I went back and asked the Colonel.
"Yeah, yeah," he said. "Book it."
One day. Two shows. Twenty thousand seats. Big-time show business.
As soon as we stepped off the plane in Miami, we needed a shower. The heat waves shimmered. Anything more than fifty yards away looked like a mirage. The concierge from the Fontainebleau sent a limousine to pick us up. I got in, smiling. The Colonel just stood there.
"Hey, come on," I said. "What are you waiting for?"
He said, "Sorry, son, but that just ain't my kind of fancy."
Instead, he climbed into the station wagon that had been sent for the luggage.
I dropped off my bags and went to the arena.
I walked into the box office and asked for the guy I had been talking to on the phone. I wanted to check the gate. The concert was the next afternoon. He was sitting in the office, holding this huge stack of tickets, smiling.
"What are those?" I asked.
"What are what, Mr. Weintraub?"
"In your hand," I said.
"These are your tickets," he said. "For Elvis. The matinee."
"Are people coming to pick them up?" I asked.
"No, Mr. Weintraub. These are the tickets that have not sold."
"What do you mean? You said you would sell them all."
There were maybe five thousand tickets in his hand-half the house. My mind was racing, a single word tolling in my mind: disaster, disaster, disaster! What did Elvis tell me, his one thing? "I just don't want to sing to any empty seats."
I got close to the ticket seller, looked into his cold, pinprick eyes. "Why did you tell me we were sold out?" I asked.
He shrugged and said, "I was just telling you what you wanted to hear."
I went wild, grabbed him by the shirt, shook him, swearing. He grinned. I picked him up, slammed him into the wall. People came running. They pulled me off. Someone said, "Take it easy. You're gonna kill him!" I stormed out, trying to cool down, trying to think. My career is going to be over before it begins. I walked outside, then followed the street to the beach. I was thinking about the concert, about what would happen when Elvis saw all those empty seats. What can I do? Give away the tickets, confess to Elvis, throw myself on the mercy of the Colonel?
On the way back to the arena, I passed the county jail, a windowless fortress just across from the Civic Center. I wandered around the arena until Elvis showed up with his entourage for rehearsal and sound check. I pulled the Colonel aside.
"What's happening, son?" he asked.
"Well, Colonel, we have a problem," I told him.
"Oh, we do," he said. "What's our problem?"
"It seems I was misled before I booked the matinee," I said, "and now I'm stuck with five thousand unsold seats."
He pushed his hat back and said, "Well, son, as far as I can tell, we don't have a problem. You have a problem."
"Yeah, well, what should I do?" I asked.
"I'll tell you what you should do," he said. "You should fix your problem."
He went back to his entourage, and I went back to the hotel. I got in bed. I tossed and turned. When I finally fell sleep, I had nightmares, a tiny Elvis, with his cape and flare boots, kung fu kicking before an empty house, storming offstage, shouting, WHINE-traub! WHINE-traub!
I woke up early and went to the arena. I stood in the aisles and studied the seats. I noticed that bolts secured each of the seats to the floor. Meaning these could be unscrewed and carried away. How long would it take to unscrew five thousand seats, how many men would it take? I wandered over to the jailhouse I had seen the day before, asked for the person in charge, and soon found myself talking to the sheriff. I don't remember what he looked like, so imagine him as you want-a trim, officious, bureaucrat, or a big, burly southern lawman, the sort played by Jackie Gleason in Cannonball Run. I moved a pile of money from my pocket to his pocket.
"What can I do for you?" he asked.
"I want to take five thousand seats out of the convention center, hide them for a few hours, then, before the nighttime show, put them right back in," I said. "Can you help me?"
"No problem."
A few hours later, the sheriff showed up with dozens of prisoners, men in orange jumpsuits who unscrewed and carried away the seats, which they piled in the parking lot and covered with a blue tarp. In my mind, I still see that blue tarp hiding the unsold seats. It is one of several images that, spliced together, tell the story of my career. The jewelry bag with my initials is the life I did not live. The seats rising from second base to the grandstand is the audience that must be attracted, satisfied, sold. The blue tarp is the need to innovate and improvise.
Elvis sang the matinee. It was great. Not an empty seat in the house. Then, as he rested between shows, the prisoners went back to work, tearing away the tarp, carrying the seats back to the arena, screwing them into the floor. The second show was even better. Elvis sang all his hits. Between songs, he dabbed sweat from his face with a scarf, then tossed the scarf to the women near the stage, who fought over it, smelled it, passed out. I went back to the Fontainebleau hotel with Elvis. He was spent, exhilarated but depleted, having given everything away. "You know, Jerry, it's amazing," he told me. "The crowd was good in the afternoon, but it's always so much better at night."
We were on the road for just under a month. I was working as a kind of advance man, traveling a day or two ahead of the tour, checking into hotels, meeting security, scouting arenas. I was learning the ups and downs and constant crises of life on the road. Now and then, I pursued a whim or a moneymaking scheme of my own. There was, for example, the near disaster of the scarves (this happened on a later tour). Having seen the girls fight over the scarves Elvis tossed from the stage-you could see the flurry, the snap of teeth-I decided to order the kind of scarves used by Elvis and sell them at the concession stands. Turn a nice little profit. The first boxes reached me at the Pontiac Dome in Detroit, Michigan. Seventy-five thousand seats, sold out, New Year's Eve. I had ordered thirty-five thousand scarves, ten cents apiece, made in Hong Kong, with Elvis's picture on them. I remember walking past the concession as the fans came in from the parking lot. They stood in line to buy T-shirts, mugs, key chains, but no one seemed interested in my scarves. During intermission, the head of concessions came up to me, shaking his head. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Weintraub, but we're not selling the scarves," he said. "It's just not going to work."
I walked into the dressing room, moping, depressed. Elvis saw me sitting in a chair with my head down. "What's wrong?" he asked. "You look terrible."
"I have a problem."
"What?"
I told him about the scarves.
"If I fix it," he said, "will you smile?"
"How are you going to fix it?"
"Don't worry," he said. "Just tell me: Will you smile?"
"Of course," I said. "I'm starting to smile just thinking about it."
So what does he do? He goes out onstage, does a number, gets the crowd going wild, stops, puts his hand on his forehead, salutelike, as if trying to make out something far away, then says, "You know, I can't see anything or anyone from up here. Turn on the lights."
The lights come up, he blinks, eyes asquint.
"I still can't see," he says. "Tell you what. I'm going to take a five-minute break. Go out to the concession. They have scarves. I want everyone to get a scarf and wave it so I can see where you are."
In those five minutes, the concessionaires sold every scarf in the arena. Then, as Elvis was walking back on stage, he looked at me and said, "Are you smiling now?"