The debate was high-octane tonight.
“Couldn’t you tell the poor man is just looking for peace, whoever he is?” The woman’s voice was teary. “We can give it to him if we just stop expecting him to be anything any more, even alive. That was so sad, Mr. Midnight. What Elvis said last night. I hope he’s all right now.”
“He’s all right, mama. He’s probably calling in from some money-laundering island in the Caribbean, laughing at how gullible we all are. He’s probably got a secret deal with the estate to stay dead, so they can milk his image better. Who wants to see Elvis a senior citizen? I hope you radio people expose the bastard who’s been pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes. If he comes on again, I dare you to let me ask him a few questions.”
“You’d scare him away! You probably already have. Guys like you were just jealous of Elvis.”
Matt was playing referee tonight. He hardly had to put a word in as Leticia conducted the bristling switchboard like a bandleader.
He sat there, listening, exhausted by the strong feelings pro and con the topic of Elvis raised, growing more concerned that this outbreak of emotion would driveaway the one man who really needed to get on the line: the supposed Elvis himself.
These calls had always come independently of whoever else was calling in and what they were saying. Elvis seemed cocooned in his own world, musing in a sometimes laid-back, sometimes manic monologue. Matt almost got the impression that he didn’t listen to the radio show at all, that he just dialed during the proper hour and connected.
Two isolated men, talking, with the world listening in. And the FBI.
Matt shifted in his seat, interrupting a denouncement of rock ‘n’ roll music. “The music can’t talk back. And neither can Elvis.”
“Yes, he can!” the next caller argued. “He’s been talking here.”
“We don’t know who that is. Was,” Matt said, suddenly sure. “I don’t think whoever he was will be calling in again.”
“Why, is his contract up?” a snide-sounding man demanded.
“I think he’s shared as much of himself as he’s going to. Didn’t you notice his call last night had a . final … air to it?”
“Aw, he won’t ever go away, not really.” The woman sounded more anxious than certain. “You can’t mean that was it. That he’ll just stop.”
“He did before.”
But the calls didn’t stop. Someone even asked everyone not to call in, “so that the King could get through.”
Matt smiled to see Leticia’s face solidifying into horror on the other side of the glass barrier. Nobody wanted Elvis to stop calling.
Except Matt.
“It’s over,” he said, voicing his thoughts.
The big hand on the schoolhouse clock sliced the line that stood for twelve fifty-nine. The roulette wheel of time was running out tonight, and even Leticia’s willingness to let the show run overtime meant nothing if the main attraction failed to show.
“He’s skipped a night before,” a woman’s thin voice pointed out just as the minute hand clicked into place on high noon, or high midnight.
Matt heard his rush of closing words. Thanksforcalling, we’llhavetowaitandsee. Waitandsee.
Reluctantly, Leticia’s falling hand cued Dwight to run the scheduled ad.
Matt pulled off the headphones before he could hear some inane jingle for a furniture rental place or a car dealership or a Laundromat. Advertisers at the midnight hour expected a young and restless audience in need of credit and consumer goods. What a role model Elvis was for them.
“Sorry,” Leticia told him on the way out.
He didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t sorry.
Maybe his long session last night had exorcised Elvis. He hoped so.
The group outside was bigger than ever, up to nine people. All women.
“He didn’t call us,” one wailed as soon as she saw him.
“Don’t take it personally. If he’s standing anybody up, it’s me.”
“Nobody would stand you up, Mr. Midnight.”
Matt stared, nonplussed, into devoted eyes that would look right on a basset hound.
“How did you all get here so fast?” he wondered aloud.
“We came early and listened on the car radio,” a pair of plump night-shift nurses said, almost as one, proud of their initiative.
“Maybe he’ll call tomorrow.” Another woman handed him the usual photograph to sign.
Leticia had given him a pen that wrote in silver, so it would show up on the photo’s darker surfaces. She had a whole box of the things, brand-new, and had beamedlike Santa Claus bestowing an electric train instead of a producer anticipating many nights of numbing ritual outside the radio station door that would soon become tiring and then an imposition.
Once the novelty wore off, so would the ease.
“You might want to sign this on something solid.”
Matt had been so busy autographing his photos that he hadn’t noticed the quiet woman come up. She looked more businesslike than the average fan, and her tote bag still had shipping folds in it. Elvis’s face on the black background was drawn and quartered right through the Pepsi-Cola smile.
Matt took the thick fabric pen she offered—do their research, the FBI—to the newspaper vending machine, slipping the one set of tapes from his jacket pocket and into the bag.
He wrote “Sincerely, Mr. Midnight” in big loose letters across the rough surface.
Her mumbled “thank you” vanished into the pressing crowd, who weren’t many, but who all wanted to be in the first row of his admirers.
“Maybe if Elvis doesn’t call any more, you won’t have to sit out here at midnight listening to your car radios,” he joked, signing as fast as he could.
“Oh, no. We’ll still be here for you,” they promised in a ragged chorus.
They were fans. They would always be there. For somebody.
Chapter 51
It Wouldn’t Be the Same Without You
(A song Elvis recorded during an early Sun session, without much success)
Temple’s phone rang eight times before she answered it, and it was after noon.
Matt was too weary to have much imagination after a sleepless night haunted by Elvis clones, but he couldn’t help wondering if Max Kinsella was back in town, keeping Temple up late.
She sounded rushed when she finally picked up the phone.
“Hell-oo.”
“Matt. I wondered if you have a moment for career consultation.”
“Now?”
He felt like the ceiling had rained a bucket of ice-water. “No, of course not. Not now. Whenever—” “Matt, don’t be so darn eager to oblige. You sound alittle … worried. I’m sorry. It’s been wild. Why don’t we go to lunch, or something.”
“What would the ‘or something’ be?”
“Something fun. I know! We could drive out to Three O’Clock Louie’s at, ta-dum, Temple Bar. I’ve been wanting to patronize the old guys. This is as good an occasion as any.”
“But you’ll have to drive, as usual, and it’s me who wanted to get together. I’ve really got to find some free time to buy a car.”
“Agreed. I could go with you … except I’ve forgotten all the tips on car-buying, it’s been so long since I got the Storm.”
“Maybe I’ll just get a Saturn.”
“Sounds fine, but kind of … predictable.”
“Sony. Why don’t I be unpredictable now? Any reason we can’t take the Vampire out to the lake?”
“It’s just as far away as my leggings and fifties ankle boots. I can use Electra’s ‘Speed Queen’ helmet. I’ve been dying to.”
“Okay! Twenty minutes?”
“Make it fifteen. I’m hungry, and there’s nothing like a nice, cold, bouncy ride to enhance an appetite.” Yeah, Matt thought, hanging up.
Suddenly, it was an expedition.