Viva Las Vegas

Heads turn to watch the King and his entourage make their way through the lobby.

“I’ve been in Vegas three days, and finally I’ve seen my first Elvis,” someone says.

“Sing for us,” plead some girls.

Chinese Elvis struts and waves, but leaves them heartbroken as he continues past to the waiting limo. He wishes he had a rich baritone instead of a nasal tin-can voice. He wishes he had scarves to hand out as he crooned gold hit records. He had agreed to the costume, but when his friends wanted to start the evening with karaoke, he had vehemently refused.

Instead, they go to a gentlemen’s cabaret where women parade around with traces of clothing over taut bodies. Elvis adores women, but does not feel comfortable in these immodest surroundings. Women are muses, to be worshiped and to inspire -- their love to be earned, not purchased. It is how he wants to be loved.

He thinks of Evelyn, the sweet girl from Roseville that he is marrying in three nights. He would give anything to be with her at this moment, instead of with his entourage and these girls. Surrounded by his best friends, he remains lonesome tonight.

Cigars and shots of Patrón come around. A toast is raised to Elvis being in the building. At the beckoning of his friends, a young woman in neon green string comes over to sit on his lap. She is thin and all legs.

“Let me love you tender,” she says. She smiles widely and he laughs at her joke.

“If I can be your teddy bear,” he replies.

She pushes him back into his chair and gyrates like a puppet. And she is very beautiful, so at some point he is almost in love, but he himself knows something about putting on an act, and in the end he can see the devil in disguise.

More drinks, more girls who can’t help falling in love, more surrender for him and everyone in his party. He feels their passion at this moment, but Evelyn is always on his mind. But on such a night he is the big boss man and must let himself go.

“Viva Las Vegas!” he shouts to everyone who will listen. “Viva Las Vegas!”

Some time and several drinks later he is back at the hotel room spinning at the edge of reality. His friends help him remove his white leather boots and put him to rest on the couch with a wastebasket nearby just in case.

For a moment, he closes his eyes, but he wakes because he has to pee. He gets up. He knows there is a bathroom somewhere, but the path is a long lonely highway and also a matter of time.

“Whatcha doing?” asks Frankie.

“Taking a leak.”

“Dude, bathroom.”

“Okay, as soon as I finish.”

He can’t help himself and releases a Kentucky rain across the hotel carpet. His friends scramble from their beds to save their luggage.

“Bathroom!” shouts Johnnie.

“No,” he says. “No bathrooms.” Chinese Elvis remembers that thirty years ago, on a hot August night, Real Elvis died in a bathroom. “That’s not the way I want to go.”

He stands before the mirror. His black ducktail hairdo wig sits askew. Beneath the sequined starbursts embroidered on his white polyester suit his heart beats rock ‘n’ roll.

“I’m okay,” he says to his reflection. “Elvis lives.”

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