by Mark Dunn
Clay and I called home: “Hi, Mama. Elvis is coming to the theatre tonight. See you at breakfast.”
What did Elvis and his troop watch that night? Two fairly underwhelming movies. The first was called Macon County Line. It was a low-budget indy written and produced by Max Baer Jr., more familiarly known at the time as an erstwhile Beverly Hillbilly. The movie told the story of a deadly road trip taken by two U.S. Army-bound brothers in the redneck South. Elvis enjoyed this one.
The second film selected by the King to round out the evening’s double feature was a George Segal sci-fi stinker called The Terminal Man, about a brilliant but dangerously epileptic computer programmer. Elvis slept through this one. I know this because Clay and I—and several other ushers and candy-counter girls, including my own girlfriend Jerri, sat behind him. Just before the movie, Mr. Humphries had asked Jerri if she’d ever dreamed of being kissed by Elvis. Jerri was cute and unquestionably kissable. When she had bashfully answered in the affirmative (Jerri told me later that her mother, who had once flown all the way to Vegas to see Elvis on stage, would have killed her if she hadn’t been receptive), Elvis leaned in and gave Jerri a chaste peck on the lips.
Elvis drank.
We were under strict orders not to reveal this fact, since it would undercut the clean-cut image that Elvis’s handlers, even in this late season of his life, still wished to put across to the Elvis-worshipping public. And so we all kept dutifully mum. Elvis is human, I thought. What’s the big deal?
Elvis was pissed.
At one point in the evening he decided to don the mantle of moral authority and reprimand one of his entourage for either maliciously or mischievously pulling up yard signs (and getting caught) during this, a fairly contentious city primary season.
We were ordered not to speak of Elvis’s temper. Elvis has a temper, I thought. Who doesn’t?
The evening ended just as the sun began to rise over the mall. Elvis and his sleepy entourage headed back to Graceland, a couple of miles from the theatre, and Clay and I slid into our parents’ mammoth green Pontiac station wagon and drove back to our “outer” Graceland hovel, having enjoyed our evening of close proximity to superstardom.
These were the times that I felt the strongest connection to my twin brother Clay. It had been a great summer for him too. If one’s eighteenth birthday marks the passage from adolescence to adulthood, then this was the summer—indeed, this was the very night—that Clay and I made that all-important transition.
There are ironies here. Sad ironies. The fact that like me, Elvis was also a twin. His own brother, Jessie, had preceded Elvis by thirty-five minutes but was stillborn. I was also born second, and like Elvis, I also lost my older twin brother. Clay died Christmas week of 2006 of an accidental prescription drug overdose.
Elvis may have wondered what his life could have been like with a twin brother taking the journey alongside him. I didn’t have to wonder. Twindom is a queer phenomenon. One goes through life as both an individual and as part of a couple, for even those twins who allow competition or jealousy to poison their relationship cannot deny the kind of bond that in truth can never really be severed.
Even in death.
I often think back on that night in 1974 when my brother and I turned eighteen, when Clay was well on his way to becoming the funny, gregarious hail fellow well met whom he’d be for most of his life. Because that night wasn’t just about Elvis. It was about two men, both of whom embraced life with gusto, until life tripped them up and ultimately betrayed them. Both Elvis Presley and my brother Clay met sad ends abetted by serious drug addiction.
Tens of millions the world over mourned the death of Elvis Presley. I saw only a small fraction of them on the sprawling front lawn of Graceland the week of his demise in 1977, but the crowds that turned out were vocal and communal in their bereavement. When Clay died, there were far fewer to mourn his passing.
Several years later, I continue to mourn my brother and to think about him.
Clay was born with a black eye. We joked that it was my fetal fist that delivered the punch. “You boys were fighting with each other even before you were born,” our harried mother quipped. And we did fight. All brothers fight. But not in those first few hours of our nineteenth year on this Earth, when the world was suddenly everything it could possibly be and life held every imaginable promise.
Jerri had been kissed by the King of Rock and Roll. And the King had shown that he could drink and cuss like all the rest of us. And George Segal demonstrated that even a good actor can sometimes be hampered by a bad script.
And did I mention how damned good the popcorn was that night?
Clay and I were all smiles on the short drive to Hickory Hills. Once we got home it was hard to sleep. But we had to get some shuteye. Our work schedules called for us to report back to the theatre at noon.
Life goes on—at least for as long as fate allows.
1975
PHYSICALLY CANDID IN LOUISIANA
Jake and I had never done any work in the Fairfield/Highland neighborhood before—I mean after I started my own construction company. I’d worked on a couple of remodels there for two other outfits, but this was my first job in the neighborhood since striking out on my own. The house was on Herndon and it belonged to Henry Badeaux, who was well known in both Shreveport and Bossier City.
I figured it was going to be a good three-day job: first day to pull up the old brick terrace that looked to be about a hundred years old from its crumbling condition; then day two lay in a new foundation, and day three put in a new paver patio. I asked Badeaux why he wanted to go with an itty-bitty company like mine (it’s just me and Jake and sometimes my boy, Kit, on the weekends, and then there’s my hardworking wife Theresa in the office). He said he was drawn to my ad in the Yellow Pages. How do you like that? That little turtle with a toolbelt that my artistically gifted teenage son had drawn for us actually landed us a decent-sized job! And a decent-sized job in old-money Shreveport, for crying out loud.
It was the maid, Callie, who was there the first couple of days we worked. She brought us lemonade (this being Shreveport, and October in Shreveport being just as hot and muggy sometimes as August), and even served us lunch. Every now and then I’d catch her peeking out at us through the utility room window, I guess to make sure that we weren’t loafing on the job.
We didn’t meet Mrs. Badeaux until very early Thursday morning, Callie’s day off, and Mrs. Badeaux’s first full day back in town after a week down in the Big Easy to see family. There was a milk delivery van parked in front of the house. I didn’t pay it much mind, except to comment that I didn’t think people got milk delivered to their homes anymore. Jake suspected foul play: an empty van, a missing milkman. I think Jake watches far too many of those Quinn Martin detective shows.
It was about seven thirty when we got our first look at Mrs. Badeaux. We’d already been working for about half an hour, giving the paver sand one last screed before beginning the next big phase of the operation. Mrs. Badeaux looked dressed and ready to meet the day. I’d say ready to go to work except that a) she didn’t work, according to Badeaux, and b) no woman I know would have gone off to work looking the way she did. You’d think she had the starring role in some gypsy movie, for crying out loud. If she hadn’t been beautiful (oh, Lordee, was she beautiful, as second wives—or was she his third?—always are), I’d say she looked like a blueberry. That’s the color she was wearing—this sort of bluey-purple peasant dress with flouncy sleeves and tassels at the bottom and a pirate-like thick sash the color of the dress tied around her waist, and a long, sinuous scarf that went around her neck and hung down low and then wrapped itself around her head real tight but with just enough of her blond hair poking out in the front to assure you that there was a good flock of Herbal Essences-scented yellow silk under there.
She looked nothing like my wife, and suddenly I felt guilty. Guilty for looking. Guilty for entertaining thoughts that—let’s be honest here—I really
had no control over.
So this is what rich young women wear when they’re lounging around the house, I thought. The only thing missing was bonbons!
I pulled my eyes from her long enough to notice that Jake was looking at her too. Jake’s gaze was especially noticeable since he’s crosseyed.
“It looks like you’re doing a fine job,” said the lady of the house, in that distinct northern Louisiana drawl that I’d been familiar with since birth. “Do you put the bricks in today?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Jake and me together, and then I gave Jake a look that said, “I’m the boss here. I’ll talk to the woman. You can just keep quiet.”
“We got the sand smoothed down and we’re ready to lay in the pavers,” I went on.
“What are pavers?”
“That would be the brick, ma’am,” Jake replied, winking at me insubordinately.
“Oh, I hated the old patio that was here before. I was afraid one of our guests might come out here and trip on the broken stones.”
“Then it’s a good thing you’re getting it replaced,” I said.
“Well, you’ve got a warm day for it. The weatherman says it’s getting up into the eighties this afternoon. Now, you boys just give a knock at that door if you need anything. Callie said the two of you got pretty thirsty yesterday.”
“We did, ma’am,” said Jake, whose eyes were still fixed on the stunning Mrs. Badeaux. I’m sure I was ogling her just as much as he was, but I was doing it a little more subtly.
Jake is constitutionally incapable of being subtle. He’s a hard worker and that’s why I keep him on, but his life has largely been driven by his various appetites: sex, food, beer, the Saints, and the LSU Tigers (which he calls the “Bengals” after their nickname, the “Bayou Bengals”), and all of it pretty much in that order.
It’s always been hard, during our long side-by-side workdays, to talk to Jake about anything other than the above. He doesn’t even know the name of the vice president or either of our two United States senators, although both men are Shreveport natives. And his obsession with the Tigers and his hatred for their in-state rival, Tulane, got old after our first week together.
“Green Wave. You gotta be fucking kidding. Who’d name their team after water, for fuck’s sake?”
By eight thirty Jake and I had staked the retaining edge in place and had started to position the pavers. Jake was pulling the wet saw down from the bed of the truck when Mrs. Badeaux came out “to see how things were going.” The scarf was gone, both from her neck and her head. Its absence displayed a mane of luxurious soft blond hair and a smooth, luscious, lightly tanned neck that wanted badly to be kissed and caressed. Jake fumbled with the wet saw and nearly dropped it. His mouth was open in a slight gape—a look that didn’t flatter him and probably gave one the impression of a lascivious, crosseyed, mentally retarded man.
“Oh,” she said. “So that’s how you do it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
“I was going to make me an egg sandwich. Would either of you boys like an egg sandwich?” As Mrs. Badeaux said this, the first two fingers of her right hand seemed to be diddling, absentmindedly, the nodule of her left nipple. “And coffee? Would you like coffee too?”
All that I could get out was “Yes.”
“Me too,” called Jake, half-slobbering, from the driveway.
After Mrs. Badeaux had gone inside, Jake ran over to me and said in an urgent whisper, “Why was she twiddling her titty like that?”
“You could see that all the way from the truck?” I whispered back. “With that Clarence-the-Crosseyed-Lion eyesight of yours?”
“It don’t take perfect eyesight to take notice when a pretty woman fingers her zoom, Cortner.”
I took a deep breath. “We need to get a hold of ourselves. I’m a married man and you’re—just what are you, Jake? Has the divorce gone through?”
“Not yet.”
“Then technically you’re still a married man too.”
“And technically, you’d be an idiot, Cortner, to think I gotta have that decree in my hand to make a move on any woman of my choosing.”
“You make a move on Mrs. Badeaux, Jake, and you’re fired. You’re more than fired. I’ll make sure that nobody in town ever hires you. I’m starting to get the feeling that Mrs. Badeaux is one of those lonely housewives who isn’t getting enough from her husband.”
“Well, hell, Cortner! With a Buddha-bellied, squirrel-faced mari like Badeaux, do you blame her?”
“You heard me, Jake. Now get your mind off Mrs. Badeaux. Tell me about that game against the Gators last Saturday.”
When Mrs. Badeaux brought out our egg sandwiches and cups of coffee, another item of apparel was missing from her blueberry ensemble. The sash was gone, and her shoes as well (I hardly ever notice a woman’s shoes; I’m always too busy taking in everything else). Mrs. Badeaux was totally barefoot, her toenails painted hot pink. Without the sash, she looked even more like a gypsy, the dress flowing every which way. She directed us to the gazebo and served us there.
As we were eating—or trying to eat—she stood nearby and talked about some of the ideas she had for landscaping the large backyard. “Henry loves it that I’m inclined that way, though I wish he’d care a little more about how this place looks. It’s been in his family for four generations, you know.” And then, apropos of nothing she’d just said, Mrs. Badeaux pressed two fingers against her lips with a coquette’s tease, and then trailed her fingers down her chin and farther south between her breasts, finally withdrawing them just above the land of unearthly delights.
Then she excused herself and went back inside, her floating stride across the green lawn sensuously mesmerizing. Jake and I sat for a moment in a state of suspended animation. I finally found my voice to say, “Something’s going on here. I’m not comfortable with it. I don’t even know if we should finish the job.”
“There’s no harm in looking, Cortner. She’s playing a game. I want to play. I won’t touch her. And we’ll both hightail it out of here, no problem, if she decides to make a move on either of us. I’m just saying—”
“I know what you’re saying. But I’m weak. And I know that you’re even weaker than I am.”
“It’s a game, Cortner. We won’t let her win. But for fuck’s sake, let’s play!”
We kept playing.
At about nine forty-five, Mrs. Badeaux returned to offer us lemonade on a tray. The blueberry gypsy lounging attire was gone. Now she was wearing a pleated skirt that came up high, like cheerleaders used to wear, and a halter top that looked like the kind of tit-sling that sluts wear. It was a very different look—slightly schoolgirl, mostly trailer-park trash. The purpose here, I suppose, was to share with us an exposed midriff that seemed both taut and touchably soft—nothing at all like my wife Theresa’s abdominal Michelin pudge, of which she was extremely self-conscious, because it didn’t used to be there, but appeared as we both passed the forty mark and my own paunch coincidentally became more pronounced.
“I know what’s going on,” said Jake after she’d gone back inside. He was so excited that he could hardly get the words out. “She’s doing a striptease.”
“Strippers don’t generally change clothes in the middle of their act.”
“Well, there wasn’t much under that blue dress. She wasn’t even wearing a bra, far as I could tell. You could see the outline of her hard kernels.”
“Look, Jake. We need to stop doing this color commentary after each of her appearances. It’s only making it worse and it’s hard for me to concentrate on getting this patio finished.”
“I’m hard too.”
“That’s not what I said, butthole.”
Jake laughed. He was having a blast. I was having fun too—too much fun—but I was also starting to feel a little anxious about the whole thing.
Jake’s theory was confirmed with Mrs. Badeaux’s next emergence. It was almost noon. She had brought us lunch. She served it to us wea
ring an all-white two-piece bathing suit. I couldn’t call it an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny because, in truth, it was actually quite modest as bikinis go, but it gave us a much better look at her plump gazungas, and more gam than a gam-man deserved to see.
“I’m going to do some sunbathing over by the pool. You boys know where I am if you need anything.” She went back inside, and a few minutes later re-emerged wearing sunglasses and carrying her towel and a couple of magazines and a big glass of something pink and cold and condensating.
By this time Jake and I were ready to fill sand in between the pavers in the section of the patio we’d already laid down. After emptying the third bag over the bricks, I handed Jake a broom, but he wasn’t looking at me and the handle end of the broom went into his eye. He held his hand over the poked eye and pointed toward the pool, which was in clear view of the patio we were constructing. Jake could hardly form words. “The—the top is down. The top is down.” It took me several seconds to realize what he was saying had nothing to do with automotive convertibles and everything to do with the fact that Mrs. Badeaux had just taken off her bikini top. And she hadn’t done it in the way that most sunbathing women do it: tummy down, to allow the sun to bronze their strap-free dorsal regions. She had rolled over completely upon her back so that her fully exposed breasts could soak up a little of the early October radiance that had already reduced Jake and me to sweat-drenched t-shirts.
Neither of us could speak. Jake’s broom was poised in midair.
And it wasn’t over.
Something buzzed from just inside the door. It sounded like one of those house intercom systems that builders put into some of the larger homes in the sixties. Without donning her top, Mrs. Badeaux came bounding inside to answer the intercom. “It’s Callie’s day off,” she remarked as she passed. (This she had already told us.) Who then, I wondered, was inside that house, summoning her? And was this person privy to all the fun that Mrs. Badeaux was having out of doors, clearly at Jake’s and my expense?
