Black Elvis

by Geoffrey Becker

  "Please. I had a hard day on the range." As he said this, he noticed that the man was getting up.

  "Go downtown and see what Irving's paintings are selling for. Forty thousand bucks. For that kind of money, maybe you could paint a few Indians."

  "It's kitsch."

  "Of course it's kitsch. What did you expect? People around here pay a couple of million dollars for a log cabin in the woods that has a Jacuzzi, hot tub, and Sub-Zero, they need something atmospheric for the walls. Irv also happens to be a very fine painter. In the world of Western art, he's very highly thought of."

  The woman was now alone, and she did seem sad. "I don't doubt it," he said.

  "Ooh." Rhonda poked his arm. "Go over and bring her another margarita. Compliments of the house. Talk to her."

  "How?"

  "Just ask her how she's enjoying herself."

  "Maybe, but on one condition. You go do something else."

  "All right. I have to make some calls anyway. But I want a full report."

  Kaufman went to the bar, had Dreadlock Steve mix two margaritas, then brought them to the woman's table.

  "On the house," he explained. "I wonder if I could join you. That is, if you're alone."

  "I'm alone," she said, eyeing the drink he held out. She motioned with her head toward the opposite chair, and Kaufman slid into it. "My husband has gone to the room to play mandolin."

  "A musician."

  "I didn't say that." She had high cheekbones, wide-set green eyes. "Are you related to that manager?"

  "You're good. Most people don't see the resemblance."

  "Well, I see it."

  "Can I tell you something?"

  "What?"

  He leaned forward, and was pleased that she did, too. Their faces were only inches apart. He very much wanted to touch her. "My sister doesn't believe you're married."

  "Sure she does," she whispered. "She gave us the honeymoon suite."

  "Because you cried."

  "I cry all the time. It doesn't mean I'm lying."

  Kaufman sat back, and so did the woman. He felt as if they'd known each other a long while, and he couldn't explain it. He'd heard of people having chemistry, but he'd never quite known what the expression meant. Perhaps this. "All the smoke in the air sure makes for a nice sunset."

  "You like sunsets?"

  "It's in my job description. I'm a painter. I'm working for a famous Western artist right now, finishing his stuff. I can't tell you his name. I had to sign a contract."

  "Finishing what parts?"

  "Scenery, bodies. He does faces, and he does the underpaintings, but I do a lot of the filling in. Right now, I'm working on a boulder."

  "Is that ethical?"

  "A boulder?"

  "The whole thing."

  "I think so."

  She was looking out the window again. The shirt she had on was sleeveless, and her long, thin arms were nicely muscled. "Well, I guess it's not surgery," she said. "Anyway, I am."

  "Sorry?"

  "Married. And this is my cowboy honeymoon."

  "My sister's probably jealous. She's older than I am, and neither of us is married."

  "You ought to try it. It's everything it's cracked up to be and more."

  "Look at that fire," he said.

  "You don't think we're in hell, do you?" She took a long swallow from her drink.

  He didn't think this was going all that well. "What do you do?"

  "I'm in advertising. I dream up amusing scenarios for selling things. You know those milk ads where a cow comes walking through that family's living room while they're watching TV? That's one of mine."

  Kaufman pretended to know what she was talking about, even though his TV had died two years ago during a thunderstorm, an electric bleat of protest before falling silent. He had yet to replace it. "Are you from New York?"

  She nodded, drew a circle in the frost on the side of her glass with her finger. "Hey, you want to go for a hike tomorrow?"

  "Sure. What about your husband?"

  "His plantar fasciitis is acting up. I want to do Jenny Lake."

  "I'm supposed to work in the morning, but I could go around one."

  "Then we'll meet at the front desk," she said, cheerily. "It's a date."

  Kaufman did not stick around for the cake. Instead, he got a burrito at a place in town, then walked briefly around the square, looking in the windows of the various galleries and souvenir shops. He felt exhilarated, strange. The salt from the margaritas had left him thirsty, the air didn't contain enough oxygen, and his heart seemed to be working overtime. He saw a kid lose three scoops of ice cream in what appeared to be slow motion, watched all the while by a fascinated collie tied to a parking meter a few yards away.

  Irving Straight's studio was a separate building behind a modest house five blocks south of the town center. He'd shown Kaufman where he hid the spare key under a cinder block beside the house, and now Kaufman let himself in. He liked the clutter of a studio, the sense of work ongoing, the random splotches of color that accumulated on everything. A big oak desk with a combination TV and VCR on it took up much of one wall, and various videocassette tapes were piled up alongside. Straight believed in keeping old Westerns playing for atmosphere. Already, Kaufman had listened to Red River and El Dorado.

  He went to the painting he'd been working on and took another look at his boulder. There was a rattle of movement behind him as Irving Straight came in. He was in his late fifties, with white hair he combed straight back, and oversized glasses that magnified his eyes out of proportion to the rest of his face. He wore a droopy handlebar moustache.

  "A burglar," he said. "I hope you don't have a gun." He went to the boulder and stuck his face right up to the canvas, then backed away.

  "What do you think?"

  "Try a smaller brush. And try to think a little more cowboy. Think Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott, maybe even Lee Marvin. Henry Fonda, for that matter."

  "Those are actors."

  "I know they're actors, Art School. That's not the point. It's what they embody, the whole spirit of the thing. I don't know if this is going to work out."

  Kaufman looked at his boulder. "I'll try harder," he said.

  "I wasn't keen on hiring you, you know, considering the circumstances with Rhonda and me. I thought it might just muddle the waters. But she can push a point when she wants to. I used to fix cars for a living. You were a teacher, right?"

  Kaufman thought how odd that use of the past tense sounded. He'd taught his last class less than a month ago. What was he now? Starting over. A colleague of his had dropped dead back in the spring, and he was only forty-five. Two weeks later, Kaufman had submitted his resignation. It didn't make him feel brave, or even particularly nervous. It felt like the only thing he could do.

  "Circumstances?" he asked.

  Irving Straight took a bottle of water out of the small refrigerator under the window, unscrewed the cap, and took a swallow. "She didn't tell you about us?"

  "She just said you were friends."

  "I've known her five years now, but only for the past two was it romantic. Up until last month, when I called it off."

  Rhonda had dated a drug dealer in high school, and Kaufman could still hear the purr and hack of his idling motorcycle outside their house late at night as he'd drop her off. Her subsequent relationships had all seemed influenced by that unfortunate paradigm, and Kaufman didn't ask many questions. "I didn't go to art school," he said. "I just took a few classes."

  "She wants to get married," said Straight. "I already did that, thirty years ago, and I wasn't good at it. Ask my ex-wife, ask my two kids. What I'm good at is right here in this room—I paint my pictures, and then I have a girlfriend for my not-painting time. It might sound hard, but it's the facts. I never represented it different, and Rhonda knew that all along. I hired you because I think you can do the work, not because I feel guilty. That's all. But you have to show me that you can do the work." He returned the water to t
he fridge. "That's not getting it," he said. "You want to go have a real drink?"

  At The Cowboy Bar, the men wore ball-strangling Wranglers with big belt buckles, Western shirts, and moustaches; the women all had long hair, hip-hugger jeans, midriff-revealing tops, and serious makeup. Everyone had on a hat. Kaufman followed Irving Straight to a table, sat, and ordered the same thing he did—a double Jack Daniels on the rocks. He could tell the tourists from the locals fairly easily. In Baltimore, there was only one bar he went to regularly, right in his neighborhood, because he liked their grilled chicken sandwiches. Otherwise, he'd become a recluse, moving between his living room, the kitchen, the bedroom upstairs, and the spare room where he painted.

  "Rhonda likes this place," said Irving Straight.

  Kaufman looked at his watch and wondered if dinner was over back at the hotel. "How does it feel to get forty thousand dollars for a painting?"

  "I wouldn't know. The gallery takes fifty percent. But, yeah, I see what you're driving at." He cracked a knuckle. "It's a kick in the ass." He sipped his drink. "So, look, just tell me one thing. She's seeing someone new, right?"

  "I don't know," said Kaufman.

  "You don't?" His eyes floated behind his lenses like pond creatures. Kaufman had the impression that Irving Straight was honestly surprised by moments when the world appeared not to be entirely about him.

  "Okay, yeah, she is. A mandolin player." The band was playing an old Little Feat song that Kaufman recognized, and could remember Jackie singing along to back in their apartment on Guilford Avenue. The thrift shop furniture, the tattered stereo speakers up on cinder blocks. Put on your sailing shoes. He'd have called that rock, back in the seventies, but now he saw how it might have been country. On a talk radio show somewhere near Omaha, he'd heard a caller say, "I know hindsight is fifty-fifty, but . . ." He'd liked that, even repeated it aloud. As he'd driven, Kaufman had stored each brief passing image—an abandoned gas station, a collapsing barn, a gleaming new mall set like a child's toy amid the cornfields—in his mind. These things were unambiguous.

  "Being an artist means sacrifice, man," said Straight, poking at an ice cube. "Don't fool yourself. Happiness doesn't have anything to do with it, and neither does getting laid."

  Kaufman was awakened by his sister on the phone at a little after 7:00 A.M. His room was similar to the regular guest ones, except that it was located by the service building, which housed gardening equipment and large electric pumps that came on and off all night long. "So, where did you go last night?" she asked.

  "Into town. I had drinks with Straight." Kaufman picked sleep out of his eyes and squinted at the bright light seeping through the blinds.

  "Tell me about the margaritas," she said.

  "You're probably right about the husband, if that's what he is. What happened with your cake?"

  "She's such a phony. They fed each other pieces and everyone applauded."

  "We're going for a hike this afternoon to Jenny Lake."

  "You are? Now this is exciting. How'd you manage it?"

  "It was her idea. I think he has something wrong with his feet, so he couldn't go. By the way, what's her name?"

  "Are you serious?"

  "It just never came up."

  "Elizabeth Moore. Boring, huh? Hey, I need you to tend bar for a couple of hours tonight. Steve's band has a gig, so I gave him the night off."

  He sat up further in the bed. "OK. I gotta get going here," he said. "I have a boulder to finish, and then later I get promoted to cattle."

  Straight wasn't at the studio, but he'd left scrawled instructions on a couple of Post-it notes. The first read, "Do Cows." On the wall behind the easel there was a rough sketch of what the finished painting was supposed to look like. One cowpoke sat resting against a boulder, holding out a cigarette, while another leaned down toward him, his hands cupping a lighter. A bit to the right was a horse, and in the distance, moving up and toward the vanishing point, were lots of cows, represented at this point by lightly sketched shapes.

  Do cows. On the canvas itself, Straight had already penciled in the closer cows, as well as their faces. The ones that receded into the distance were probably what he meant, but Kaufman, who was used to working from photographs, had an idea. He poked through the stacks of art books piled against the wall until he found what he wanted, a fifteenth-century Flemish nativity scene. The Christ child at the center, casting light outward onto the faces of Mary and some admiring angels, and just off center and far less well lit, a bovine face, almost thoughtful. Kaufman mixed some paint and set to work copying it onto the face of the second cow back.

  At 1 P.M. he was by the front desk, waiting. The air was even smokier today than yesterday. Coverage of the fire was national—Good Morning America had reported that over 3,000 acres were ablaze, with no rain in the forecast. Elizabeth Moore came in with a small black backpack and Italian leather hiking shoes.

  "Sorry I'm late," she said. "You ready?"

  "Your car or mine?"

  "You honestly don't want to see me drive."

  She smelled like vanilla and nervous sweat. He was somewhat embarrassed about the state of his car, which was still full of the detritus from his cross-country journey—empty fast-food bags, mostly—but she made no comment. They drove up past the airport, toward the mountains that jutted into the sky like jagged blue teeth. She chewed Tic Tacs, shaking another one out of a container every few minutes.

  "They sang to you, huh?" he said, after a while.

  "'We've Only Just Begun.' It was humiliating."

  "I warned you."

  "It's harassment. Can't two people just be left alone on their honeymoon?"

  "You don't get something for nothing. You wanted a fancy room, you're paying for it. Lots of people would be happy with free cake."

  "I bid on this and won. I guess I should have known the place would be on fire."

  "Sort of spur of the moment for a honeymoon."

  "Hey," she said. "I'm that kind of girl."

  They arrived at the parking area and set out on the trail, which went first through forest, paralleled by a gurgling brook, then emerged into an area which was far more open. There were lots of shrubs and short trees, but very few of any size, although quite a number of dead ones poked up like broken phone poles as far as they could see, their silvery trunks the color of polished bone.

  "This area burned in the early eighties," Elizabeth said. "I read about it in my book. That's part of what makes it such a beautiful hike. You can see all around you."

  It took an hour to hike to the lake, and they made small talk as they went. She was originally from New Jersey. She'd once thought she'd like to be a dancer. She loved dogs, especially big ones. Her favorite movie star was Vincent Price, her favorite movie, Theater of Blood. They found a spot to sit. "I brought cheese and an apple," she said, poking in her bag. "And these." She held up two brown and beige items about six inches in length. It took Kaufman a moment to recognize them as shoe inserts. "Orthotics," she said. "I snuck them out of his shoes last night. He's out wandering the town right now looking for a present for his kid, and I'll bet his feet are killing him. Funny, huh?" She made a strange sound in the back of her throat and her eyes filled with tears. "This is what I'm reduced to. Stealing people's orthotics."

  "Look," Kaufman said. He arranged her apple and the piece of cheese on top of the rock beside them.

  "At work, I'm known as the funny one. I did tell you I cry a lot. What is that, a still life?"

  "Ever paint one?"

  "I'm not what you'd call artistic. I'm funny." She sniffed.

  "Look at the apple." He moved over so that he was right beside her. The light was coming from a slight angle. "What colors do you see?"

  "Red," she said.

  "Anything else?"

  "I don't know. Darker red? Some brown where there's that spot."

  "Good. How about underneath, just above the rock?"

  She sniffed again. "Purple, maybe."


  "Something close to that. It's the reflection of the rock itself. I think it's more a blue gray. But you're right."

  "Are you going someplace with this?"

  He wasn't sure. He only knew that he needed to keep her attention. "Being able to recognize colors is the key. That shadow, that's going to mostly be cerulean blue. Our red on the apple is going to range quite a bit. I see at least five different shades there, not counting what's reflecting up from the rock. The colors are in the light, you know, not the object. They travel in waves. Opposite colors—yellow and violet, for instance—actually seem to tremble when they're next to each other, because our eyes can't adjust for both at the same time."

  She picked up the apple and took a bite, then held it out to him. "They're actually called orthoses. That's what he calls them. Orthoses. It sounds like calling dibs on birth control pills."

  Kaufman took a bite of the apple and chewed.

  "See, I told you I was funny." She got up. "You want to head back?"

  He didn't move. He shouldn't have started lecturing her about colors. People didn't care about colors. Most people didn't. It occurred to him that he might never have a normal interaction with the world again. All those days he'd come into his class waving the New York Times, saying, "Who can tell me one thing about Liberia?" or "West Bank! West Bank of what?" That person seemed someone he'd dreamed.

  "Wait," she said, and turned around. "Come stand behind me. Close."

  He did this, almost touching her. She reached back and took his hands, bringing them up under her shirt, placing them on her breasts. "Just hold me," she said.

  He looked out at the flat lake, its surface reflecting the blue sky, but darker. They stood that way for a minute, and he closed his eyes and it was Jackie's breasts that he touched, though she had never let him—not again, after her diagnosis. After a few months, she'd moved out to be with her family, down in Virginia, which was where she'd finished up, spending her last days designing gardens in a small sketchbook. He'd gone down, of course, taking sick days, vacation days. But he'd missed the very end—she'd just slipped away one night while he was putting together a lesson plan. Her mother asked for her photograph albums; her brother wanted her books. The house he'd bought the following year had a small garden, but he'd never done anything with it, just let it grow wilder and full of leaves.