Losing Graceland Read Free Page A

took a swig of vanilla Coke. He crunched an ice cube. “Shoot.”
    “Who are you?”
    “It’s not who I am, but who I was.”
    “Then who were you.”
    The old man swallowed the shards of ice. He smoothed back his hair and his eyes dropped half lid. Heavy eyes, thick lids, dark bags beneath like halved grapes.
    “I was the King.”
    Their apartment sat above Manchurian House, a Chinese restaurant off the wide boulevard surrounded by treeless flat and the crenellated horizon of low-slung strip malls and plazas. A framed poster of Brando hung above the brick fireplace. Ben’s roommate, Patrick, sat on a three-legged Naugahyde chair, Ben across from him on the couch. An aquarium stood in the corner, green with algae, two fish swimming blind through the murky water. Home theater speakers hung on the walls.
    “He didn’t come out and say it,” Ben said. “He didn’t actually
say
he was Elvis.”
    Patrick licked his joint closed, spitting a fleck off his lip. He wore jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt, one leg draped over the chair’s arm. He wheeled the lighter. “I doubt he even has the ten grand.”
    “He’s got the money,” Ben said. “I watched him buy a classic Caddy with a roll of hundreds.”
    “That was probably his entire stash. Last of the Social Security.”
    “It wasn’t like that.”
    “Uh-huh. What was it like?”
    “I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet.”
    Patrick exhaled smoke rings. “It sounds kooky.” He laughed. “That’s a good word.
Kooky.
” Another puff, and he shrugged. “You know, you could work with me at city camp. The pay sucks but there’s always a few available high school seniors—”
    “No thanks.”
    Patrick grinned. “My bad. I forgot about Jess.”
    “Don’t talk about her.”
    “Still?”
    “Yes. Still.”
    “Jesus, Ben. It’s been almost a year.”
    “Six months.”
    “A year. Six months.” Patrick puffed, and spoke with his breath held. “Whatever. You need to move the fuck
on
. I’ll get you a job at camp, you’ll meet a young blonde, and all the pain will just fade … away.”
    Patrick held out the joint but Ben ignored him. Instead he lay back on the couch and put his arm over his face. He remembered how his dad would stomp into the living room fresh from shoveling snow, and the entire house smelled like winter coming off his clothes. Those central New York winters: silent, sharp, and brittle. In the spring his dad smelled of lingering rain. In the summer, warm wind. In the autumn, dry leaves and someone’s fireplace. His dad a god who carried the seasons in his pocket, big as the world.

3.
    been up all night,” the old man said. “Mapping our route. Load these bags into the trunk and I’ll be out in a minute.”
    Ben did as the old man said and waited in the driver’s seat of the old Cadillac El Dorado, staring into the dark of the garage door. In his bag he’d packed several paperback biographies of Elvis, remainders bought from a sales rack in Barnes & Noble the night before, sandwiched on the shelf between
The 50 Worst Album Covers of All Time
and a book on the Knights Templar. The old man had wanted him at the house by six A.M ., and when he showed up on the front step, the old man answered the door wearing his red sweatsuit, holding a muffin in one hand and an electric razor in the other. He was barefoot and gray stubble dotted his puffy face. When he spoke he scratched his head and looked at the ground as though it were speaking to him and he was trying to hear what it had to say.
    He’d led Ben into his living room, where maps were spread on the floor next to packed bags, stacks of books, and magazines. The magazines were the type that Ben liked to browse whilewaiting in line at the drugstore—tales of Nostradamus, Bigfoot, alien abductions, and the occasional Elvis story. Grainy doctored photos of a fat guy in a white jumpsuit peeking out from a car or walking into a gas station restroom, and damn if the old man didn’t