Artificial Elvis

by Kimberly Moore

A cruel coincidence caused this moment in which Hunter stood between the bathroom door and his bedroom entrance, cornered by his stepfather, Cal. Hunter was moving toward the bathroom where he was preparing for his late-afternoon gig, and Cal was leaving the bathroom on his way to work. Hunter crossed his arms. “If they’re serious, they can postpone this interview.”

“Why should they postpone for you, when I had to pull strings to get you in?” Hunter’s stepfather, who was the only father figure Hunter had ever known, rarely shouted. The decibels were rising now. “You’re twenty-three years old. When I was your age, I was already married with a mortgage and building a baby crib, for God’s sake! Do the grown-up thing, call that woman and tell her you can’t be Elvis today because you need a real job. This isn’t difficult.”

“I would do that if you had told me a few days ago, but I can’t stand them up. I’m supposed to be there in two hours.”

The silence was becoming uncomfortable while the old man smoothed back the place on his head where hair once grew. He took a deep breath, and his voice was softer again. “Listen to me. I’m not trying to discourage you from doing what you like. Everyone needs hobbies. I’m asking you to look at your life, yourself, and how you might fit into this world. It’s not normal to live with your mother at your age. You should want more. You should want your own life. For you, not for a man who has been dead for half a century. Yes, it’s entertaining, and I’m the first to admit you’re good at it. But it shouldn’t be more than a side gig. You need a job. A career.”

“Trucking isn’t a career, either. All you do is complain about how it ruined your body.”

“It paid for this house and for your Elvis costumes! Do you think you’re too good? It can be a career. You can move into management. Or it could lead to something totally different that you’d like, but you need to earn money now. I expect you to be at the interview today. If you can’t, perhaps you should find someone else to feed you and pay your bills. Your mother and I have been more than patient.”

Hunter felt his face redden, recognizing it as deserved shame. “I’ll get another job. Just don’t make me be a trucker. There’s not enough flexibility.”

“You’ll get a job? Like the last ten? Twenty? Minimum wage until someone dares schedule you to work when there’s an opportunity for Elvis? You’ve never had a job that AI couldn’t do, which is something you should consider in your generation. They’ll likely hire you today if you just show up. They’ll do it as a favor to me. Get cleaned up and go!”

Hunter had no excuses. His mother had told him the same, although not as harshly.

Cal turned to walk away, then stopped, turned and pointed with a steady hand. “You are not Elvis.”

Twenty minutes later, mousse in one hand and comb in the other, Hunter made his decision. The Honolulu look never failed, and his hair was the best length for it. Darkening the eyebrows, waterproof mascara, bronzer to create cheekbones, lip liner. He couldn’t help himself: each time he applied the makeup, he gave himself an Elvis raised-lip sneer in the mirror. A few touch-ups to the hair with a curling iron, and he almost forgot the shame heaped on him moments before.

The transformation was not complete. Hunter’s trust in the process grew from years of practice. The makeup didn’t make him look like Elvis. Not the bejeweled white with vampire collars. Not the mannerisms that he had mimicked for hours with brutal self-criticism. It was something magical that appeared moments before a performance. It would happen later, at the nursing home, before he strutted onto their small auditorium stage.

***

At the same time of the interview, Hunter began testing the sound quality of the nursing home’s setup. Ashley, the middle-aged director who hired him, followed him with questions. Was this sufficient? Would he have room on the small stage? Would he be able to control the level of his voice for those with sensitive hearing aids? Hunter assured each question with a calm nod. He had played nursing homes before. A little less volume, but one-hundred-percent full Elvis otherwise.

An hour after the interview never happened, Hunter was dressed in his Honolulu clothes and on the stage, his voice echoing through the small theater along with the voices of the smiling crowd of residents. With the progression of the music, muscle memory took over. Elvis drove, and Hunter was merely the vehicle. It was an eternity of happiness and fleeting at the same time. Having tried to explain the experience left him speechless in many conversations, so that now he only pitied those who never felt it.

He reached out to the wrinkled lady who mouthed “Love Me Tender” with tears in her eyes, and winked at another as he assured her he couldn’t help falling in love. Misty-eyed men swayed with memories of Dixieland, and girlish giggles surrounded the hunks of burning love.

After his sweaty towel had been flung into the applauding audience, and he had hugged all the old ladies as they moved to the dining room, Hunter felt himself becoming Hunter again. Hunter, the unemployed and possibly homeless. It was a slow process. While Elvis’s sweat still leaked from his pores, he could ignore Hunter’s problems.

“I wish I could afford to pay you more.” Ashley handed him a check. “You’ve brought so much joy to this place today. It can be a bit dark here at times.”

One hundred dollars, from her personal account. “You paid this yourself?”

“This is a state-funded institution. They don’t allow much of an entertainment budget.”

“I can’t accept this.” Hunter pushed the check back into her hand. “It’s my gift to the residents. They seem to be wonderful people.”

“Just take it.” But she didn’t push the check back.

“Absolutely not.” He was overcome with sweat. The Honolulu outfit may have been the hottest of the outfits, so hot that he sometimes felt the metal stars could brand his skin through the thick, white fabric. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to change.”

  Ashley chuckled as she pointed him to the room where his street clothes waited for him. “For a few minutes, I thought some of those women were going to throw their underpants to you.”

“It happens sometimes. Not to me, but I’ve been in competitions and I’ve seen it.”

The lie was tiny. Hunter wasn’t lying about the underpants, or about being in a competition, but he had made the competition plural. That was a lie. Hunter had entered one competition. He learned right away that he was competing too early. The older Elvises ruled from the first song to the last.

Hunter never regretted the competition. It was one of his favorite memories to replay, perhaps, when driving home from a nursing home gig to face disappointed parents. The Elvis who won that competition was a 35-year-old man named Mel, and he had been kind to Hunter on the night before the final round.

“You’re very talented,” Mel had said while sipping whiskey in the hotel bar. “It takes years to perfect your act. I could show you a video of me at your age. You’re much better than I was, but you’ll see. Your best days are yet to come.”

Hunter had just turned twenty-one, and after one sip knew he didn’t care for whiskey. “I’m here to learn. What can you tell me?”

“There are some Elvises out there who preach that you have to know everything there is to know about Elvis. You have to know his life like it’s yours. If you want to delve into that, be my guest, but I gave up on that long ago.”

“We can’t know everything,” Hunter continued for him. “What we’ve been told may not even be true.”

“But what you do need to know is yourself. It’s through knowing yourself that you’ll know Elvis, or anything for that matter.” Mel laughed for a moment, with an Elvis smirk that Hunter couldn’t decipher as intentional or not. “I don’t mean to sound trippy, but I guess I do. This is what I mean—you know what Elvis struggled with, and you can see it on his face when he’s performing, and you can hear it in his voice. He was a flawed human with problems he never had time to deal with. I don’t think you must know every single problem or suffer the same way he did. But you have to have suffered, and you have to use that to connect to him.”

Hunter wondered how many whiskeys Mel had drunk before their meeting. “No, I don’t want to become a drug addict. And I’d like to have a less troubled love life.”

“His relationships all around were bizarre. Many times, I’ve watched his delivery of love songs and I’ve wondered…”

Hunter waited, but Mel wasn’t intending to finish his thought. “You know what I’ve always seen on his face during love songs? He looks like, ‘I wish I had a clue what I’m singing about’.”

“Interesting take!” Mel leaned forward. “Or maybe that’s you.”

Hunter was preparing his defense in his mind, but Mel interrupted.

“You see? That’s what I was saying. It doesn’t matter if it’s him or you. Use that. And with age, you’ll have the experience that makes you more like him.” He laughed again. “I don’t know anything. I shouldn’t be advising anyone about anything. People laugh at us, tell us we’re wasting our lives. The way I see it, everyone is impersonating someone else, whether they realize it or not. I only know that I’m not sorry I’ve chosen this. I’m not rich, I’m not famous, I’m not smart, and my future may be a disaster, but I’m happy.”

Hunter understood that much two years ago. Mel, on the other hand, had disappeared from the Elvis competition circuit.

***

Mom was alone when Hunter returned. She would ask questions. Instead of preparing for her, he had been reminiscing about Mel for the twenty-minute drive from the nursing home.

She was at the kitchen table of the dinky house they shared, a mug of something in front of her with a crossword puzzle half-finished. She raised her eyes to him and sighed. “I was going to ask how the interview went, but I see you decided to be the King for a day.”

“I gave the nursing home my word. I never said I was going to that interview.”

“You heard what Cal said. You have to do something. You need a life of your own. We can’t continue to support you.”

Hunter leaned against the door facing to the kitchen and wiped his forehead. His arm was streaked with makeup. “Mom, I said I would get a job. I will. First thing tomorrow.”

“Sit down. You’re missing the point.”

Hunter obeyed and sat across from her. “I get the point.”

“You don’t. This is for your own good. These are the best years of your life and you’re wasting them doing nothing. I’m not saying becoming a trucker is the answer, but it’s a start. You need to move out and have your own place.”

“Right now?”

“Let’s not do the minimum wage argument again. Your cousin, Larry, is looking for a roommate since his hours were cut.”

“How is that different?”

“You won’t be living with your mother, for one. It’s a step in the right direction.”

Hunter remembered Larry from childhood, mainly because he was obsessed with playing with the green plastic army figures. “Doesn’t he live in his mother’s old trailer?”

“No, no. After she died, he sold it and bought a different one.”

“On her property.”

“What are you trying to say? You’re waiting for me to die so this will be your house?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Just call Larry, then get any job you can get. I don’t think Cal can tolerate much more.”

Hunter didn’t want to change subjects. “You’re saying that Larry is basically the same as me, and you want me to do whatever I have to do to live there with him instead of here. You just want me out of here. It’s not about what’s best for me.”

“Hunter, don’t be stupid. Of course, I want my house back. I want some years just for Cal and me. You’re old enough to understand that. More than that, you should want to leave. It’s natural. Children grow up and leave.” She looked at her crossword, tapping her pencil on the table. “You know I love you. I want to be supportive. But you can’t make pretending you’re someone else into a life.”

“But Cal driving trucks and loading and unloading until his legs and back are in chronic pain is an acceptable life?”

“It’s a sacrifice. He has paid his way and for his families, and now for mine. He’s an adult.”

“He’s miserable.”

“Do you think he didn’t have dreams of other things? At some point, you need to realize that you’re responsible for yourself. I don’t know where I failed that you don’t understand this. I certainly didn’t spoil you. You know I struggled to put clothes on you and feed you before Cal came along. You must know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean. How could you want the same thing for me? What is it? Are you two jealous because I come home from work happy?”

“It’s not work. How much have you made this year? Not even enough to file taxes.”

Hunter almost regretted giving the check back, but remembering the faces of the residents in the audience, he couldn’t. “I get it about making money. I’ll get a job. I’ll apply at everything in town first thing tomorrow. I’ll live with Larry. I just wish you would understand what I’m saying, too.”

“I’ve heard you.” She sighed again. “We’ll have the conversation again when you grow up.”

“What did you want to be when you were my age?”

“I was married to your worthless father when I was your age. I only dreamed of escape.”

“Before then. What did you originally want to do?”

“It never would have worked out.”

“What, exactly?”

“There’s no point talking about it. What I wanted doesn’t even exist anymore. No longer relevant.” She looked at him, already embarrassed at what she was yet to say. “I used to think about having one of those aerobic studios.” Her eyes rolled. “Now I can’t touch my damn toes.”

“I don’t want the one thing that makes my life worth living to be no longer relevant. I don’t want to look back and guess that it wouldn’t have worked out or be too embarrassed to tell anyone. Maybe that irrelevant dream you had was who you were supposed to become. Maybe you’re pretending to be someone else all day, every day.”

She huffed as if he were ridiculous, but her eyes resonated with what he said. “You’re such a child.”

“I’ll try to be out of here in a week.”

“It’s for the best.” She took a sip from the mug, wrinkling her nose at either the taste or temperature. “Just remember, put reality first. It’s an expensive world. It owes you nothing. Many people are talented, and not all of them rise to the top. You’re not Elvis.”

Hunter wiped his face again to stain his other arm with makeup, and stared for a moment at a drop of sweat that fell from his forehead to the tile. “Today for an hour, I was.”