Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy

by David Gatewood (ed)

  “You’re young. You’d enjoy the trip far more than I would. And it would be good for you and Dolores to get to know each other.”

  “Are you sure it’s not just because you don’t want to fly, Gramps?”

  “Well, you know what I’ve always said: if man was meant to fly he’d have been born with wings.” Charlie gave Anna a wink and a flash of his dentures. “I’m sure Elvis has been sighted in Reno many times too. But Dolores doesn’t want to go to Reno. Rosemary always liked Reno. Anyway, I don’t want to stand in her way. Dolores and I agreed early on in our relationship that we would not hold each other back from anything in our last few years of life. If she’s determined to go to the Bermuda Triangle, then she should go to the Bermuda Triangle. It would just be nice to have someone along to keep her company. Make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble. You don’t have to worry about the cost. I’ll pay for your trip, of course.”

  “Gramps, you don’t have the money for that,” Anna said. “I don’t want you spending that much on me.”

  “Consider it an early birthday present. You need a vacation anyway. Get your mind off that Stephen fellow. Maybe you can meet a nice man. One who isn’t a weasel. Not that you need a man. I understand that women don’t these days. And you can look after Dolores.”

  Anna wasn’t sure why she suddenly felt that Dolores had more potential to get into trouble than a bunch of college students on spring break. And how exactly did one chaperone an eighty-year-old? Distract her with a surprise game of shuffleboard or pinochle? Hold her Ben Gay and Polident hostage until she behaved?

  Anna gestured to her carroty hair and freckles. “Sun vacations have never really been my thing.”

  Her grandfather let his gaze fall to her knee brace and pink snowflake pajamas. Then he raised his piercing blue-grey eyes to hers. They were eyes that, growing up, had always seemed to know when she had been drinking, skipping school, lying, or flaking out; and yet despite all her screw-ups, they were eyes that somehow always conveyed an ocean of understanding… and the same deep hurt that lay behind Anna’s own.

  He gave her the nod, as if it had already been decided. “You should go. It’ll give you a chance to think… Figure out where you want to go from here. It’s time.”

  * * *

  “Since we’re on vacation, dear, I was thinking we should have a nightcap. See if you can flag the stewardess, why don’t you?” Dolores said, pressing a warm, papery-skinned hand against Anna’s arm.

  Anna’s automatic response—that she didn’t drink, that she couldn’t drink—sprang to her lips. But it was no longer the truth. She could drink now. She was no longer on the team with Stephen. She could get rip-roaring drunk and watch Lost reruns all day in her underwear scarfing donuts and smoking cigars, and nobody would care.

  She glanced around the cabin of the small hopper plane that would take them to Seattle. She had been taking some deep mouth breaths to calm herself for takeoff—and acclimate herself to the floral cloud that surrounded Dolores. Businesspeople occupied all the seats around them, tapping on laptops, checking phones, and reading the New York Times. None of them looked like they were about to order a round of mojitos.

  “Dolores,” she said carefully—after all, she hardly knew the woman, apart from her Elvis fetish and the fact that her favorite saying was that eighty was the new seventy—“it’s only eleven in the morning, we’re not even in the air, and I don’t think they offer that kind of service on this plane.”

  The silver-haired, pink-lipsticked woman made a tutting noise. “Well, they should. Charlie and I have had a much more fulfilling sex life since we initiated happy hour every night.”

  Anna involuntarily lifted her hands to her ears. “Ahhh… Dolores, I think it’s great we’re taking this trip together, but I do not need to hear about you and my grandfather and sex. Ever.”

  “Dear, it is a very important part of any relationship. Sex is the glue, I always say. My poor Harold, he was a thumper.”

  Anna considered the various possible things this could mean and pointedly opened the novel she had removed from her carry-on bag. “Why don’t we get some drinks when we get to Seattle?” she said. “With our lunch.” At least then it’ll be after noon, she thought grimly, although she imagined Dolores likely subscribed to five-o’clock-somewhere logic.

  Dolores fell silent during the brief taxi and takeoff. When they were in the air, she removed the airline’s magazine and started flipping through it with vigor.

  Anna tried to concentrate on her book, but after several minutes, Dolores started to sigh and shift about in her seat, looking over Anna’s shoulder every so often, the magazine unattended on her lap. Dolores’s bright pink velour tracksuit matched her lipstick and made Anna’s brown yoga pants—which had looked quite serviceable before she left the townhouse—seem rather drab in comparison.

  After another particularly ponderous exhale from Dolores, Anna closed her book.

  “They wrote a song about Elvis in the Bermuda Triangle, you know,” Dolores said brightly.

  “I didn’t know that,” Anna said.

  “It came out in 1987.” Dolores regarded Anna with speculative, glittery eyes. “I guess that was before you were born.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Anyway. The song clearly states that Elvis is in the Bermuda Triangle because he needs boats. I think it’s a message.”

  A faint smile twitched on Anna’s lips. “A message from whom?”

  “From Elvis of course. He wants us all to know that he’s okay. He just had to get away from that horrible life of fame that was killing him.”

  Anna had seen pictures, in Dolores’s Elvis shrine, of the mess Elvis had become as he’d gotten older. She had shivered, her perfectly toned body—a body that hadn’t seen a single night of debauchery or an Egg McMuffin in the previous eight years—recoiling at the sight of someone who had so clearly lost control. But that was before, when she was an Olympic hopeful, when she trained 365 days a year and lived in Park City, Utah, with Stephen. When the endorphins and exhaustion of exertion and the whoosh of skis on snow had ruled her life.

  Before.

  Now she ran the Nordic skier development program at Mt. Spokane, spent too much time in her snowflake pajamas, and could theoretically let herself “go Elvis” if she wanted.

  “Have you always felt this strongly about Elvis, Dolores?”

  Dolores gave her head a little shake, as if she was overwhelmed by emotion, and looked to the ceiling of the plane, her spotted hand pressed over her heart. “Always. From the moment I saw him when he appeared on the scene in 1956, I knew Elvis was different. He was a pioneer. He brought music to life for millions of people. They called him the symbol of a lost generation, an empty generation. They said we had failed to find any meaningful values, and Elvis was the cause. Can you believe it? Elvis the pelvis, unfit for family viewing. A judge in Florida even ordered him to tame his act. But he couldn’t. The music was part of him, and if you watched him even for a second, you knew that. They couldn’t stop him, and they couldn’t stop change.” Dolores fluttered her eyelids. “Imagine what they would have made of that twerking that you all do now.”

  “I don’t twerk.”

  Dolores didn’t seem to have heard her, or at least didn’t acknowledge that Anna had spoken. “Elvis was the symbol of that change, and of hope and energy… and his music…” Dolores heaved an enormous sigh. “Well… there’s a reason his songs are still played today. He came to Spokane, you know, in 1957. I was there at the Spokane Municipal Stadium. I was twenty-two, working as a stenographer for Reynolds, Smith and Taylor, and I knew Elvis was something special.”

  Anna was considering what this meant for Gramps, when Dolores patted her knee.

  “Don’t worry, dear, I don’t love Elvis that way. Elvis is more of a spiritual leader. He’s touched me deeply over the years, and I know he’s not dead.”

  * * *

  A sticky warmth hung in the air when they deplaned i
n Bermuda at four in the morning local time after several too many nightcaps. Anna tried to blink away the fog of intoxication and sleepiness, but Dolores practically pranced over to the luggage carousel to retrieve their bags, alert and chipper after eleven hours in transit and five gin and tonics. Who’s looking after who, Anna wondered as she hobbled after Dolores, her knee stiff and unyielding.

  They drove through a blur of quaint, quiet streets to the Fern Grotto Beach Resort. Anna gratefully fell into the bed in their room, hoping that Dolores didn’t snore or have any elaborate bedtime rituals.

  * * *

  Anna awoke to find the room flooded with sunlight and Dolores’s bed neatly made, but no Dolores. Anna had lost her grandfather’s girlfriend already. She cursed herself for not insisting that Dolores get a cell phone—or sleep with one of her legs handcuffed to the bedpost. She splashed water on her face, threw on a t-shirt and some capris, and pulled her wild tangle of orange hair into a knot. She cringed a bit at the brightness outside and shoved a tube of sunscreen into her pocket.

  The lobby hummed with tourists milling around the buffet. Anna grabbed a muffin and a coffee while checking the sitting area for Dolores. Stephen would expectorate a lung if he saw her eating simple carbs. But there was an eighty-year-old woman to be found, and after the three and a half drinks she had consumed yesterday, Anna was completely off her training diet anyway.

  She stepped out onto the patio. Perhaps Dolores had just gone to the pool.

  The view of the beach hit her like a shockwave. The cerulean sky danced on aqua waves, and the island glowed with lush greens and creams. She had lived and breathed winter for so long, with its stark and thin colors and air. Everything here seemed saturated and heavy. She felt her curly hair absorbing the moisture, springing to life and growing even more unruly and wild in the ocean breeze.

  Beyond the turquoise sea, the darker waves of the Bermuda Triangle loomed. She didn’t believe any of the stories about the Triangle, least of all Dolores’s theory that it was the center of a drug-smuggling ring. Still, the waters gave her a creepy sensation. She walked around the edge of the pool, scrutinizing the people in deck chairs, and then cut across the grass to the beach, which was deserted save for a few walkers, none of which looked like Dolores.

  On her way back through the lobby, she collected a carrot muffin and several pieces of bacon in a napkin and shoved them in her pocket. In for a nickel, in for a dollar, Gramps always said. She should probably get a gin and tonic too.

  Out in front of the hotel, Anna turned and looked both ways down the busy street. Mopeds and small vans streamed past her, and other tourists ambled up and down the sidewalk in front of the brightly colored buildings. She turned and headed in the direction of some of the taller structures, guessing they might signify the center of downtown. The city definitely had an upscale, yet somehow quirky, Colonial flair. Surely nobody would mug an eighty-year-old woman in Hamilton, Bermuda.

  She hadn’t gone more than fifty feet from the hotel when she saw the man across the street. He sat on the edge of the sidewalk with his overturned hat in front of him. He had dark greasy hair and the tattered and wild appearance of a beggar, but what caught her eye was the small hand-printed placard that he had propped against his chest: “Elvis Lives. Inquire Within.”

  Anna let her eyes rise to the storefront sign above him. “Pritchard Boat Tours,” it announced in peeling green paint.

  Dolores emerged from the building in a white sundress reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe and gave Anna an animated wave. Then she practically skipped across the crosswalk, grinning like someone certifiably mad.

  “I’ve booked us a boat tour,” she announced. “We need to head to the docks right away.”

  Anna swiveled her eyes back to the green paint. “We’re going on a boat tour in the Bermuda Triangle?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, we aren’t going very far off shore. We’re going to do a tour around all the privately owned islands. We’ll be perfectly safe. It’s the only way to get close to Elvis.”

  “You think Elvis lives on one of the privately owned islands?”

  “Of course, where else would he live? He couldn’t live out here among the people. He’d be spotted right away.”

  Anna regarded the man holding the sign dubiously.

  * * *

  The boat, a broad white cruiser with open sides and rows of seating for tourists, seemed seaworthy enough, and once they were underway, the guide, Jeremy Pritchard, launched into the history of each of the small islands. As they wove in and out of them, in the waters off the main islands of Bermuda, Anna was surprised to learn how many of these islands had been used as quarantine areas for cholera, yellow fever, and smallpox, and how many of them had been military outposts during the wars.

  Once Anna had slathered herself with sunscreen, she allowed herself to relax. The sky remained reassuringly blue, and the man driving the boat appeared competent enough. He wasn’t gunning the engine or steering into rocks at least, and the other tourists appeared placid and unworried.

  Several of the islands were indeed privately owned luxury estates, and Dolores perked up at each of these, examining the gently bobbing wharves and peering with rigid concentration between the trees, as if the King himself might pop out in a white jumpsuit and launch into “A Little Less Conversation” right there on the dock.

  But the King did not appear, and they cruised around a number of islands with other uses, including a ruined fort, a prisoner-of-war camp, a seaplane base, a whaling center, and a cemetery. At some point in the cruise, a youngish woman came by and offered fruity drinks, which Anna accepted. Clearly she was well on her way down the path to becoming a raving alcoholic. Dolores, still intent on raking her eyes over every visible square inch of the privately owned islands, declined.

  By the time the boat pulled to a stop at a pier on Iota Island—one of the islands that formed Paradise Lake—Anna had downed two of the fruity drinks and was pleasantly tipsy. Two muffins, six pieces of bacon, and two fruity drinks was definitely not the breakfast of champions.

  “We will be staying at the lake for a full hour,” Jeremy Pritchard announced. “Enjoy your swim. Paradise Lake offers the most tranquil and protected waters of Bermuda.”

  Everyone else began to disembark as if they had been expecting this. Anna turned her head to Dolores and observed the pink straps of a bathing suit snaking up around her neck.

  “I thought I should spring for the deluxe tour,” the older woman murmured by way of explanation.

  Anna nodded. Except that, because they’d had to run down to the docks immediately after meeting in the street, Anna had no bathing suit. She wondered what Dolores would have done if they had not encountered each other in the street. At least the woman had bought two tickets.

  Anna meandered off the boat. There was no point in hurrying, since she wasn’t swimming anyway. The waters were a glorious aqua, and the wind gentle and balmy. Maybe she could find herself here. Or maybe that was the fruity drinks talking.

  “A little young for this tour, aren’t you?”

  The operator of the vessel stood behind her wearing a faintly amused smile. She suppressed a gasp. With his muscular frame, jet-black hair, blue eyes, and square-cut jaw, he was possibly the most gorgeous man she had ever stood this close to.

  “Hi, I’m Nick.” He extended a hand, and Anna offered hers in return, nearly spellbound by the man now standing only inches away from her and regarding her with an attentive and rather intense gaze. Clearly she had been sipping smoothies and calculating interval times with insipid, beaky-nosed Stephen for far too long.

  “Anna,” she managed to squeak.

  “Where are you from?” His British accent was slighter than that of the other islanders she had encountered, and she thought she could almost detect a faint southern twang to his voice.

  “Spokane, Washington.”

  Dolores emerged from the makeshift canvas change rooms in a hot pink one-piece bathing suit and a lar
ge floppy white sunhat. She gave Anna an enthusiastic wave before making her way down to the beach.

  “Your grandmother?” Nick said.

  “My grandfather’s girlfriend,” Anna said. “She’s looking for Elvis.”

  Nick’s dark eyebrow shot into the air and he offered a wicked smile. “Right. I’ve heard he lives somewhere around here with Princess Diana, John Lennon, Jimmy Ellis, and Andy Kaufman.”

  Anna grinned back at him. “Great. Maybe we’ll call them up.”

  “Right. Tell him he’s still the man.”

  “What?” Anna’s smile faltered and she tried to don a cool expression, as if she knew what Nick was talking about.

  Nick snorted faintly. “Don’t worry about it. It was probably from before you were born.”

  Dolores was rocking the pink one-piece on the beach. A man who looked to be in his seventies had gone to get her a deck chair, and she had already struck up a conversation with another older gentleman, much to the annoyance of his wife.

  Anna decided that she would like to be Dolores when she was eighty.

  “Well, if you know any of the secret Elvis hangouts, I’d love to hear about them so I can prevent Dolores from disappearing on me again like she did this morning.”

  “She’s a true follower then?”

  “She owns an Elvis Presley board game and has Elvis Christmas ornaments.”

  “Hmm,” Nick said. He had moved away from her, and his gaze no longer lingered. Perhaps the knowledge that Anna was traveling with a crazy was a turnoff. “She’s not the first.”

  “Not the first what?”

  “Not the first Elvis fan to come here looking. That Mojo Nixon song brings in a few every year.” Nick cracked a roguish grin. “Mostly your new grandmother’s age, but some younger. He was a true religion, that one.”

  “So do we have any hope?”

  “Any hope of what?”

  “Of finding Elvis.”

  Nick winked, but his jaw seemed a little tighter than it had been before. “None whatsoever.”