by P. F. Kluge
“She says she’ll take care of all of you,” I had told the girls the night before. I’d found them sitting in Elvira’s kitchen. One look told me that the word was out about our leaving.
“Baby Ronquillo takes care of Baby Ronquillo,” Elvira said.
“She said not to worry.”
“It doesn’t matter what she say,” Dolly replied. “You should know this by now, Biggest Elvis. She say yes, she mean maybe. She say later, she mean never.” Was it just me or was there a new directness in the women’s responses, a certain edge that signaled awareness of my departure?
“All I can say is I’ll come back, I promise.” I meant it for all of them. Especially Malou. I didn’t know much about her past but I learned—from Dolly and Whitney—that there’d been an American officer she’d lived with who’d gone away. I wanted her to know I wasn’t like that. But she sat quietly, adding some invisible columns. And my words sounded false as soon as I said them. My promise to return. Another American, sailing away, another woman on shore, yet another replay of Madame Butterfly. All the bad plots in the world were waiting to ambush us.
“You could come with me,” I said to Malou, later, in the bedroom, but it sounded lame, like a hypothesis, a theoretical possibility. “I mean, I want you to come,” I amended.
“I don’t think so,” she said. She had practical arguments, the house we were building on the beach. Someone had to look after that. You couldn’t just walk away, not in the Philippines. As soon as you were gone, things changed. You were here or you were not. It was that simple. We were supposed to be talking about the house but I read a deeper meaning into every line. Including the last, as I went out the doorway at dawn. “Good-bye, Biggest Elvis.”
So, nine months after our advent, the three Elvises departed Olongapo. We splashed through puddles. We got caught in traffic near the Victory Liner Bus Station. Three more Americans leaving the city of easy come and easy go. The tide rolled in, the tide rolled out. Inhale and exhale, that’s the way it was here. Nobody held their breath, not in this air. Maybe, if Father Domingo had it right, all the Americans were leaving. That would be something to see. Then again, if I saw it, all the Americans wouldn’t be gone. I wondered if they’d be working on the beach house today. Malou had said you had to watch them every minute. I pictured her, sitting in Elvira’s kitchen, talking things over with the others. Word was that they’d be bringing new groups into Graceland, versions of the Beatles and Rolling Stones. They’d stage a “battle of the bands.” Or maybe Hank Williams, father and son, sharing a night. Could Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli be far behind? Nat and Natalie Cole? John and Julian Lennon?
We headed uphill, past Dolly’s house. Kids in school uniforms walked along the road, her kids among them, I supposed. You always leave a piece of yourself behind, they said. But it wasn’t true. I left nothing behind on Guam. Except a marriage. Olongapo was different. Why couldn’t I believe what Baby had told us, take her plans at face value, that this was a reputation-building tour, a local group goes regional, a market breakout, and happy endings all around?
My problem was that we hadn’t asked for this. Someone had decided we should go. Baby or the Colonel or someone else. Father Domingo? Someday, I’d learn. It was something about money or power. What else? But by the time I found out what had gone on, it would be too late. We were fine in Olongapo. So fine. Two of us in love and the third with a movie deal. Magic every night. Malou.
Our last night in bed wasn’t so good. I wanted something memorable, but it ended up like that last meal I’d talked about, just barely touched. We were both off. My problem was that I knew I was leaving. As for Malou—I was gone already. She was shutting down on me. I was in her arms, I was inside her, but I was gone. Our old argument came back to me. Do we live—and love—as if every night might be our last? Or as if we’d live forever and the nights would never end? The truth—as some of my so-so students used to say—was somewhere in the middle. Live as though you’ve got … a while. Nobody dies tonight. Nobody lives forever. But never say that you’re making love for the last time. And if that last time comes, don’t even try. It’s already over. Rouge on a corpse. Heading for the airport, I wondered if I was showing Malou how right she’d been about Americans. I was going to be different, I thought. Partings weren’t forever, sadness wasn’t required. I’d be back. I’d show her. Promise.
II
The Elvis Trio
Chester Lane
Some places I’d heard of and some I hadn’t. The night before I left, Christina got out the atlas so we could figure out where I’d be traveling and she told me what she knew about all those places, starting with Brunei. I forget what she said. We ended up just spinning the globe, closing our eyes, and seeing where our fingers landed, taking turns. Wondering what it would be like to live there. She always knew more about where the finger landed than I did. Except, of course, when my finger landed in the ocean. Then there wasn’t anything she could say. So the idea was, when this happened, we kissed. And there’s a lot of water in the world.
Albert “Dude” Lane
They told me that the people in Brunei were loaded. They had oil. They were like Arabs. They worshiped Allah and they hired Filipinos to work for them. All kinds of work, they told me. A Filipina won a beauty contest and she got invited to Brunei, a short-term contract on the Sultan’s public relations staff. Uh-huh. “Brunei beauties,” they were called. Elvira did a turn or two down in Brunei and had the sheik to show for it. It was her kind of place. Money talked but not too loud and not too late at night and definitely not at the hotel where the Elvis Trio began its grand tour. Brunei was the place where we ran into something we never had seen before. Empty seats.
The stage was at one end of a big dining room and the only door to it was what the waiters used, coming in and out of the kitchen. Biggest Elvis shook his head as soon as he saw the place. He decided we might as well come in from the front, the same route diners took on their way to tables. The plan was, Chester would barrel-ass in, like always, and I would do some kind of cocky strut and Biggest Elvis would make his usual grand entrance, “Thus Spake Zarathustra” ricocheting off the rafters, a spotlight finding him in back and following him, all sweat and sequins, as he marched into the arena. That was the plan, anyway.
“Look at this, Dude,” Ward said when we peeked through the doors five minutes before showtime, our musicians already onstage, warming up with period rock and roll.
“Oh shit,” I said. My heart sank. The room was half-full. What was worse, they were seated around the sides and toward the back, like students who didn’t want to get too close to the professor.
“They’re eating,” Ward said. And, God, he was right, it was a damn supper show. I don’t mean that they’d finished their meals and were lingering over coffee, waiting for the show to start. I mean, they were chowing down. Some of them had only just sat down and were looking at padded leather menus the size of Rand McNally’s road maps and others were just coming back from the damn salad bar. The waiters were flaming steaks at one table, mixing Irish coffee at another, it looked like high school chemistry class in there, blue arcs of flame leaping from glass to glass.
“Maybe that’s what Uncle Pete wants us to learn,” Chester said. Count on him to be constructive. I say, I’m covered with shit, don’t tell me it’s roses.
“Learn what?” Ward asked. He was irritated.
“About being professional,” Chester said. “Dealing with all kinds of audiences and situations.”
Ward looked at Chester like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Or maybe what he couldn’t accept was that what we were doing was a profession. To Ward, what we did was a lot more than a profession. Or it had been. And tonight it was going to be a lot less.
“You know what I mean,” Chester persisted. “What they say. ‘The show must go on.’”
“The show must go off,” Ward said. “I think that’s the plan.”
Chester didn’t get it. Neither
did I. But the more we looked inside that room, the worse it felt. Our backup band—Efren, Rudy, Roman, and Roger—seemed out of place, like they should be playing dinner music instead of oldies-but-goodies. Then we heard an announcer offstage announce the arrival of an act that was the talk of the Philippines. That got no response. Nobody in Brunei cared about what they talked about in the Philippines. The Philippines were servants’ quarters, that’s all.
“Give it your best shot,” Ward said, clapping Chester on the shoulder.
“Always have,” Chester said. Black slacks, pink stripes, pink jacket, black stripes. “Always will.” And off he ran, God bless him, down past some customers bribing the maitre d’ to seat them a safe distance from the stage, down past a bunch of empty tables, and then it happened and it’s fair to say that this was a no-fault accident, that collision of Chester sprinting toward the stage and a Filipino waiter wheeling a cart full of desserts, cakes and toppings and cut-up fruit, to a table of already-stuffed customers, Chester looking like he’d dived head-on into a banana split.
“They’re laughing,” I said.
“Why not?” Ward asked. “We’re funny.”
Chester Lane
After Brunei we came to Singapore. I’d never seen a city before and Singapore was an eyeful, those buildings downtown, like Oz, high towers that shone like mirrors during the day and were lit up all night long, poking up to heaven and saying, up close and personal, in your face, God. I felt real country, walking around that town. Everything that was outdoors was a garden and everything inside was air-conditioned. Even what was old looked new, the opposite of the PI, where what was new looked old, overnight. It made Manila look like a big, dirty joke.
We played in the lounge of a hotel on Orchard Road, a smallish room that attracted what Dude said was Chinese yuppies. The guys looked like the kids who ran student government, only they’d traded their slide rules for cellular telephones. All through the show we heard those phones ringing, right in the middle of Ward’s soliloquy, in the middle of “All My Sorrows.” Another time, the phone went off right after Dude asked, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” “Obviously not,” he said. He made a joke out of it, see.
The biggest surprise came next. The hotel, it turned out, was only half of our Singapore booking. The rest was on a ship. It seemed the Singapore government was worried that not enough of the right kind of people, the young professionals, were getting married and having babies, so they set up these free three-day cruises, romantic cruises to nowhere. You got up to three cruises. Three strikes and you were out.
We were the talent for the love boat. We sang lots of slow Hawaiian things. We posed for pictures. And, the second night, just an hour before show time, down in his cabin, Ward suggested we should help things along by trying to say something about love in between our songs, something out of our personal experience, how we felt about love and maybe what our particular Elvis would have said about it. An improvisation, he called it.
“Holy shit,” Dude protested. “Is this a cruise ship or a Quaker meeting? We have to get up and testify?”
“You don’t have any thoughts on this particular subject?” Ward asked.
“I’ve got plenty thoughts! Stay away from the girls when the fleet’s in. There’s a thought. Never pay the girl more than twice the price of a bar fine and the next customer will thank you. That’s another thought. Get the girl out of the house before you go to sleep. Or nail her in the morning, before she pees. How am I doing, coach?”
“Just think of what your Elvis would have said about love,” Ward advised Dude.
“Are you kidding? Sign a no-fault divorce contract, that’s what he’d say. He’d say he liked them once and he liked them young and what he couldn’t do, he liked to watch.”
“I hear he loved his mother,” I said. “That’s something.”
“Thanks, Chester. I rest my case.”
“That’s enough,” Ward said. “All in favor raise your hand.” It was two-to-one. One brother—me—voting against the other. And with Ward. What surprised me was how nicely Dude took it. A few months ago, he would have been pissed off big-time. Now he just grinned. I now think he was grinning because he knew we didn’t have much longer. So he could be charitable.
“You guys …” Dude said. “Only once, right? We’ll never do this again, this public service spot. We’ll never even talk about it.”
“Never again,” said Ward.
“Shit!” Dude started pacing back and forth, running his hand through his hair and coming up with fingers full of shiny mousse he wiped on the bedspread. But he wasn’t mad, not really. “Shit!” He frowned, then he laughed. “Would you believe it? I’ve got an audience of wallflowers whose idea of a hot Saturday night is a visit to Computer World … and I’m nervous.”
“Heartbreak Hotel,” “Teddy Bear,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” I did the fast stuff first and I wowed them, I guess, but when people who can’t dance watch someone who can, there’s always bad vibes. They think if I can dance, then I must be stupid. Then I stopped, grabbed a towel, mopped off, and just held the same microphone I’ve been known to throw, juggle, wrestle to the floor, but now I leaned against it for support.
“I’m in love right now,” I said, “and it’s the first time. And the last time.” And suddenly I was into it, I wasn’t just Chester Lane talking about a woman named Christina, I was Elvis talking about Priscilla and I was everybody who ever felt what I’d been feeling. “I’m not so much,” I said. “There’s some things I can do—like you’ve seen—and lots of things I can’t. Which you won’t see.”
I glanced off the side, where I saw Dude beaming at me, laughing some, thinking of all the things I couldn’t do.
“Most anything with writing in it,” I said, “or numbers. I’ve heard some people say there’s only one right person for you, one in the whole world, and others—including a close relative of mine who will be appearing in a minute—say no, gosh no, there’s not just one, because if there’s only one, think what the odds are against finding that one.”
Now I started strumming a few slow chords. “One or more than one, I don’t know. But I found mine and I’m singing this for you, Christina.” And I sang “Loving You,” like I was singing it into a phone with her at the other end. That’s how it was for me, on the love songs. There was the audience in front of me. And the audience I saw when I closed my eyes.
After that, it was Dude’s turn and he was rougher than usual, meaner and sulkier. Not the marrying kind, for sure. Then, after “It’s Now or Never,” his turn came.
“They tell me three voyages is all you get,” he began. “Now, how many—tell the truth—are on this voyage for the first time? Tell the truth, now.”
We saw a scattering of hands. Not many. And not many more when Dude asked about a second voyage. No need for another question, the third-times were more than half the room. Some of them were good-humored about it. Why settle for one voyage when the government was good for three? But some were embarrassed. They felt like losers.
“This isn’t the love boat,” Dude said. “It’s the voyage of the damned. Well, three days isn’t long enough, that’s what I think. We should stay at sea until everybody’s paired off, everyone. I wonder how long that would take?”
I heard some nervous laughing in the audience. Some. Even when he was being nice, Dude had an air about him, laughing with you one minute, at you the next. He could turn on you in a wink. The people sitting in front of him knew it too. He could be dangerous.
Dude sang a song that night he’d never done before. It usually belonged to Ward. It was maybe the best love song Elvis ever made, called “Don’t,” a simple melody that Elvis just slides and glides all over, light and easy one moment, dark and husky the next. Ward said it was “a song of innocence and experience, perfectly balanced,” and I believe he got that right.
The song was out of character for Dude and it was out of character for our audience of Singapore young professionals. Still, the dan
ce floor filled. And then everybody was dancing close, nobody was too busy or too cool or too ugly, needed a smoke or a trip to the john. They were all out there and that was Dude’s doing. Our whole act was like that, when it was good, the way it brought feelings into people’s lives.
“I can’t follow that,” Ward said. I agreed but I was too involved in watching Dude to say much. I was about ready to cry, seeing how he got into that song. And then, the way that last “Baby, don’t say no …” hung in the air. And everybody just stood around when he finished. They didn’t applaud or shout encore. They just waited for him to sing it again. When he finished the second time he wiped his face and eyes with a towel, leaned forward in a bow, and walked out toward us.
“Don’t make me do that again,” he said to Ward. “Ever.”
“Don’t worry,” Ward said. He was smiling. “Unless, that is, you want to finish the show.”
“Come on, little brother,” Dude said to me. “Let’s see what Biggest Elvis does on the subject of love. I’ve been wondering. …”
“That was my song you sang out there,” said Ward. “That’s what I was going to do.”
“Now, Professor. Didn’t you tell us to poach? To extract music from time and place? To interrogate the texts? Well, I just gave a song called ‘Don’t’ a pretty good interrogation out there tonight. The third degree. But you can interrogate it again, if you want.”
Ward shook his head, the way teachers do when their students act up on them. Then he stopped, looked into a showroom that still hadn’t gotten over Dude’s performance. “Serves me right,” he said. He looked puzzled. He scratched his head. He moved his lips, but nothing came out. Onstage, he did the things he usually did, “Suspicious Minds” and “Return to Sender” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” He put a lot into them too but I couldn’t help wondering what he’d come up with at the end of the show, when we were supposed to talk about love. I saw him walk back and talk to the musicians awhile. They nodded, after a bit.