“She’s right,” Temple told the girl, whose mascara-blurred eyes were desperately panning the hallway outside for supporters. “If Elvi are dying, it’s not safe for the one Priscilla among them.”
“But they’re counting on me!”
Somehow, Merle had dragged her daughter to the doorway. “They can count on some other girl.”
“The Crawf is counting on me!” Quincey clawed at the doorjamb, but her long fingernails snapped under the pressure. “My manicure—!”
A man in black stepped forward. “Need some help, ma’am? We’d like your daughter out of the line of fire, too.”
“Fire?” Merle stiffened. “There’s been shooting too?”
“Just an expression, ma’am. Come on, miss. Your mother’s right. This is no place for a teenager.”
“Elvis was my age when he started his career!” Quincey was kicking as well as screaming now, and the man in black’s mohair shins were bearing the brunt of it. “You don’t know what you’re stopping here! I’ll sue! I’ll get my probation officer to go to the highest court in the land. I’ll—”
The words, “probation officer” had the opposite than desired effect. Men in black tightened their lips, and their grips. They hustled Miss Quincey down the hall to instant obscurity, and therefore safety, her mother taking up the rear.
“Probation officer,” Temple mumbled, awestruck. All she had was one unimpressed homicide lieutenant, and it had taken her until age thirty to attract official attention.
That Quincey was a pistol.
But she was gone, and the dressing room emptied of spectators with the expulsion of Quincey and her mother, no doubt bound somewhere well east of Eden.
Temple, left alone, stared a little sadly at the impressive rows of discount store hair, eyes, teeth, and nail products laid out like leaderless soldiers whose general had been captured. Saddest of all was the gaudy tube of Daddy Longlegs’s Centipede Sweetie mascara, and the spidery array of false eyelashes entombed in their clear plastic packaging coffins like Elvis jumpsuits in the Medication Garden.
Enter the cause of it all, the snake, hissing, stage left. “Psst! T. B.”
How could she have forgotten? The last Elvis Exploiter, foiled at first and always. Her eyes met his in the mirror.
They were alone.
Crawford—somehow the title of Elvis’s King Creole opening number, “Crawfish,” came inexorably to mind—crept into the deserted dressing room.
“Glad to see you haven’t gone ballistic, T. B.”
“I will if you continue to refer to me as an infectious disease.”
He ankled over to stand beside her in the mirror. “Why, Temple honey, I didn’t know you cared.” She elbowed him in the ribs.
“I’m done,” he said, doubling over.
“Come on. I didn’t hit you that hard.”
“It’s not that.” He looked up from almost black eyes, large and accusing. “It’s my emcee gig here tomorrow. I need my Priscilla.”
“Maybe you can talk Merle into doing it.”
“Merle? She’s all wrong for the role.”
“Oh, come on! Anyone can impersonate a Priscilla Barbie Bride. You could do it now that you’ve shaved off your stupid mustache.”
“I’m hosting the competition, much as I care anymore.” Without taking his arm from his midsection, he collapsed onto a dressing table chair. “You’re right. None of it matters. The King is dead. My career is dead. Quincey will have to go to reform school; I won’t have the dough to bail her out.”
“Crawford! Since when were you going to lift a finger for Quincey anyway? You’re always getting her into some gig no teenage girl should do. I’m glad her mother has finally shown some backbone and jerked Quin from the competition. How bad does it have to get before you start thinking of someone besides yourself?”
“About as bad as this.” He looked up, his face stricken. Crawford Buchanan stricken looked like a Chihuahua with Montezuma’s revenge. Small and obnoxious and big-eyed pathetic. “I really idolized the King. Wouldn’t admit it to just anyone, but I did. I was thrilled to emcee this competition. I don’t mind the impersonators. Maybe all together they only capture a tenth of what he had, but it’s a tenth more than we’d know about today without them. Even lightning needs lightning rods, huh?”
“Maybe lightning bugs,” she suggested pointedly. “I’m not sure I can go on,” he sniveled.
Yes, Crawford Buchanan sniveled as well as sneered and leered. He belonged in a bad melodrama, as if there were any good ones.
“You’ll live,” she said shortly, moving toward the dressing room door.
“No, I don’t mean I can’t go ‘on’ on. I mean I don’t know if I can go on stage tomorrow night. For the competition. It’s not only too soon after Elvis’s death”—Temple rolled her eyes and found herself exchanging exasperated glances with a big fat spider on the ceiling; how appropriate; even the insect world had no use for C. B—“but it’s dangerous out there. Someone could kill me by mistake.”
“Don’t worry about it. I can’t ever see it happening that someone would kill you by mistake.”
“What if the Elvis-killer is another impersonator, mad to win? Or a deranged fan afraid a rediscovered King wouldn’t live up to his old image? It could be anybody.” “That’s absolutely right.” Temple folded her arms over her chest, which even in his extremity of emotion was attracting too much notice from Crawford Buchanan. “Okay. I can provide you with bodyguards, but that’s all.”
“I need a Priscilla to share the stage. It’s a great part, T. B. —Temple.”
“Oh, sure. Stand around in the background like an albino Christmas tree and then sling some humongous, heavy belt to the guy who wins, all the time wearing shredding organza and unraveling seed pearls. And maybe while I’m at it, a deranged fan/killer/maniac can rush out and strangle me with a guitar string. Bodyguards.”
“Who can you get for that?”
“Experts. That’s all you need to know.”
“There are enough guys running around here in those funeral-director suits already. They haven’t been able to stop a thing.”
“Those aren’t my bodyguards.”
“Who are they then?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Then how do I know if they exist and are doing their jobs?”
“You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
He frowned and squinted, trying to squeeze out a fresh glaze of liquid to his eyes. Apparently he was done crying for the King. He only managed to look constipated, which was also appropriate.
Temple turned to leave.
“Please! I need a Priscilla tomorrow night.”
“Rent a department store mannequin, then, and drape what’s left of the wedding gown on it; I’m sure no one in the audience will notice. Now.” She pointed a forefinger. “Out.”
He slunk away like a whipped weimaraner.
Temple sat on the vacated chair, feeling virtuous about heeding Matt’s advice to take the sane and stable road of noninvolvement.
He had been right. How satisfying it was to turn C. B.
down cold, although it might have been fun to masquerade as Priscilla. If the dress hadn’t been trashed, she might have tried it, but no dress, no Priscilla, and one less Presley persona to worry about.
She glanced again at the many accoutrements necessary for recreating a late sixties woman, including almost-white lipstick. Ick! How had they brainwashed women into these universal “looks” back then? Temple liked to skim a fashion magazine occasionally, and occasionally went after a way-out nail color or a certain article of clothing, but she was mostly immune to the color palette of the season or the next weird Hollywood hair thing.
The soft scrape of a shoe on cement made her look up.
A man in black’s silhouette filled the doorway. As she watched, puzzled, he stepped into the room, drawing the door closed behind him.
Maybe the impenetrable sunglass lenses spooked her. They were as shiny and opaque as the bug-eyes on those shrimpy albino aliens who were the official poster beings of the UFO set.