by Micah Nathan
“I got a Gremlin available right now,” Eddie said. “And a ’94 Taurus with no AC.”
“We need something to get us back to Buffalo,” the old man said. “Something comfortable.”
“Maybe if I had a week I could get you a decent ride. But on short notice the best I can do is that Taurus.”
“Bullshit.”
Eddie sighed, then mumbled to himself and leaned back, looking over the rack of keys mounted on the wall. “If you can wait until tomorrow morning, I can get you a ’98 Continental.”
“We can wait,” the old man said.
Eddie nodded and scribbled something on a sheet of paper. He held the Folgers can on his stomach. “Everything work out with that girl you were looking for?”
The old man said nothing. Eddie raised his eyebrows at Ben.
“Told you.” Eddie spit into his can. “Hank may be old but he’s still got it. Couldn’t get women off him when we were kids, and can’t get them off now.”
“She’s not with Hank,” Ben said.
“Then where is she?”
The old man sniffled. “Here.”
“In Orange Mount?”
The old man nodded.
“Goddamn,” Eddie said. “And I thought you came back to say hi.”
“You got a bathroom?” the old man asked.
Eddie pointed to the other side of the room. The old man stood, slowly, legs shaking with effort. He righted himself and began his stiff walk across the room.
Ben stared at Eddie. Eddie stared at Ben.
“Never thought you’d be driving his fat ass around for summer break, did you?”
“Nope.”
“He’s like that. Always got you doing the exact opposite of what you thought.”
“How long have you been friends?” Ben said.
Eddie whistled. “Too long. How long you been his driver?”
“Six days.”
He laughed. “You know that son of a bitch—”
“You mean Elvis.”
Eddie smiled. “I mean that son of a bitch. Anyway, that son of a bitch helped me rebuild my first dream car. Can’t remember what it was, but he helped me rebuild it. Handy son of a bitch that son of a bitch. And a hell of a voice.”
“He told me who he is.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said he’s Elvis Presley.”
“What a coincidence.” Eddie winked at Ben and spit into his Folgers can. “Didn’t he tell you I’m Malcolm X?”
Ben and the old man sat in a bar down the street from the Shake-A-Tail Motel. Eddie had talked to Reginald, the motel owner, who gave the old man two free rooms on the top floor. Tomorrow morning at nine A.M. someone named Mayorga would drop off their car, a full tank of gas, and two hundred in cash for their trip home. “Now, I don’t want anything in return,” Eddie had said to the old man, and the old man said, “You’re fucking with my karma,” and Eddie said, “Your karma been fucked for a thousand years.”
Then they hugged and Eddie looked at the old man as if it were the last time they’d see each other. When the old man turned away, Ben swore he saw tears in his eyes.
So they spent the night at the bar, drinking for free because the bartender liked the old man’s jumpsuit and felt bad they’d been in a car wreck, and the old man kept eyeing the dusty piano across the room, forgotten in a dark corner like an ugly woman on singles’ night. Ben drank his beer and nudged the old man but the old man shook his head, claiming his back hurt too much to play. Too goddamn much to do anything but sit and drink even though he nursed one beer and his speech began to slur like the old days. Too goddamn much to think about Nadine or Hank, or how Eddie and Ben were his only true friends in the entire world.
It rolled past midnight and the bar emptied. Soon the old man and Ben were the last customers in the room. The bartender talked with his girlfriend at the end of the bar, white towel slung over his shoulder, and Ben wished she’d look at the old man and saunter over, writing her number in red lipstick on the bar. He wished they’d all stop and stare, the entire city pouring in, fighting and screaming to get a glimpse. Front page of the New York Times and Breaking News on CNN, even the Google logo done in a clever send-up of the King. Jumpsuits and aviator glasses on every letter; the sneering G, mutton-chop sideburns on the O, drugged-out L lying on a pile of scarves with a guitar.
Instead there was nothing. Only the quiet clink of his beer bottle and the old man shifting on his bar stool to ease the shooting pains in his back.
“I miss her, you know,” the old man said.
“Nadine?”
“My girl. My baby girl.” He smiled a little, drool collecting in the corner of his mouth. He wiped it off and let his hand flop back onto the bar. “Hurts so much I could cry. ‘I get so lonesome I could die.’ You know how much I hated that song? Always thought it was corny. Now I get it. The old man gets it.”
He started to say something else—something about a lifetime of regrets erased with a little bit of courage—but his eyes rolled back and he slumped forward. Ben caught him before he fell.
“Hold on.” Ben struggled to keep the old man on his stool. “Hey,” he shouted to the bartender. “We got a problem—”
“Fresh as a daisy,” the old man whispered. He opened his eyes.
“How many did you take?” Ben asked.
“Not enough. My back still hurts like a motherfucker.”
“Do you want me to find you some more?”
The old man smiled. “Man, that’s okay. You done enough.”
Then he slipped off the stool and took a deep breath, making his way across the bar, holding on to tabletops as he lumbered past, red and green garnets falling from the Aztec thunderbird emblazoned on his back. He smoothed his hair and stopped at the piano. He winced as he sat on its bench, flipped open the fallboard, made his hands into fists and opened them wide as he could. He cleared his throat, letting his fingers rest on the dusty keys, closing his eyes, remembering a laughing beauty queen in the passenger seat with the wind caressing her long brown hair and her legs dangling out the window. Pink polish on her pink little toes. Glittering anklet. Pink shorts hiked up to the top of her smooth tan thighs.
Back when I rambled, the old man thought. A rambler roaring through the world, drinking oceans dry and chopping down mountains.
Somewhere in the smoke and light.
Oh the king he sings of Heaven.
Oh yes he believes there is a paradise.
And a band is playing there.
There is a black car waiting somewhere outside.
Filled with lovely ladies for celebration.
He wipes the tears from his eyes.
For all his lonely lovemaking.
Oh babe. Whenever will you love me?
The old man closed the fallboard. Ben clapped and whistled.
The bartender leaned close to his girlfriend and whispered, “Every week some poor guy wanders in and pretends he’s the King. But you know, that old man wasn’t so bad.”
Ben woke to the sound of a car horn. Eddie stood on the sidewalk in front of the motel, black Lincoln Continental parked in front. Ben ran down the stairs barefoot, pulling his T-shirt over his head and combing his hands through his hair. He stepped onto the sidewalk and squinted against the sun.
A Mexican sat at the wheel of an old Mercedes, idling behind the Lincoln. Eddie tossed the keys to Ben and handed him an envelope stuffed with crisp twenties.
“It was a 1958 Ford Skyliner,” Eddie said. “My first dream car. The one that son of a bitch helped me rebuild. You know he gave me the engine from his own Skyliner? That’s the kind of guy he is. Tear his heart out if you said yours was broken. Understand?”
Ben nodded.
“Good,” Eddie said. “ ’Cause a lot of people didn’t. Now, you tell him I said not to wait thirty years next time.”
Ben shook Eddie’s hand and watched as he got into the old Mercedes and drove away, into the shimmering heat.
Ben ran back upstairs and knocked on the old man’s door. He waited. He knocked again and said, “Elvis?” Then he tried the knob and it clicked open. The door swung slowly with a long creak.
The bed was empty except for two garnet stones lying on the sheets, glittering in a bar of morning sun.
Ben drove until the sun dipped behind low-slung buildings and an evening wind ruffled the trees. He drove slowly, window down. Everywhere he looked he saw the old man. Posing for a picture in front of the Sun Records building; sitting on a restaurant patio eating a burger and fries; walking out of a Gap; feeding quarters into a parking meter. Hundreds of Elvii, wiping sweat from their foreheads because it was too damn hot to wear a jumpsuit, but where else could you wear such a ridiculous outfit and no one would laugh at you.
Eddie’s store was closed, so Ben pulled to the back and knocked on his trailer door. He shouted Eddie’s name and was answered by the surging chirps of crickets. He drove to the bar and found it empty save a few middle-aged men flicking bottle caps across the room while the bartender talked on his cell. He drove to Graceland and it was closed for the day, gated with a security car sitting at the entrance.
Ben drove to Orange Mount and parked outside Nadine’s home. He summoned his courage but lost it every time, afraid she’d be waiting with a can of Mace or a giant boyfriend. The wind picked up and leaves scraped across the driveway. Ben cursed and punched the steering wheel, laying on the horn until he saw her porch light flicker. She opened the door, peeking out her head. She wore the same clothes as the day before, only her hair was wrapped in a towel. She looked at the car. Ben peeled away, laughing for no good reason, into the night.
17.
en smelled Chinese cooking oil from miles away. A line of cars were parked outside his apartment and the faint cacophony of a party got louder as he trudged up the stairs. Nineteen cents in his pocket remained from the two hundred in crisp twenties—he’d eaten well during the trip home, gorging himself on shrimp platters and steak tips and 7-Eleven hot dogs. Every rest stop he expected to find the old man pushing through the restroom door, hair freshly combed, a Big Gulp in hand. That slow drawl coated in pills, limping and complaining about the pain in his back but relentless as always. You know, I remember one time Lamar and I carried a cow on our shoulders from Austin to Duluth. Chopped down a mountain over Labor Day weekend back in ’72. Drank the Mississippi in a single night and puked it back up before sunrise, fish and all.
There was one night at a Denny’s in Frankfort, Kentucky, when Ben saw the back of a man wearing a red jumpsuit with thinning dyed hair combed into a struggling pompadour. He walked across the restaurant and saw the man was a thick-jowled loner with glasses, hunched over a Grand Slam, grasping his vanilla shake. “The fuck you looking at?” the man hissed, and Ben stared, wishing the man would make a move. But the man only wanted to eat and drink his shake in peace, and Ben felt foolish for flexing the courage that had failed him outside that cedar-shingle home in Orange Mount.
He opened his apartment door to noise and music. Patrick stood in the middle of the living room. Samantha sat on the threadbare plaid couch, legs folded under her skirt. Steve and Jim huddled near the three-legged Naugahyde chair, sharing a joint, Jim wearing his favorite basketball shirt with the jacked guy dunking on a hundred-foot rim. The aquarium was still green with algae.
“Holy fucking shit,” Patrick said.
The room fell silent. Ben pushed past them all and headed for his bedroom. He heard Patrick call out to him, and Samantha say Benjamin and then something about his mom having called but he’d driven for two days without sleep. The dark of his room and the cool pillowcase were the two things he wanted more than anything in the world.
He awoke to the sound of traffic outside his window. He stumbled from bed and walked through the living room. Empty cups and a bong sat on the kitchen table, surrounded by crumbs and plastic bowls with melted ice cream. Afternoon sun warmed the counter. The microwave read two P.M. He’d slept for fifteen hours. He took a carton of orange juice from the fridge, rinsing his mouth, then grabbed a bag of pretzels and walked back to the living room.
A small box sat near the door. The FedEx label showed John Barrow as the sender.
The buzzer sounded. Ben buzzed and opened the door. He sat on the couch with the box and ripped it open, rummaging through crinkled balls of newspaper. One of the back-page headlines—from the Memphis Sun—was highlighted in yellow marker: Car Found in Mississippi with Arsenal in Trunk.
“Ben?”
She stood in the doorway, wearing white Keds and an electric-blue T-shirt. Her blond hair was shorter than he remembered. She was prettier than he remembered; her cheeks flushed, like they always did when she got nervous. It all came back. He thought it was funny how he’d forgotten the little things. He’d always believed you remembered the little things and forgot the rest.
“Hey, Jess.”
“Hey. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“My cell died.”
“I figured it was something like that. I got back a few days ago.” She smiled. “I see you still haven’t cleaned that aquarium. Do you like my hair?”
“Love it.”
She pushed a strand behind her ear. “So, do you want to get some lunch?”
“How’s Alan?”
“I don’t care. It’s a long story, and if I never have to talk about him again …”
“That’s cool.”
Silence, then Jessica clapped her hands together. “So, lunch?”
“I can’t.”
“Oh.” She toed the carpet. “I just thought you might be hungry. We can walk around the mall instead, or do whatever.”
“I am hungry,” Ben said. “But I can’t have lunch. You do look great, though. That Alan is missing out.”
Jessica frowned. “I told you I don’t care about Alan. Why are you acting so weird?”
Ben stood and walked up to her. He could smell the cocoa butter scent that always made his mouth water. The raspberry lip gloss was gone, however. She was older now, a college girl with unscented lip gloss. She was more than pretty—she was beautiful. He could pretend and play the cool guy but he still loved her. Fifty years from now he’d love her. Maybe one day he’d wax nostalgic to some young man about his first love, and it would seem better than it actually was.
But so what, Ben thought, and he kissed her. Jessica kissed him back. Cherry lip balm; he’d been wrong about the unscented lip gloss. She squeezed his arms. He pulled away and she took a breath, looking up at him. The youngest girl he’d ever seen, pretending just like him.
“Honey, one hundred years ago you’d break my heart,” Ben said. He pushed her gently into the hall and shut the door.
He stood in the middle of his living room and waited until he heard her footsteps echoing down the stairs, then the slam of a car door and the roar of an engine. He grabbed the box and pulled out the newspaper.
At the bottom lay a gold lion’s head belt buckle.
“So you never saw Ginger again?” Patrick waved his arms. “That was it?”
Ben missed his layup. He let the ball bounce and roll across the court. They played in a park across the street from his apartment, with netless rims and a chain-link fence that sliced the sun into yellow diamonds. He’d been gone a little more than a week but it was already mid-summer hot, that smell of warm pavement and exhaust.
“That was it,” Ben said. “I thought she might have run back to her pimp, so I stopped by on my way home, to the bus stop where we first picked her up. You know what I found? Another hooker.”
Patrick laughed. “You should’ve brought her back. I’d fuck a hooker.”
“How hot was Ginger?” Steve asked.
“Pretty hot,” Ben said.
“Scale of one to ten. One being Jim’s mom, ten being that hostess at Applebee’s.”
“The hostess at Jack Astor’s,” Jim said.
Steve waved him off. “Don’t be a douche bag. The Applebee�
�s hostess is more … what’s the word I’m looking for.”
“Fuckable,” Ben said.
“We’re not rating fuckable,” Jim said. “We’re rating hot.”
Steve frowned. “Same thing.”
“It’s not,” Patrick said. “Ben’s ex Jessica is hotter than Samantha, but I’d much rather fuck Samantha. No offense, Ben.”
“None taken.”
“Whatever,” Steve said. “I want to know about Ginger. Come on, Ben. One to ten.”
“Are we still talking about fuckability?”
“Jesus, who cares?” Steve retrieved the ball. “Just give us a rating.”
“Eight,” Ben said.
“Awesome,” Steve said, and Jim and Patrick jockeyed for position under the hoop as Steve launched a shot. Ben stared past them, toward the boulevard with its traffic and horizon of low-slung strip malls and plazas. The air smelled like plastic again. This time, Ben knew what it was.
On the way home from the basketball court he stopped at the old man’s house. The lawn was brown from drought and leaves had collected on the steps. Ben pounded on the door and called for the old man but only heard the echoes of his fist. He walked around the back and peered through the windows; he saw a living room with furniture and little else—the stacks of books and papers he’d seen that morning when the old man answered the door with a muffin in one hand and an electric razor in the other were gone. Some dishes sat on the kitchen counter. A recycling bin filled with plastic Coke bottles waited on the linoleum floor.
Ben tried the garage door and it squeaked open. Late-day summer sun washed over the dusty cement floor. A push broom leaned against the wall, next to a bag of mulch and a garden spade with dried dirt pasted to its blade. The cherry red 1958 Ford Fairlane Skyliner was gone. In its place, an outline.
“I would have given you the Lincoln,” Ben said aloud. “That son of a bitch didn’t even have an engine.”
