over a billion records
sold? It's beyond comprehension, really. I certainly can't imagine what it would be like to do all that
and ... what are you grinning at?"
"I bet if you had to take an Elvis test right now, you'd ace it."
"Shut up." But she laughed, then sobered again when she walked through the sunlight with him to the Meditation Garden, and the King's grave.
There were flowers, live ones wilting in the sun, plastic ones fading in it. And the little gravesite beside
the swimming pool seemed both eccentric and right. Cameras snapped around them now, and she heard someone quietly sobbing.
"People claim to have seen his ghost, you know, back there." Logan gestured. "That is, if he's really dead."
"You don't believe that."
"Oh, yeah, Elvis left the building a long time ago."
"I mean about the ghost."
"Well, if he was going to haunt any place, this would be it."
They wound around toward the shuttle pickup. "People are awfully casual about ghosts around here."
It took him a minute. "Oh, the Harper Bride. Seen her yet?"
"No, I haven't. But that may only be because, you know, she doesn't exist. You're not going to tell me you've seen her."
"Can't say I have. Lot of people claim to, but then some claim to have seen Elvis eating peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches at some diner ten years after he died."
"Exactly!" She was so pleased with his good sense, she gave him a light punch on the arm. "People see what they want to see, or have been schooled to see, or expect to. Imaginations run wild, especially under the right conditions or atmosphere. They ought to do more with the gardens here, don't you think?"
"Don't get me started."
"You're right. No shop talk. Instead, I'll just thank you for bringing me. I don't know when I'd've gotten around to it on my own."
"What'd you think?"
"Sad and sweet and fascinating." She passed her headphones back to the attendant and stepped on the shuttle. "Some of the rooms were, let's say, unique in decor."
Their arms bumped, brushed, stayed pressed to each other in the narrow confines of the shuttle's seats. Her-hair skimmed along his shoulder until she shoved it back. He was sorry when she did.
"I knew this guy, big Elvis fan. He set about duplicating Graceland in his house. Got fabric like you saw
in the game room, did his walls and ceilings."
She turned to face him, stared. "You're kidding."
He simply swiped a finger over his heart. "Even put a scar on his pool table to match the one on Elvis's. When he talked about getting those yellow appliances—"
"Harvest gold."
"Whatever. When he starting making noises about putting those in, his wife gave him notice. Her or Elvis."
Her face was alive with humor, and he stopped hearing the chatter of other passengers. There was something about her when she smiled, full out, that blew straight through him.
"And which did he choose?"
"Huh?"
"Which did he choose? His wife or Elvis?"
"Well." He stretched out his legs, but couldn't really shift his body away from hers. The sun was blasting through the window beside her, striking all that curling red hair. "He settled on re-creating it in his basement, and was trying to talk her into letting him put a scale model of the Meditation Garden in their backyard."