Love Me Tender

by Laurie Horowitz

  “This wasn’t a booty call, babe. This was strictly business.” Then she’s gone.

  Hunter comes inside. “What’s she talking about?”

  “She works for Slant and she wants to sign me.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Yes. What else could I say?”

  “I thought I was going to be your manager.”

  Patton looks at his friend. The truth is that what Hunter knows about managing musical talent couldn’t get Patton a gig at the county jail.

  “I thought we had a deal,” Hunter says.

  “But it’s Slant.”

  “I’m the one who started the Elvis rumor. All she did was spread it.”

  “Don’t be mad. We’ll work something out.”

  “I don’t see how,” Hunter says. He goes into his room and slams the door.

  Patton slumps onto the sofa. Shit. He hadn’t even thought about Hunter. Still, Patton wouldn’t have done anything differently. How could he? Too bad his first taste of success is cut with this bitter undertone.

  Hunter will just have to get over it. Because of Nola, Patton has his first big interview tomorrow. Everything could be changing for him.

  Chapter 6

  Leslie takes a cab to Wendell Smith, where she is meeting Patton King. She recognizes him immediately because he looks so much like Elvis Presley. She is thrown by the fact that he is not alone. He’s sitting across from a woman who could be the love child of Dolly Parton and Sarah Palin. When Leslie approaches, both the man and woman stand up. The woman sticks out her hand, and the man makes a self-deprecating dip of his head as if he’s not exactly sure how he ended up here.

  He has the longest eyelashes that Leslie has ever seen on a man. The word dreamy pops into her mind. This is not a word Leslie ever uses or even thinks. It’s a word that belongs on a shelf in a vintage store, a word out of Bye Bye Birdie, the musical they did in Leslie’s senior year at Deerfield Academy.

  “I’m Nola Grayson,” the woman says, “Patton’s manager. We’re delighted you could come down here to interview him. He’s going to be the next big thing. I guarantee it. Well, I’ll leave you to it.” Though Nola’s look is country-business, she has the clipped consonants of a northerner. When she walks out, her boots click and clack against the floor.

  Leslie looks at Patton, who is still standing and continues to do so.

  “We should sit,” she says.

  “After you.”

  If there was a chair, she’s sure he would pull it out for her. He waits until she slides into the spot Nola vacated. Leslie pulls her messenger bag in after her. Then, Patton slips into the other side of the booth.

  The waiter comes with the menus.

  “This place is called a meat and three. You order one meat and three sides,” Patton explains.

  “That’s a lot of food for lunch.”

  “Well, we southerners like to take a snooze after,” Patton drawls.

  “Really?”

  He shakes his head and smiles. “No. Not really. Just playing with you.”

  Leslie orders country-fried steak because she’s never had it before. For sides, she chooses cornbread, lima beans, and mac and cheese. It’s a mountain of food, but she wants to be a sport, or at least pretend to be. She pulls her digital recorder from her bag. She never uses her phone for interviews; she likes dedicated devices.

  “Do you mind if I record this?” she asks.

  Patton acquiesces and wipes a lock of dark hair from his forehead. For all his laid-back southern gentleman act, he looks jittery. “I’ve never been interviewed before,” he says.

  As if she couldn’t tell. Patton looks like a lanky kid who has been pulled into the principal’s office and nothing like a guy who has set out to perpetrate a fraud on an unsuspecting public. The hard-hearted intrepid reporter in Leslie melts a little. She’s tempted to put her hand over his and reassure him, but that wouldn’t be professional, especially in light of the fact that she’s likely to decimate him.

  “Just relax. You’ve got nothing to worry about. You grow up here in Nashville?” Leslie asks.

  “In Memphis.”

  “Like Elvis,” Leslie adds. She’s done some research, but not much.

  “Actually, Elvis was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, but he did grow up in Memphis. The wrong side of the tracks.” Patton pauses. “Like me.” He takes a sip of his sweet tea. Leslie finds herself staring at his lips, then looks down at her food. “I’ve always loved music. My momma gave me my first guitar when I was seven. I sang in the church, same as Elvis,” he says.

  “But that doesn’t make you Elvis,” Leslie says, after swallowing a gob of mac and cheese.

  “Never said it did.” He takes a forkful of green beans and puts it in his mouth.

  “You have any brothers or sisters?”

  “I’m an only child.”

  “Elvis had an identical twin.”

  “Jesse Garon. Died in childbirth. Something enchanting about a phantom twin, don’t you think?”

  “Enchanting? I guess that’s one way to look at it. I think it’s depressing.” Leslie runs her finger around the top of her glass. “Let me ask you, are you actually claiming to be Elvis Presley’s grandson?”

  Patton takes another bite, this time of mashed potatoes. He won’t meet her eye. Leslie’s grandfather taught her to spot the signs of someone who is about to lie. That’s one of them. Now, Patton pulls on his ear—that’s another.

  “You ever heard of Elvis Presley’s seven love children?” Patton asks.

  “Are you willing to do a DNA test?” Leslie is stretching with this one. Even if Patton were willing, how the hell would she go about getting Elvis’s DNA?

  He smiles and bites on his lip. “I could,” he says. “But this is more myth than science.”

  “You mean it’s a lie.”

  “I’m saying that a story can have its own value, that there is romance in myth.”

  “One of the definitions of myth is a misrepresentation of the truth,” Leslie says.

  “You aren’t really eating.” He changes the subject. “Are you one of those salad girls?”

  “If I was, would I have ordered this?” She points at her heaving plate.

  “Maybe you were trying to impress me.”

  Leslie has to use all her self-control to keep from rolling her eyes. When she wants to impress a guy, she doesn’t do it by ordering a salad. And maybe, if this guy weren’t her subject, she’d want to impress him. He’s incredibly sexy. His lips are so pillowy, any girl would be tempted to take a nap on them. He has a little barbecue sauce in the corner of his mouth, and Leslie almost raises her finger to wipe it off, but she remembers herself just in time. This is an interview, not a date. And even if it was a date, wiping something off another person’s face is too intimate for people who have just met. Still, she can’t keep her eyes off that little spot of sauce.

  “What?” Patton asks.

  “You have a little …” Leslie takes a napkin and points toward his face. Patton runs his tongue around his lips, pausing when he gets to the barbecue sauce. When it’s gone, his tongue lingers at his teeth and disappears. Snap out of it, Leslie.

  “You know, sometimes a myth is an idealized version of something,” Patton says.

  “Right. An exaggeration, or—a lie.” Leslie’s mac and cheese is getting cold, and it tastes chalky.

  The woman is trying to provoke him, Patton thinks, but she’s too cute for him to get too upset about it. He hopes that doesn’t make him a sexist. When Nola met him here before the interview to prepare him, she told him, in no uncertain terms, that he must not deny the Elvis connection. She told him to go at the questions sideways. He agreed to go along with her even though it made him feel squirrelly.

  He’s finding it difficult now to follow Nola’s instructions. This Leslie Stern is a serious journalist, and he doesn’t want to lead her in the wrong direction. Plus, she’s so pretty. Coltish. Slim and tall with long legs that end a
t her shoulders. He’s glad her legs are hidden under the table, or he’d be having more trouble concentrating than he already is. She’s Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” in the flesh.

  “You have a very black-and-white way of looking at things,” he says, but he’s not sure he cares all that much. There is so much to like about her. Leslie Stern is poised, sophisticated, beautiful, and bright. She doesn’t have an ounce of bimbo in her and, frankly, he’d always been a bimbo magnet. Even his ex-girlfriend, Landry, was 65 percent dumb blonde. That may be the reason he could never commit to her. Patton knows he’s no rocket scientist, but the woman he wants, the one who will be his, will have the education he missed. He only hopes he can live up to someone like that, to someone like Leslie.

  “I’m a journalist. I deal in facts. Either you’re related to Elvis, or you’re not. It’s that simple.” She lays down her fork, having managed to put away a solid portion of her meal.

  “I don’t think anything is that simple. You act like there is only one world, the world of facts. What about the world of the imagination?”

  “You mean lies.”

  “I’m starting to feel a little sorry for you,” Patton says. What would life be like if all you could ever do is stick to the facts?

  “Don’t. I’m a perfectly happy person.”

  “That obvious chip on your shoulder says different,” he goads.

  “If I have a chip on my shoulder, and I’m sure I don’t, it would know enough to keep its mouth shut.” She takes her napkin from her lap and puts it on the table. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Then, tell me something,” he says, because he thinks she’s wrong. Patton does know a few things about Leslie. He’s learned them from observing her for the past hour. He’s listened to her. Gauged her expressions. Collected her preferences. He knows that when she’s nervous, she scratches under her left ear and then tugs at her hair. And she’s nervous, even though she obviously thinks she’s putting on a good show.

  “I’m here to interview you, not the other way around.” She twists a blond curl around her finger.

  “Come on. Give me a little dirt on Leslie Stern. Break out of your comfort zone.”

  “That’s all you know. I’m not in my comfort zone. I’m already far outside it. You think that eating this much food for lunch is in my comfort zone? You think doing a puff piece on a guy who thinks he’s the next Elvis Presley is in my comfort zone?”

  Patton leans back. He feels like she’s slapped him, not hard, but it stings nonetheless.

  “I don’t think I’m Elvis Presley,” he says in a low voice.

  “Elvis’s spawn, then.”

  Patton puts his hands on the table and stares at Leslie. “I want to know about you. You got any brothers or sisters?” He’s going to push her, to see what he can get away with. She seems determined to bring out the idiot in him, and he’s not going to let her. But that doesn’t keep him from wanting to lean across the table and kiss her pink lips. Now, that would really screw things up. He doesn’t even want to think about what Nola would say. He can’t help it, though. He likes Leslie despite her thorns.

  “This is not about me,” she says.

  Chapter 7

  Leslie can’t stand the silence. Patton is staring at her, waiting for an answer. She can’t imagine it would hurt the interview to answer him. “I have one brother. Henry.”

  “And what does he do?” Patton asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nobody does nothing.”

  “You haven’t met my family. They’re dabblers. Henry writes a wine blog.”

  “That’s something.”

  “It isn’t much.” She’s feeling uncomfortably full.

  “That’s just your opinion,” Patton says.

  “Of course it’s my opinion. Who else’s would it be?”

  “Maybe people, including your brother, get pleasure from his blog.”

  “Life isn’t all about pleasure. I became a journalist because I wanted to do something important in the world, but instead, I’m stuck here with you.” As soon as she says it, she knows she’s made a huge mistake. But he’s been provoking her. It’s really his fault. Her fun quotient is none of his business. He may be phenomenally attractive, but that is no reason to treat him differently from any other subject. His charm shouldn’t allow him to get away with things that other people can’t.

  “I’m sorry that you feel this is such a waste of your time.” Patton looks a little green, and Leslie realizes that she has hurt his feelings, that she took her frustration out on him, and she has no evidence that he deserves it.

  “I didn’t mean that,” she says, backpedaling. “I should never have said that. It was rude, uncalled for, and unprofessional. I apologize.” She takes a sip of water.

  “How did you like your country-fried steak?” he asks.

  “It isn’t really steak, is it?”

  “Depends on what you consider steak. Usually, they fry the cheaper cuts.”

  “And disguise them with spice and batter.”

  “Exactly,” he says.

  “So, this Elvis thing is your battered coating.” She smiles. She’s trying to make him laugh, and by the time she realizes that he could take this as another insult, it’s too late.

  “You don’t quit, do you? To be honest, I’d rather you refrain from comparing me to a substandard cut of meat.” He looks up at her from under his long lashes.

  She likes that he runs with the joke. He’s even flipped it into a flirtation. He’d be easy to be around with his unflappable ways. She looks for the word. It’s easygoing. She could tell him that he’s a Select Special Kobe filet, but that would be highly inappropriate.

  “Will you do me a favor?” Patton asks.

  “Depends on what it is.”

  “Come see me at the Bluebird tomorrow night.”

  Leslie tries to look straight into Patton’s dark-blue eyes, but she has to look away because they are having a hypnotic effect on her. Based on his looks alone, this guy should probably be a star already, and if he isn’t, he’s probably a hack. Maybe those eyes don’t arrest everyone the way they do her. She’s too soft when it comes to beautiful men. Leslie knows that some women avoid them because they are too dangerous. Olive, for instance, is more interested in the size of a man’s wallet than in any other part of him. The date Olive brought to the office Christmas party last year looked like he’d just escaped from an illustrated children’s book.

  Leslie calls for the check. She has to keep her head. Falling into Patton King’s eyes would be a disaster. No telling where she’d end up. This is not a problem she usually has when doing a story, but then articles about Mollusk Mania or the Strolling of the Heifers hardly have sexy written all over them.

  So, this guy is charming. So what? Leslie isn’t easy to bullshit. Her grandfather used to play a game with her that he called Truth or Bull. He didn’t want gullible grandchildren. And he probably wouldn’t want Leslie to fall for someone like Patton King.

  Chapter 8

  After lunch, when Leslie is back in her hotel room, she steps to the window and looks down on Nashville. She always stays on the upper floors of a hotel. The paper only pays a fraction of the cost of this room and Leslie upgrades on her own dime. Every city is the same when you’re in a luxury suite. She probably should have stayed somewhere like the Loveless Inn for a little flavor. Unfortunately, she has a five-star comfort zone. She feels a little guilty about it. Maybe she’ll do penance by going to see Patton King in action tomorrow. She’ll see how she feels after the story is written.

  About once a year, Leslie considers trying to live on her salary, but she always decides against it. Her trust allows her to live in a two-bedroom condo in the Back Bay, while her salary would not provide her with a basement apartment in the worst part of Allston.

  She sits down at her computer. There isn’t much about Patton King on the internet. Why would there be? He’s an unknown country artist without so m
uch as a downloadable song. Patton King—at least under that name—hasn’t been arrested or involved in any lawsuits. Leslie is looking for something that will expose him as a fraud. She’s searching for the con man in Patton King.

  She hunts for his mother’s name: Jo Lynne King. No father is named anywhere. No marriage certificate for Jo Lynne. There is no evidence that Patton has any connection to Elvis Presley nor is there anything that definitively proves the claim to be false.

  Leslie takes a vodka from the minibar, downs it fast, then showers and puts on a T-shirt dress. She looks in the mirror. She could use a tan. No matter how sophisticated she tries to look, there is always something waifish about her. Leslie’s long hair has some wave in it, and it can be more frizzy than shiny, depending on the weather. No matter what she does, she never looks as polished as Olive, not that Leslie wants to look like Olive. But she would like to have the sheen of a woman who is part costume designer, part makeup artist. Anyway, who is she trying to impress? She’s tired and frustrated and her stomach has started growling again. She looks at the clock. Seven p.m. She can’t believe it’s already time for dinner.

  Down at the hotel’s restaurant, Leslie puts up one finger when the maître d’ wants to know how many are in her party. She doesn’t mind eating alone. She likes to take out a notebook and pretend she’s a food reviewer. It makes people bend over backward to assure that she has a good eating experience.

  She is seated by the window.

  “Hi, I’m Hunter. I’ll be your server.” Hunter grins. He has a very large mouth, not unattractive, but out of proportion—the better to eat you with, my dear.

  “I’m Leslie. I’ll be your customer.”

  Hunter laughs. “The special is a smoky barbecue pork loin in a red wine reduction. I recommend it. Also, you might want to start with the foie gras.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “You’re easy.”

  “Only when it comes to food.”

  Hunter winks at her and walks away. While she’s eating, he keeps glancing over from where he’s standing near the bar. Leslie wonders if Hunter’s interest is purely server to customer. If so, he’s the most attentive waiter she’s ever had. Mind you, it’s late and the rush is over.