The Biggest Elvis

by P. F. Kluge

  “Talk about clean,” he said. Now we swayed together, side to side, and I knew that I wouldn’t be leaving soon, that I wanted him again, that I’d be here in the morning.

  “Now it begins,” I said, in his arms. I detested myself for not simply going back inside, not thinking. I always had to show I knew enough to worry. I had to be the first to ruin something so that no one else could ruin it for me.

  “What’s that?”

  “The what next. I hate that part. Can’t we just say … no obligation. … Each of us … is free.”

  “Sure we can say that,” Biggest Elvis said. “It’s been said before. Thing is, it’s usually the sailor says it to the woman. Not the other way around.”

  “We’ll just take it—”

  “A little at a time.” He was against me now and I was going to want him soon, right here perhaps. “A little at a time.” Standing. Lifted up a little. Wondering what the wet cement would feel like. “A little at a time. You’re stepping on my lines, Malou.”

  Morning.

  “No public displays of affection,” I said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re making fun. You’re condescending. But this is important. When we meet, it’s as if nothing has happened. Do you understand?”

  Another nod and I was down the steps, no parting hug, no farewell kiss, no future date. I was already in practice for tomorrow. Only I paused a little, not for his sake but only because of our custom: you don’t just walk away.

  “None of this talk about living together,” I said. “You have your place, I have mine.” I had meant to say something kind but this was what I said. The fires were out, the beach seemed empty. “Well, thank you,” I said, walking away, knowing that from here on everything was going to be awkward.

  “Malou.” The sound of my name came from behind me.

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to say your name. Malou.”

  Biggest Elvis was never more carefully watched than when he next came to Graceland. I had moved into Elvira’s place, after leaving the home of Commander Andy Yauger. She had the most luxurious apartment in Olongapo, certainly the most cluttered, and a headquarters for the Graceland women. When the sheik took up residence—once a month, usually, for a long weekend—we cleared out and moved into the VIP rooms at the club. If only the Japanese businessmen who entertained themselves on black Naugahyde couches, with Johnnie Walker scotch and karaoke tapes for between shows could see how, within moments of their departure, these pleasure cubicles turned into girls’ dorms, littered with food cartons, makeup, laundry, as if the part the women played with visitors-—seductress, innocent, slut, blushing bride, as you like it, sir—were only an act, readily cast off. I had expected Biggest Elvis to try to reach me, Monday or Tuesday. I was ready to scold him for tracking me down. In the end, I was sorry he didn’t call. And I could not avoid smiling when I remembered how he gasped and jumped under that icy shower we’d taken together. “I can hack it, I can hack it, I can hack it.” Or that sigh of, what?—release, pain, ecstasy?—when I’d permitted—invited—him to come. And the way he’d stood behind me on the porch, calling out my name, just my name.

  “How’s everybody doing tonight?” he asked when he walked in around eight P.M., an hour before the showroom opened. Our front bar—the day shift—was open from noon, staffed by waitresses who didn’t go with men, some married, some cherry girls. The women who worked the showroom appeared around eight, half-dressed, fussing with makeup, combing out their hair.

  “Good evening, Biggest Elvis,” some of them said.

  “The Lane boys here yet?”

  “Chester yes, Dude no,” Dolly answered.

  “I guess he’s coming in from Manila.”

  “Is it true he makes a movie for Baby Ronquillo?” Dolly asked. “Someone told me.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” he said.

  “If Dude Elvis becomes movie star,” Whitney asked, “what is becoming of Graceland?”

  “Well, I don’t know. It has to be the three of us. The Elvis trio. You know how it works.”

  “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” Whitney said. It surprised me, that sort of talk from Whitney, that she had come to believe in him that way.

  “It won’t work with justtwo of us. Or one. It wouldn’t even work if the Original came back on his own.”

  “The Original?” asked Whitney. “You mean the other Elvis?”

  “Yeah. That guy. Him.” He fell silent for a minute, studying the jukebox crew, looking at Elvira, bounteous and overdressed, at Whitney, beautiful and blank, at the perky, teasing Dolly, and at Lucy, a flat, high-boned Visayan who was already famous—Lucy Number Three—because the sight of her body stepping across a room had caused a Marine to faint. Long ago, Lucy Number One had married a Navy guy. Later came Lucy Number Two. She went away with an Australian. So, Lucy Number Three.

  “Sometimes I wonder,” he said. “Sometimes I think that, every day we live, we should live like it’s our last, we’re going to die the next morning. So we should … get closer to everything we do. Every meal, kiss, piss, song—”

  “Piss?” Dolly asked.

  “You know what I’m saying. Because it could all end tomorrow. But then I say, no, that’s crazy. Too much pressure. What would it be like, if you knew your next meal were your last? Could you taste the food? Or, if someone says to you in bed, make it good, it’s the last time ever.”

  “Whitney says, ‘Oh no, not again,’” Dolly joked. “And Elvira says, ‘This will cost you extra.’”

  Elvira laughed but Whitney was hurt. Lately, she’d started looking to Biggest Elvis for guidance. He shook his head, waved his hand, as if to tell her it was nothing to worry about, they’d talk about it another time.

  “So do you go about your business as usual, like you’re going to be around forever? That’s what happens, I hear, when people learn they’ve got, say, six weeks to live. First they vacation, they pig out, they gamble. Then they come back to work. They take it a day at a time. Hey, am I right, Malou?”

  “This is nonsense,” I answered. He’d been talking to me all along and everybody knew it. “You probably won’t die tomorrow. And you certainly won’t live forever. Nonsense.”

  The girls of Graceland weren’t accustomed to hearing someone speak so sharply to an American, especially to Biggest Elvis. They fell silent, waiting for him to respond. The silence grew deeper, longer. Even I wanted Biggest Elvis to break it.

  “I’ll do what I can for you, no matter about Dude,” he said. “I’ll do what I can.” He got up, stretched. His pants slipped down a little when he raised his arms. “Damn if I’m not losing weight,” he said to Dolly. “Did you see that?”

  “Biggest Elvis, you’re melting away,” she responded. “Soon you’ll be pretty big Elvis.”

  He reached into his wallet and placed two 500-peso notes in front of me. “Let’s get something special after the last show. Call it a Christmas party. Some of that fried pork for me. With the skin.”

  “You shouldn’t,” I said.

  “I’m worried my cholesterol’s too low,” he said. “And, like you say, nobody lives forever.” He walked back to the dressing room he shared with the Lane brothers. “Or dies tomorrow.”

  “He’s not losing weight at all,” I said. “He hasn’t lost a pound. He’s fat.”

  Soon afterward, the first customers arrived, the ones who wanted the best tables and girls. It felt like a department store just opening, floorwalkers heading to their counters, salesgirls near the front door, offering a taste of this, a scent of that. When the other girls had drifted off, Whitney came over to me. Usually I intimidated Whitney. It was nothing I set out to do. Nor had I done anything to correct it.

  “Pardon me, mum,” she said. The language of a schoolgirl or maid.

  “Yes, Whitney?”

  “Excuse me, but I do not think you should be speaking so hard to Biggest Elvis. He is trying hard to take care of us. He is buy
ing us food and he give us money for medicines and he never bother us for monkey business. I’m sorry, mum, but I am not liking the way you talk to him.”

  “Thank you, Whitney,” I replied. I almost laughed out loud, watching her walk away, like a student going from blackboard back to desk. Here was Whitney rising to the defense of Biggest Elvis, who never pressed the girls for monkey business. Poor Whitney. Whitney with a crush. If only she knew what satisfactory monkey business her idol and I had transacted. It was better not to tell her. Besides—and now my bad mood returned—it might never happen again. I didn’t know how I felt about that. I tried relief, I tried disappointment. Neither one felt right.

  That night we dined on lechon Elvis ordered, and chicken and prawns. The girls of Graceland laughed a lot. Dolly imitated all three Elvises but she did Biggest Elvis best, the singing and the moves, the spoken parts between the songs.

  “I’m thanking you very much,” Dolly said, pushing out her stomach, toweling herself just like Biggest Elvis. “This song ‘Burning Love’ I’m dedicate to all the sailors and hostesses who drop by clinic on Monday. … No … no … never happen at Graceland … finest bar in Babylon. … All women are beautiful all men are handsome here. … We don’t rush show, we don’t water drink, and everything you are see is real.”

  And with that Dolly took the towel and shoved it into the crotch of her slacks, breaking into a few lines of “Suspicious Minds.” When Biggest Elvis laughed, he gave himself over to it completely, holding nothing back, flushing and convulsing. I resented that and I resented her and I resented myself for letting it bother me. I watched in vain for the least sign of possessiveness toward me and when I saw none, when he included me in the same cheerful farewell that included everybody else, waving good-bye, that bothered me too.

  “Biggest Elvis sleeps alone,” Elvira said, later that night.

  “I suppose so,” I replied. “So?”

  “If you plan to treat the American like this,” Elvira asked, “why did you sleep with him?”

  Elvira knew. It escaped the others but Elvira knew. She could look at anyone and tell. She had taken me home, turned on the air conditioner, slipped into a terry-cloth robe that said RAFFLES HOTEL, and started in on me.

  “Two theory,” she said, holding up her fingers.

  “Theories,” I corrected. She ignored me.

  “Number one theory. Pay me now. U-drive theory. Taxi theory. You go with the American and he pays from beginning. Cash and carry.”

  She paused and drank some tea she’d made. One of the pleasures of air-conditioning, she said, was that it let her enjoy things the sheik had introduced her to in other climates. So she would walk over to the aircon and say that she felt like October. Or Christmas. And out would come wool scarves and cashmere sweaters. Or there’d be soup on the table, or hot rum, or mint tea.

  “Number two theory,” she said. “Very hard and very rare. My theory. You make the American—”

  “The American from Brunei?”

  “American is meaning everybody rich,” she said. “You make the American fall in love with you. No money down. Maybe you don’t do monkey business with him, first time. No money. No money talk. But later you have apartment, you have car, you have commissary food, you have trips. Maybe when the American goes, you go too, as wife or something.”

  Elvira’s voice trailed off. This was all theory now, even to her. When it came to marrying the American and going away, she was in the realm of legends, Navy Lucy, Australia Lucy, and the other Graceland legends.

  “You …” she said. “I don’t know what to call what you do. You sleep with Biggest Elvis one time, for nothing. And then you make insult. No money for you now, no money for you later. You give your thing away and you get nothing back. Malou, what is this?”

  The next night he did not appear until after the food he’d paid for was eaten and the girls were gone. I sat by the jukebox, finishing my accounting—bar drinks, bar fines, VIP lounge. I wished my life could be summarized as neatly. Columns for love, friendship, work. Now and then. Here and there. Yes and no. Theory number one. Theory number two. No theory at all. Living as though I would live forever, living as though I’d die tomorrow, living like this. In Graceland, Olongapo, Philippines, a recording angel. And then he came, not from backstage, but from the front.

  “It’s late,” he said. I nodded yes. We were like nocturnal animals—bats, maybe—who awaited sunset and hated dawn.

  “Okay if I sit with you awhile?”

  “As you wish.”

  “I was out talking to Father Alcala. About military bases and Philippines history and the Catholic church. About all kinds of things.”

  “You like these talks?”

  “I do.” He nodded. “But now I’m tired of talking.”

  “Oh?”

  “To him. I wanted to talk to you.”

  I waited for him to say something more. But he sat there, looking at me, waiting for me to respond, which was the cleverness of an old man or the awkwardness of a boy, I couldn’t tell, when it came to Biggest Elvis. So we looked at each other and the silence continued, serious silence, embarrassing silence, and—suddenly—silence that was funny. We both laughed at the same time.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Sitting here, not saying anything …”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “It’s just as if …”

  “I know,” he said. “As if we’d been together forever.”

  By accident, we’d broken through. I told him he’d ignored me, just the way I’d told him to, but I hadn’t liked it when he did it. He said he’d been walking on eggshells around me, that he worried about doing the wrong thing, about violating any of the many conditions I’d called out to him as I left his house. He didn’t want to take me for granted. He didn’t want to ruin his chances, which might be no chance at all, so he did nothing.

  “Malou, we’re all still kids,” he said. “We never grow up. Not in these things. Unless you’re different.”

  “I just can’t picture us together here,” I said. “And I cannot picture us anywhere but here.”

  “Look,” he said. “The time we spent together. It wasn’t so bad, was it? Or was it?”

  “It was good.”

  “Because I was worried. I thought maybe you’d decided once was enough. Maybe once was too much.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “And I really like that shower. Is that only on Sunday?”

  “For you, every day of the week. For you, I’ll buy an icemaker.” Now he turned toward the jukebox.

  “There’s a switch in back,” I said. “Only I know about it. Which one do you want?”

  “One of mine. Any one.”

  I reached for the switch, pushed the button for one of his songs, and it was ‘’Every Little Bit Hurts.”

  “Did you and your wife have songs?” Sometimes I wondered about my ability to say the wrong thing, to ruin the moment. A defense mechanism, a mood killer.

  “Yes,” he said. “But not these. Not this. Now don’t sit down. Come here.”

  Biggest Elvis stood there. And it was just like the movie scene I’d pictured and laughed at a few weeks before. The empty tables, the bottles and beer nuts and napkins, waiting for the morning cleanup. A cave in one of the VIP lounges, the one that Whitney called home and I guessed that, when they heard the music, Whitney and her suite mate, Lucy Number Three, had come to the window and even now were watching me slip into Biggest Elvis’ arms, slowly dancing to a song that wasn’t quite as sad as it had been before. Biggest Elvis could move. We saw that every night. But this was an embrace, not a dance. The song was our background music. It must have seemed to Whitney that we were characters in a romantic movie. I felt that way myself, something in me answering to this fat American. If it hadn’t been there, I couldn’t have faked it. But it was there.

  “Shall we …” I said.

  “It’s late.”

  “Shall we go?”
>
  “As you wish,” he said. My line. I pinched him in the side, where his love handles crept over his belt. “Malou!”

  “I don’t know what to call you.”

  “You know my real name, don’t you?”

  “Ward Wiggins. Yes. I don’t like it.”

  “Me neither. It sounds like the name of someone in a western movie. Not the hero.”

  “Then there’s no choice.”

  “No, Malou.” He had a habit of smiling whenever he said my name, as if the sound of it pleased him, almost as if he could taste it.

  “Biggest Elvis.”

  IV

  Albert “Dude” Lane

  Whenever there’s poor folks around you know there’s a rich neighborhood hidden away someplace. The only thing you’ve got to do is find it. It’s not like the States where you can drive all day around a place where people live pretty much the same, same size houses on the same size lots, same kind of car in front and, out back, the same size pool above the ground, ripped at the sides, so they don’t even bother to take it in when winter comes. I’ve seen plenty places like that. Everybody goes shopping together.

  In the Philippines, it was as though you needed something rich to balance out what’s poor and God knows, there was plenty of poor in need of balancing. Actually, Olongapo was better than most places, ratty and chewed up as it was, because it could live off the base. Between Olongapo and Manila it was worse: all these sad little towns where fixing tires—patches on patches—was the main trade. Was it going to be hot and dry or raining and steamy, that was the only question. Would there be water in the potholes? Mud or dust, on the way to Manila? And then, when the traffic thickened and the air turned brown, you knew you were coming into Manila. That’s where you got Guinness Book of Records poverty, because it wasn’t dumpy cinder-block towns anymore, not villages of wood shacks with tin roofs, but people living under highway overpasses or wall-to-wall along the railroad, or along the seawall on Roxas Boulevard, or on landfill near the harbor, picking through garbage. My condolences went out to anybody born there, my heartfelt “Sorry about that.”