by P. F. Kluge
“Is that so?” I asked. “Watch this.” Right then, Chester was a third of the way into the song and out onstage I stepped. A look of true alarm crossed Baby Elvis’ face, as though I were pulling him offstage. The guys in back stopped playing. Not a clue. Then I began to sing “Don’t Be Cruel” the way my Elvis might have done it, if he’d had the strength to try new things and the heart to look more deeply into old ones. I sang it slow and bluesy; Chester’s song was about making up and breaking up, heartbreak and hardons. I came to the song across a gap of time, drugs, divorce, obesity, and boredom, and I sang like it was my last chance of love and not much of a chance at that.
I nodded to Chester and he came back in, up-tempo. You didn’t have to explain to him. He got it, sometimes too quickly. And when he finished, uptempo, and I was ready to come back with a second helping of sadness, Chester waved me off: he sang the way I’d sung, as if he’d just learned what life was about. Then, with this mischievous grin, he passed off to me so I had to sing it upbeat. Now the audience understood what we were doing—the girls were the first to notice any departure from the norm—and I was just about finished when out walked Albert with his own reading of “Don’t Be Cruel,” the crueler the better. When I think back on our time together, that’s the kind of thing I remember, Ward Wiggins, Chester Lane, Albert Lane reinventing “Don’t Be Cruel.” We crossed oceans. We skipped datelines. We jumped backward and forward, hopscotching time. We rescued what was lost and revived what was dead.
After that, the rule was anybody could step into anybody else’s tune. But only on a Wednesday or Thursday night and only with fair warning and never in connection with our closing song, “American Trilogy.” That was off-limits. So Chester would walk up to his brother, smiling, ask whether he planned on doing “Return to Sender.” Dude nodded, knowing what was coming. “Company’s coming,” Chester would say. Or—once misdirection was permitted—I’d come sauntering out and Dude’s “Return to Sender,” which was about a love letter not going through, became something different, because I sang it as though I’d had all the mail I ever wanted. They were fun nights and they served a purpose, too, because it made old songs new. And from that it was just one short step to my worst-ever idea.
“You know about the Sun Sessions?” I asked the brothers one night. They both shrugged. They left the homework to me. I told them fast: that before he’d signed with RCA, Elvis had recorded with Sun Records in Memphis. Some of those early recordings had been released, rough stuff but loaded with talent and pleasure that had drained out of his later recording. “Good Rockin’ Tonight.” “That’s All Right.” “Mystery Train.”
“I do those songs already,” Chester reminded me. “Good Rockin’ Tonight” was the Graceland theme song and “Mystery Train,” all eerie and sinister, raised regular goose bumps.
“What I think …” I hesitated. “There’s always been talk of other people who dropped by. You know. Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis. Jam sessions. The future of music, getting born.”
“You know what he means,” Albert said. “Like in one of those movies that shows a bunch of kids in a playground and—guess what?—the one with four eyes says let’s build a rocket ship and go to the moon and before you know it—”
“You don’t like it?” I asked. I was almost relieved. This was an idea that made me nervous. Sometimes I liked having Dude around. I could count on him to express my own doubts. He never let me down, that way.
“Jesus, Professor! A birth-of-rock-and-roll pageant. A passion play. A nativity in Olongapo. Come off it!”
That, I supposed, was the end of it. But if you could never count on Chester Lane, you could never discount him either. “Oh hell,” he said, clapping his brother on the shoulder. “Let’s give it a go.”
A few nights later, on a Wednesday, when the club had emptied, we tried it out. I’d asked the girls who weren’t out with guys to stick around, Malou, Elvira, and some others, a dozen in all. A sample audience. I ordered drinks from the bar and I sent out for food, chicken and satay.
“You pay their bar fines, I guarantee you they’ll love it,” Dude said.
“That might not do it,” I replied.
“Maybe not; those girls have some principles,” Dude agreed. “There are some things even money won’t buy.”
The women sat around at the front tables, acting like customers, while we took the stage. Before we started, I tried to explain what this was about, the start of rock and roll, not what happened but what might have happened, legends in embryo, poets in their youth. And so forth. Yawn.
It was a disaster. Chester carried off the young Elvis effortlessly. Albert was enough of an actor to make a believable Johnny Cash. But my Jerry Lee Lewis—my attempt at “Great Balls of Fire”—was grotesque. I jumped up on the bench, I karate-chopped the piano, I danced and pranced and, through all the noise I was making, I heard the girls of Graceland laughing. Then I saw Chester rolling on the floor, howling, and Dude advancing toward me with a towel in his hand, shouting, “Stop the fight! Stop the fight!” And when I thought about it later, I guessed I’d learned a lesson. I wasn’t an actor. I wasn’t an impersonator, skipping from Cagney to Cary Grant to Edward G. Robinson. I was Elvis. Biggest Elvis. So long as I stayed within his life’s generous borders, I’d be all right. When I walked in his shoes, inhabited his skin, I was better than okay. I could move back and forth and feel his power. If I shared my wonder about the years he hadn’t lived to see, his power sustained me. When I left him, though, I was finished.
Malou sat where she always sat, at the table near the jukebox, which cast enough light—pink and yellow though it was—for her to do her accounting or read a paperback or lay out her Scrabble board. I walked over to her that night, after the Sun Sessions fiasco. The other women had left, still giggling. That was one of the nice things about Americans. When they made fools of themselves you could laugh at them aloud.
“Just how bad was it?” I asked.
“Terrible,” she answered. “I could not stop laughing. When you climbed on that poor piano bench …”
“That thing was already cracked! You know it.”
“Now it’s firewood.”
“Thanks. With friends like you …”
She gave me that look of hers that I’d come to know, nonplussed, amused, a lift of the eyebrow, a pout of the mouth, but mostly a shrug of the shoulders. Half here’s looking at you kid, and half tough shit.
“I know it’s late,” I said. “Do you want to …”
She reached for the box, the board, the tiles. Some of the girls were sleeping up in the VIP lounges, the guard in front, the bartenders in back. Graceland was tucked in for night, when our Scrabble game began.
“I’m too much for you,” she said. She dressed in T-shirts and slacks every night, wore glasses, kept her hair in a tight bun, as if her world might fall apart if she released it. Maybe it would. “Still, if you insist.”
III
Malou Ordonez
While Baby Elvis fell in love, Dude Elvis slept with all the women he could purchase. He was big, they said, and very fast. He wanted his women three ways and when he finished he felt sorry for them, and for himself, and sent them home. He never had the same girl twice and they never stayed for breakfast. Now, they said, he was the good friend of Baby Ronquillo. Meanwhile, Biggest Elvis was there for me. Elvira thought I should take an interest. Jimmy Fiddler ordered me to. Still, I resisted.
He always paused to spend a while with those of us who gathered around the jukebox after the last show. First he talked a little, still standing. Then he’d sit and eat with us. Next he paid for the food. He stayed longer and longer, until sometimes only two or three of us were left. When he pulled himself up out of his chair, he seemed sorry to go. Biggest Elvis was lonely. And it would have been so easy for him to make a selection from among the women of Graceland.
“He stays for you,” Elvira said.
“He speaks to everyone but me,” I correcte
d. This was true, at first. He interrogated Elvira about her boyfriend from Brunei, the apartment he kept for her, her shopping trips to Singapore and Hong Kong. Priscilla had worked on Guam. They talked about that place. And Whitney! The beautiful Whitney, the deep eyes, the swanlike neck, the endless legs, the pianist’s tapering fingers, the utterly vacant mind, no one talked to Whitney. After Elvira, Whitney was the loveliest woman at Graceland. Maybe before Elvira. She was also, by unanimous testimony, the worst, sexually. “A total corpse,” said one American. Some of our girls loved sex. Others tolerated it. Whitney was puzzled by it. And by almost everything else. Yet Biggest Elvis spent time talking to her. And Whitney responded.
“Tell me, Whitney, the man of your dreams.”
Whitney looked around for guidance, for someone to give her the correct answer.
“Elvis Presley?”
“No, I mean someone you would like to spend your life with. Someone you want to have children with.”
A number of girls were listening, expecting to laugh. Often they made jokes about her. “What does Whitney say to the man of her dreams?” Dolly asked. And answered: “Are you finished yet?” “What does Whitney say when she makes love?” Answer: “I can’t feel anything.”
“Just talk to me,” Biggest Elvis told her. “What kind of man do you want?”
“I want …” She was tired of the teasing, determined to answer. “Short or tall, I don’t care so much. Tall is better. Not so old.” Then she smiled. “Not so young.” She caught herself laughing.
“Where is he from, this man of yours?”
“I don’t know,” she said, as if the question had never occurred to her. “Let me think …”
“From Olongapo?”
“No.”
“Where, then—from the Philippines?”
“I don’t think so.” It was not an answer. It was a reflex.
“A rich man?”
“Is better, yes.”
“We haven’t narrowed it down much,” Biggest Elvis said. They sat together in silence and a miracle happened. Like a child in a classroom, Whitney raised her hand.
“I’m wanting …,” she said, “a serious man.”
I sat quietly, night after night, adding figures by the light of the jukebox, drinks and bar fines, half-listening to the never-ending story Biggest Elvis was hearing from the girls of Graceland: old boyfriends, broken promises, a ship to Manila, a job in a beauty parlor, a problem with a boss or a father, then the move here to try the Americans. Words to go with the music of my numbers, drink for customer, 75 pesos; ordinary drink for bar girl, 150; margarita, 300; visit for short time to VIP lounge, 300; bar fine, 500. This was the money for Graceland, money for Baby Ronquillo. What happened to the girls upstairs or outside was up to them. Some of the girls bragged about how much they earned, others never said. The ones who wanted to fall in love, they sometimes worked for free. And kept quiet about it. About making love for nothing.
Night after night, Biggest Elvis talked to everyone but me. Elvira said that just as Dude had worked through all the local bodies, Biggest Elvis was working his way through all the Graceland minds. And hearts. Advancing toward me. Saving me for last. Meanwhile, I did nothing to encourage him. That was my response to Jimmy Fiddler. On the other hand, I didn’t run away. Then there came a night when I was working late, my weekly summary. I looked up and Biggest Elvis stood in front of me and all the girls were gone. My turn.
“May I sit?” he asked.
“As you wish,” I answered. He noted my coolness. What I felt for Jimmy Fiddler I directed at him. Another American. “I ride bareback, darling, and I ride for free.” Perhaps I should have approached Biggest Elvis, learning things about Colonel Parker, but I could not bring myself to do it. I could tell myself that I’d been playing distant, hard to get, all part of a strategy. In fact, I’d done—and planned to do—nothing. That was my whole plan. Do nothing. That was our way, when dealing with Americans. It was as close as we came to fighting them. Go slow, go slower, stop. Misunderstand. Do nothing. Sooner or later, they forgot. Eventually, they went away. So I told myself, knowing all the time that Jimmy Fiddler would not forget and leave. He would remember and return.
“Everybody’s gone but you,” Biggest Elvis said.
“And you,” I answered.
“Place is different when it’s empty.”
“Upstairs. In back. Someone is always nearby. You’re never by yourself in this country.”
“I am,” he said. Just that. How should I respond to that? I wondered. How does anyone? There were perfect answers somewhere. That being alone was not a bad way to be, most of the time. Or that his loneliness was his business. That we get what we deserve.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” he said.
“Oh.” I gave him a businesslike look. Was it water on the dressing room floor? Seating of customers during “American Trilogy”? “How can I help you?”
“By accepting my apology.”
“What for?”
“Apology for diaspora. It’s been bothering me. I waltz over to the Scrabble board and say, I didn’t know you knew those words. That was out of line.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’d forgotten already. And also, you bought a round of drinks for everyone. The first of many.”
“You fired back at me,” he said. I wondered if the point of his apology was to confirm that I had been the one who retorted in Tagalog. It surprises me you know those words.
“You were the one, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “And I would do it again.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
The next night, Biggest Elvis stayed until the others had gone.
“How does the jukebox work?” he asked. “I mean, is there a distributor who brings around the records and you pay him and if a song isn’t getting played enough he takes it out?”
“Not here,” I answered. “It’s just songs that the girls like. They bring the records. When they leave, they take their records with them.”
“Do you have any songs in there, Malou?”
“No, not me. That’s for the other girls.”
“Then …,” he reached into a paper bag and pulled out three records, three forty-fives, “could you just tuck these into a comer of the machine?”
There were no labels on the records. I pointed to the jukebox. Some labels were printed, half handwritten, but every song was identified. “What are these songs? And who are the singers?”
“There’s no need for that. Just leave them blank. Nobody’ll notice them. And … would you mind not playing them?”
“No … not at all.” At first 1 guessed that, like any hopeful singer, Biggest Elvis had recorded himself. Singing Elvis songs, no doubt. Hoping that no one could tell the difference. Sad, even for Olongapo.
“Unlisted records?” Elvira asked.
“He said not to play them.”
“He’s not so fat, you know. You see him onstage in those Elvis clothes, he looks very big. But in normal clothes …” She gave up looking for coins. “You know I never carry small money. Give me some pesos.”
“I promised him,” I said. And handed over some coins.
“See?” Elvira said. “I put the money in the machine. And my finger wanders. Is like an accident, no? What’s this … no labels?… I’m curious. … Let’s see … so I push buttons …”
She sat down beside me. I’d told her what I expected to hear. Biggest Elvis copying the original. Anonymously placing unlabeled records in the jukebox. Secrets within secrets. We all had them. Elvira was mine. We sat and watched the machine find its way to Biggest Elvis’ hiding place. The first song I knew, Phil Collins’ “One More Night.” The second song was a black man singing “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” The third was a woman, I didn’t know even the title, but it must have been “Every Little Bit Hurts.”
“Those,” said Elvira, “are the three saddest songs in the world. Biggest Elvis is lonely. And
he wants you to know.”
“You have to work hard to be lonely here.”
“He’s telling you,” Elvira said. She gave me that matchmaker’s smile. In Elvira’s perfect world, no one slept alone. It was like wasting food.
“Why me?”
“Don’t you see? He thinks you’re lonely too.”
“Where’s Whitney?” Biggest Elvis asked.
“Sick,” I said.
“How sick?”
“Every month sick.”
“And Dolly? I haven’t seen her for a while.”
“With a man in Boracay. A man who works for United Nations. Water Development Project. She goes with him, when he comes.”
“True love?”
“Not Dolly,” I said. “Dolly comes back. I’m sure.”
He asked me how I could be so sure, how I knew. I shrugged at that: women’s intuition. But he wasn’t content. He asked me about the place we now call Graceland, that used to have many other names, and about the women—the hundreds of women—who have passed through here. I told him more than I wanted. There was history in the place and some fairy tales as well. We had a winners’ circle of marriage and money and escape. I knew some of these women. Elvira might yet be one and—though I doubted it—Whitney also. I saw some of these women when I was little, or when they came back to visit from the States, Australia, Italy, trailing husbands and families. Others had passed from history into legend. Lucy Number One, Baby, Donna, Bing, Lucy Number Two, Connie, Aurora, Maggie. Graduates with honor, stars, exports. Hall of fame. Sometimes they wrote for a while, Christmas cards with family photos, for a while. Our Cinderellas.
Marriage was not the only happy ending. A few of our women had moved from affair to affair, cashing in, trading up, money and power accumulating. Our Evita Perons. They began on their knees, servicing sailors, and they ended in limousines, discarding lovers at will. That was the story of Baby Ronquillo.
“These marriages, do they last?” he asked.
“Not important.”
“If that’s not important,” he said, “what is?”