The Enigmatologist

by Ben Adams

  “Well, I’m glad you like it,” Mrs. Morris said, standing in the kitchen door watching him.

  “Some kids I went to school with, they would die if they saw this place. You mind if I take some pictures?” John asked, putting the stopper back in an Elvis-shaped bourbon decanter.

  “Of course. I’m happy to share my collection.”

  John took pictures on his phone, then sent them to some friends from art school.

  Mrs. Morris stood in the kitchen doorway, her hands folded at her waist. She smiled, happy that someone else appreciated her collection. In the kitchen behind her, a crumb-filled Cool Whip container sat on the yellow linoleum.

  “What, no Elvis dog bowl?” John asked.

  “Oh my, no. Elvis is way too pretty for the dog.”

  The living room couch had also received the Elvis treatment. It was airbrushed with Elvis’s face. John sat on it, gingerly.

  And there.

  Above the fireplace.

  Elvis painted on black velvet, completely naked, with an erection. John’s erectile knowledge was limited to his own, when he woke in the morning, and a magazine Jimmy Rosebottom had brought to school in the third grade. He thought he was a good size, but Elvis’s painted erection, the length of a kielbasa, the girth of the fat end of a baseball bat, made him feel inadequate.

  “You like my painting?” Mrs. Morris asked.

  “Uh, yeah.” John shook his head, refocused, his attention magnetized by Elvis’s painted wang. He quickly took a picture.

  “Sometimes I can’t stop staring at it,” she said.

  “I see why,” John said, resting his elbow on the couch armrest, propping his head on his hand, fingers shielding him from the painting.

  She sat in a chair across the room, moving a quilt made from cloth replications of Elvis album covers, and said, “Most people think I’m a little odd for filling my house like this, but I don’t care. It makes me happy.”

  “I can see that. So, how did you get into collecting?” From watching Rooftop, John had learned that the easiest way to get someone to open up was to ask them about what they loved.

  “Well, I suppose it all started with Elvis’s second appearance on Milton Berle, June 5th, 1956. I’ll never forget that day. We just bought our first TV and were really excited to watch a broadcast from New York City. Well, I was, anyway. Herman, my husband, was an old fuddy-duddy and never cared for that sort of thing. Well, Elvis performed ‘Hound Dog’. In all my life I’d never seen anything like it, the way he moved and shook his hips. Well, when he danced something moved inside me. I jumped up and asked Herman if he would dance with me, but he sat in his chair grumbling about corrupting the youth of America. Herman turned off the TV and went and put on a Bing Crosby record. I used to love Bing, but after hearing Elvis, Bing sounded like sour milk.

  “The next day, I went out and bought my first Elvis record. The man at the store looked at me funny. I was embarrassed and told him it was a birthday gift for my niece. I don’t think he believed me. I was ashamed, really, not telling him the record was for me. I didn’t have the confidence to be independent back then.”

  “You seem alright to me.”

  “Well, I am now. Thanks to him.” Mrs. Morris pointed to the picture of naked Elvis. When John lived in the dorms, he heard passionate students tell stories about how an artist, filmmaker, or musician changed their lives. And he knew he was about to hear the story of how Mrs. Morris was reshaped by Elvis.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I bought more records and would dance to them when Herman was at work, hiding them in the closet before he came home. I even secretly joined an Elvis Fan Club. Well, a few months later, Herman went out of town for work, to Los Angeles. We lived in Albuquerque back then. I discovered, through the Elvis Fan Club, that Elvis was performing in Dallas that weekend. Herman never liked me driving, but I said to heck with him and took the car anyway. I left at five in the morning and drove all day to get to the show in time. That’s the program and ticket stub framed on the mantle.” She pointed toward it.

  John turned and was poked in the eye by the painting.

  “That must have been some show,” he said. The stub occupying a place of honor, sitting at the right hand of Elvis’s schlong.

  “Oh, it was. The show was sold out. There were over twenty-five thousand Elvis fans at the Cotton Bowl, screaming at the top of their lungs. My seat was in the back and I could barely see the stage. When Elvis came out, he looked like a tiny speck, and with all the screaming, I couldn’t hear any of the songs, but you know what, it didn’t matter. I was finally near him.”

  “Did Mr. Morris ever find out?”

  “You know, I wasn’t going to tell him, but then something happened on the way home. I was feeling energized and a little rebellious. Elvis’s music has that affect on people. I was hungry and went into a bar in Dallas. I met a man there and spent the night with him.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked down. “I hope you don’t think I’m a bad person for being unfaithful to my husband.”

  “No, I don’t.” She seemed sweet, naïve. John had a hard time faulting her for something she did sixty years ago. Instead, he felt a little sorry for her.

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling. “That’s very sweet of you to say, but Herman didn’t agree. You see, Herman and I were high school sweethearts and waited until our honeymoon to be together. Our first time was embarrassing and painful. We didn’t know what we were doing. We were never really intimate after our honeymoon. We’d try every so often, usually when Herman was drunk. Fortunately, and I hate to say it like that, but it’s true, well, fortunately, he couldn’t maintain his…well, let’s just say he couldn’t maintain. I doubt you have that problem, Mr. Abernathy.”

  “Wait. What?” John jerked his head back, unsure why she’d said that.

  “The man in Dallas,” she continued, crossing her legs, smiling like a super villain whose plan was unfolding, “when I slept with him it was like something awoke inside me. I’d never really experienced sex before. Real sex. And I wanted more.”

  “So, uh, did you ever tell your husband?” John asked He propped his elbow on the armrest, lowered it, then propped it again.

  “I had to. I told him everything. I felt so relieved. It was liberating, saying everything I’d been feeling for the past couple of years. Feeling deep inside me. I was sure he’d throw a fit, but Herman didn’t say anything. He locked himself in his study, listening to Bing Crosby. That night I packed some things and went to stay with my sister. She thought I was crazy. Most of my friends did back then. Although now, looking back, they tell me they thought I was brave, free to experiment.”

  “So, you went into science?” he asked, like a naïve kid interviewing her for his high school paper.

  “I’m an expert at chemistry.”

  The innuendo threw John. He thought the interview was heading toward discovering the man in the photo’s address. Based on the way Mrs. Morris was looking at him, John was starting to think she wanted it to head someplace horizontal. He heard Rooftop’s voice telling him to remain professional, get Mrs. Morris back on topic.

  “So you left your husband, then what?” he asked.

  “Well, I took a job at the University of New Mexico as a house mother in the girls’ dormitory. It was so much fun. The girls were crazy about Elvis. We’d have pillow fights, wear out records dancing in our underwear.” Mrs. Morris leaned in, whispering, “The girls called them panties.”

  John tensed, sat upright.

  “And of course, the whole time I was collecting. By the 1960s you could find Elvis’s face on everything. Clocks, towels, figurines. Everything.”

  “Even paintings.”

  “And more,” Mrs. Morris said, punctuating her syllables with raised eyebrows.

  “And now you have your own picture of him,” he said, hoping that talking about the photo would get the interview back on track. He needed to find the man in the picture, solve the reporter’s murder, even
if that meant he had to suffer Mrs. Morris hitting on him.

  “Oh yes, I’m so proud of that photo.”

  “About that, how did you find him?”

  “Well, I was driving down South Grand, coming back from my sister’s house. I visit every Saturday to play Canasta with a group of women from church. Don’t worry. I only pretend to be reformed.”

  “Who’s worried?” John said, shifting on the couch.

  “Anyway,” Mrs. Morris continued, “on my way home, I stopped at the Stuff ‘n Pump filling station on Alamo Street and saw this man get out of a truck and start walking into a mobile home. I’m always noticing men. Well, I watched him.” She leaned forward, her hands folded, she whispered, “I like to watch.” She continued in her normal voice like the previous creepiness never happened. “He was acting strange…”

  “He’s not the only one.”

  “Looking around before he went in. I didn’t recognize him at first, but when he turned in my direction, I knew instantly it was him. It was Elvis Presley! Well, I didn’t have my camera with me, so I went back the next day to see if he was there, but he didn’t show. So, I went back every day for a week, parked across the street from the lot, and waited. Well, on Sunday he came back. And you know what, I took out my camera and took that picture. Then I sent it to you. And here. You. Are.”

  “Did you approach him, try talking to him?”

  “Heavens, no.” Mrs. Morris picked up an old lunch box decorated with images from the Elvis movie Follow That Dream, and held it over her heart.

  “Why not? You’d think with everything you’ve collected you’d want to at least talk to him.” John leaned back and relaxed, thinking that having her focus her attention on the picture, on Elvis, was like a cup of chamomile tea and horse tranquilizers, settling her down. And later that night he could text his friends and tell them about a crazy old woman and her Elvis collection, and not a story about how he grossly underestimated the sex drive of senior citizens.

  “I know some people think I’m a little odd for all my collecting, but I know enough to know that this is the Elvis I love.” She gestured to the icons and idols hanging on the walls, cluttering flat surfaces. She looked at the painting, said, “What if the real person doesn’t…”

  “Measure up?” John said, not able to help himself.

  Mrs. Morris smiled. “John, do you mind if I join you on the couch?”

  “Uh, I’m sure that would be fine,” he said. “It is your couch after all.”

  “Yes, it is.” Mrs. Morris sat the far end of the couch, and removed a few bobby pins from behind her head. She mussed her silver, shoulder-length hair with one hand, her reading glasses swinging from the beaded chain around her neck.

  “You are a skinny little thing, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t be fooled. I’m bigger than I look,” he said, immediately regretting it.

  “That’s what I’m counting on.” Mrs. Morris smiled like John was a piece of hard candy she wanted to unwrap.

  John cringed. When he lived in the college dorms, a kid down the hall Scotch taped magazine clippings of naked women to his own bedroom wall. The kid dubbed his room the ‘The Dirty Girl’s Bible Study’. Mrs. Morris’s painting hinted at interests besides Elvis, and John reprimanded himself for not recognizing it. He was ready to end the interview, drive away and never return, but something bothered him about the photo, something that seemed off, unnatural. John hoped Mrs. Morris could clarify it for him.

  “So, is there any chance he saw you?” John asked.

  “I was across the street,” she said.

  “In this picture,” John said, pointing to the man, “it looks like he’s waving at you.”

  “He wasn’t waving at me. He was looking up.” She put her finger next to the man’s head. It was tilted, the sideburns at a sharp angle.

  “Like at a plane or something?” John said.

  “I don’t know. Why do people wave at anything?”

  “To get someone’s attention. To be recognized. They want to know that someone else in this world sees them, acknowledges that they exist. Mostly, they wave hoping someone will wave back.”

  “John,” she said, “I feel comfortable with you, like I can be myself. Do you feel that way?”

  “Uh, sure, I suppose,” he said. When John was in college, and a girl said she ‘felt comfortable’, like she could ‘be herself’, it usually ended with her sharing her poetry about hand-knitted, penguin sweaters and alienation, and John was concerned that Mrs. Morris was going to recite poetry about Elvis and her vagina.

  “Can I tell you something?” Mrs. Morris asked, unbuttoning her top blouse button, running her fingers along her neckline, playing with a sealed button. “I think we should be friends. Do you want to be friends?”

  “Uh, sure. Friends is good,” John lied. He thought about what he’d seen working for Rooftop and worried that Mrs. Morris wanted to be ‘friends with butt stuff’.

  “Good.” She slid closer on the couch. “I think you and I will make perfect friends. You know what friends do, John? They share.”

  “Like the address where you took this picture?” he said, sliding further from her, bumping against the armrest.

  “Sure. But, first,” Mrs. Morris said, sliding a finger down his arm, “I have something else I’d like to share with you.”

  “I’m sure you do,” John said.

  Mrs. Morris went into the back room. John decided he’d jump through the window if she came out wearing a crotchless Elvis costume. He leaned over on the couch, peeked into the room. Mrs. Morris dug through collectibles, exhuming a small, white box.

  “This is my most recent acquisition,” she said, returning to the room and sitting next to him, their legs brushing.

  “Here, open it.” She handed him the box.

  John held it, arms outstretched, head turned away. He lifted one corner of the box’s lid like it was a bomb, cautious whatever crazy sex toy inside might explode in his face.

  Nothing.

  He removed the rest of the lid, peered in, sighed, sank back into the couch. And pulled out a silk tie.

  “I picked it up in Albuquerque last November,” she said. “It’s the bowtie Elvis wore during the Hawaii benefit concert in ’61. It’s the prize of my collection.” She took it from him and bit one end. “You know, you could use it to tie me up. Or choke me.”

  “That’s it, I gotta go.” John leapt from the couch and ran to the door.

  “But you just got here,” she said, pouting slightly.

  “I need to check out the man’s trailer. Would you mind writing down his address for me?” he asked, bouncing from one foot to the other.

  “I thought we were friends, John?”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking,” he said, his voice shaking a little.

  “If you want the address…” she said, sashaying toward him. She squished him against the door, one finger slithering down his shirt. “You’ll have to give me something for it.”

  “Uh…” John groped around for the door knob, jiggling it, but it was locked.

  “Oh, don’t get so worked up. All I want is a kiss. Right here on the cheek.” She pointed to her right cheek.

  One little kiss on the cheek wouldn’t hurt. And it would save him from searching every trailer on Alamo Street. He clenched his eyes shut and puckered, expecting something sour, inched closer to her.

  She offered her cheek and leaned in, anticipating. When his nose grazed the thin hairs on her cheek, she turned and seized his head with both hands. And pressed her mouth to his.

  John tried to yank and jerk free, waving his hands frantically like a cartoon cat with its tail caught in an electrical socket, but she held him, rubbing her sagging breasts against him. She opened her mouth and forced her tongue deep into his. It circled around the inside of his mouth, violently pushing against his tongue, teeth, and roof of his mouth. He gagged at the taste of it. She tasted like a combination of a baseball glove
and menthol cigarettes. She finally let go, and John gasped for breath.

  “There,” she said, smiling. “That wasn’t too bad.”

  “Fuck this,” John said, unlocking and running out the door. He wiped her slobber off his face and spat on the dry earth, feeling like kneaded dough, molested by wrinkled hands, then dry humped for about an hour while listening to ‘Love Me Tender’.

  “Don’t you want the address?” she asked as he sprinted down her drive.

  He yelled over his shoulder, “The Hump ‘n Pump on Alamo Street! I think I can find it!”

  “Oh, do let me know what you find out!” she said from her door, leaning her chest against the jamb.

  “Don’t worry! I’ll be in touch!” John lied, getting in his car, vowing to never return to her Elvis Museum & Fetish Den.

  John plunged his hand into his pocket, feeling around for his keys. They should have been just past his wallet, next to some loose change, but something else filled his pocket. His fingers fumbled over a soft ball of fabric. Stitching and folds. He couldn’t identify the object. He just recognized it as a tactile mass, and didn’t remember stuffing it in there. Worried, not knowing what it was, he slowly pulled the wadded fabric from his pocket. He found the ends with his hands and tugged. The jumble of black cloth fell loose, revealing a long piece of silk that trumpeted at the ends. Mrs. Morris’s bowtie.

  John shrieked.

  Somehow she slipped it into his pocket, probably hoping he’d return it and take her up on her bondage offer. He involuntarily imagined her hands and feet tied to the bedposts and he shuddered.