Matt now kept a cheat sheet in front of him. A list ofquestions for Elvis, with names attached. His fingertips spun it on the tabletop. This move turned the counseling game into a quiz show. How could he claim any pretenses to serious counseling when his client had to play games to prove he was who he implied he was? Of course, Elvis had always loved games, arrested adolescent that he was. Still, Matt’s ministerial past demanded that he do more than play media games. Was this bizarre charade damaging or helping the man who called on him for help? Maybe, Matt hoped and prayed, exposing Elvis’s dysfunctionalism via a voice in the night would help everybody: the caller, Matt himself, the audience. Everybody, of course, except the dead man talking.
Poor Elvis! The weight of his family history and his fame had become as massive and ungainly as his dying body. Elvis had stood on a slippery mountain of uppers and downers, thousands of pills, and ultimately hypodermic injections, a year. His favorite reading was books on spirituality and medical textbooks. He knew the Physician’s Desk Reference better than most doctors; armed with erroneous authority, he hooked his entourage on the same pharmaceutical seesaw of manic depression that he rode.
Another call was waiting.
Matt punched the button to release a voice. It took a heart-stopping moment to realize it wasn’t the one he expected every time he answered.
By then, the caller was well launched, eerily echoing his conscience.
“—you’ve got a nerve. Playing with the reputation of a dead man. I hope all the Elvis fans out there get together and protest. Can’t you do something on your own, without riding on a dead man’s coattails? Elvis means something to a lot of people, and this cheap radio trick doesn’t fool us, no, sir. You oughta be shot.”
“Wait a minute. We just take the calls that come in, like yours.”
“Yeah, and some of ‘em are put-up jobs. Come on! This actor you’ve hired is so cheesy, my twelve-year-old kid could do a better Elvis imitation. And don’t think we all don’t know that a bunch of these imitator guys are in town for the Kingdome opening. Hell, we Elvis fans just might boycott that big opening—how’d you like that, Kingdome people?—if you don’t cut off this corny gimmick with that phony Elvis. Leave the man to rest in peace. Show a little respect. Get a life!”
Matt gave Leticia a stunned look through the glass. She was as shocked as he. But this was a show, and it must go on.
“Obviously,” Matt commented into the foam-headed mike that had begun to feel like a friend, and maybe an only friend, “this caller is more in the mood for giving advice than asking for it.”
Another call. “I’ve been listening all week, and that last guy is right. That Elvis thing is taking the air time away from normal people. We got problems with bills and kids and all sorts of things superstars wouldn’t know anything about. I never liked Elvis when he was alive, and I don’t want to hear about him, or from him, now.”
“Believe it or not,” Matt answered wryly, “Elvis grew up in a house—several houses, because the family was so poor they kept losing places—that was full of problems like bills and yelling parents, just like everybody else.”
“Yeah, but he ended up with money to burn. That’s sure not like everybody else.”
“He ended up with dozens of people—family and friends who worked for him—to support, including the federal government, which is all of us, because he never took business deductions. For most of his career, he was in the ninety percent tax bracket. And he paid it, without complaint.”
That floored this caller. Matt blessed Electra’s supply of Elvis tomes.
“I love Elvis,” came a faded, female voice next. “I’ll take every chance I can get to see or hear him again, even if he’s not real. You keep talking to that man, Mr.
Midnight. He seems like he could use a friend. Elvis always had more friends than he knew.”
“Oh, I think he knew. That’s why he was able to perform when he was really ill. He kept going despite a lot of physical problems, and enough psychotropic drugs to stop an elephant.”
“Psycho-what?”
“Heavy mood-altering medications.”
“They all came from doctor’s prescriptions, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but Elvis manipulated the prescriptions. He had feel-good doctors in L.A. who would write him what he wanted.”
“Elvis wasn’t the first one. Look at Judy Garland. I took diet pills when I was in high school, back in the … well, back when Elvis was doing it. Our family doctor gave ‘em to me, these pink-and-white capsules. Made my mind race, made me think so much, think about all the things I was going to do. And I never wanted to eat. ‘Course, I couldn’t sleep a wink for the first month I was on them. And, then, after I lost ten pounds, I could sleep better, but they didn’t work to stop my appetite anymore.”
“What did you do then?”
“Nothing. Stopped taking them.”
“That’ s the difference. Elvis and his entourage never let the party stop; they just increased the dosage.” “But the pills were legal.”
“They aren’t anymore.”
“Why did Elvis do it? Why didn’t he just stop when they wore off, like I did?”
“He came from a family with a tendency to chemical addiction. He led an upside-down lifestyle as a performer that was hard to maintain without artificial energy. He thought they were harmless if a doctor prescribed them.”
“So did we. Then. We all thought Doctor Knows Rest “
“Doctors didn’t understand the many faces of addiction. Oh, they knew morphine and heroin were bad, but other stuff … And Elvis was coming into the sixties and seventies, when a lot of people started experimenting with all kinds of drugs. He was a man of his time.”
“You know, that’s what really bothers me. It was the drugs. I don’t understand why nobody stopped it.”
Matt shook his head, even though his caller couldn’t see gestures. “You can’t stop a person who’s addicted to drugs. It’s truly the hardest thing in life to overcome. It’s the last thing in life that person has, and so often the only exit from addiction is death. Elvis may have been a superstar, but when it came to drugs, he had no edge over anybody else. And that’s sad, no matter who it happens to.”
“I’m just so glad I was smart enough to quit taking diet pills all those years ago.” Her voice paused. A deep, trembling sigh. “I’m still fat, though.”
“You’re still here,” he said gently.
The commercial break gave Matt time to contemplate his unexpected—unwanted—new role as an Elvis apologist. From a lifestyle point of view, the man had been everything he wasn’t.
Leticia’s orange-painted lips were mouthing “poor baby” at him through the glass. Matt took a swig of lukewarm spring water. He felt as if he’d been wrung out and then hung out to dry. And this hadn’t even been the main event: the night’s Elvis appearance.
At least the phone lines were jumping, and in talk radio, that was the name of the game.
Chapter 29
Return to Sender
(Otis Blackwell’s song was the only quality number on the soundtrack of Girls, Girls, Girls, a 1962 film)
Temple hated to admit it, but Electra’s notion that the spirit haunting the Kingdome backstage area was more likely a vengeful Memphis Mafia member than the King himself made sense.
Of course, she didn’t for a moment believe in spirit manifestations. In the two incidents, flesh and blood had been attacked in actuality, or in simulation. As if the whole thing were a show. A production number.
It was possible that some Elvis advocate was so caught up in the past that he, or she, needed to protest the presence of an ersatz Priscilla.
Temple found the razor attack the most disturbing. Despite Quincey’s tough teen bravado, the act had been cruel and personal. If whoever did it had an opportunity to approach the real Priscilla … but that was the point. He didn’t, or he wouldn’t have bothered Quincey. And anybody that could do that to a sixteen-year-old girl—! Temple had paused under the soaring dome, which played endless footage of Elvis in concert. Evidently, running pre-existing film was estate-approved. Most of it was in blackand-white, so the effect was eerily like storm clouds clashing above, a pre-Technicolor twilight of the god.