The staff meeting at the paper had ended late, and when I was finally able to leave I felt tired yet restless. I had no life, and the prospect of just going home and watching TV for a few hours before falling asleep increased my edginess. Something needed to change. The blistering January wind made me want to be someplace warm; my heater had been acting up and I didn't relish the idea of driving twenty more minutes to my home in Hillsmere. I was approaching downtown Annapolis, so I impulsively decided to stop off at a bar I had seen advertisements for but never patronized. "Are you lonesome tonight? If your heart's broke, don't fix it," ran the ad. "Come on over to the Heartbreak Hotel Pub and drown your blues in the only Annapolis bar ever frequented by the King of Rock & Roll."
The ad was pretty cheesy. I imagined a clientele consisting of Elvis imitators, Elvis-sightings watchers, and the King's old fans. But I'd never seen an Elvis imitator in Annapolis. In spite of the ad's proud claim of having Elvis as a customer, the city as a whole did not prioritize any visits he had made. And, perhaps the newspaper I worked for was an exception, but no Elvis sightings had ever been reported. So maybe the customers went to the bar in spite, or regardless, of its affiliation with the King.
I wasn't a huge Elvis fan. I liked his music; I liked his image-well, his image before he became fat Vegas Elvis who died on the toilet. Back when I was a boy, I would fantasize about him coming to my house to play guitar and sing for my mother. Needless to say, it never happened. But I was especially disappointed when he died, for I knew my dream would never come true. And something of that childhood idolatry always remained with me, so the Heartbreak Hotel Pub had a certain appeal.
I wasn't sure how long the bar had been around. It wasn't located in the heart of downtown, where the highly frequented waterfront strip of bars dominated the Annapolis social scene. Instead it was on South Street, walking distance from the hospital, which I think is a strategic location for a bar called the Heartbreak Hotel.
I parked near the hospital and staggered against the wind the few blocks to the bar. The words "Heartbreak Hotel" were written in cursive in a dull blue at the tops of the windows. I had expected to see all sorts of crude advertisements adorning the outside, but the building itself was inconspicuous. As I peered through the tinted windows, it was difficult to see clearly, but I managed to pick out a few human forms.
I pulled open the door and stepped inside. A light airy heat enveloped me, and I pulled off my gloves and jacket. I moved slowly and tried to find my bearings without being obvious. The dark mottled blue walls were covered with photographs and album covers. The bar covered the whole right wall, dominating close to half of the room. There were a few tables against the other wall, with the jukebox in the far left corner. In the center of the room was a dance floor, but no one was using it. The bar was fairly crowded, but it was a somewhat somber group, in spite of the cheery Elvis tune, "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear," playing loudly yet somehow unobtrusively in the background. It appeared to be a hard-drinking, and perhaps a hard-living, crowd.
There were only a few spaces left at the bar, and after glancing around, I decided to sit towards the middle between a young woman and a 50ish, rather grizzled man. I politely asked if the seat was taken. Although the woman and the man did not appear to be together, or even aware of the existence of the other, their responses to my question were uniform. Neither turned away from the bar; both simply shrugged, and the slowness of the movement of one, whether from drunkenness or despondency, was mirrored by the other. So I sat between them. It was then I noticed the HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ELVIS banner on the wall above the bar. Had I ever known that Elvis was born on January 8?
I wasn't sure what to order. A hot toddy seemed the ideal complement to the weather, but I felt like whiskey, something hard and bleak, was more fitting for this environment. A boiler maker sounded good, and I couldn't see how dropping a shot of whiskey into a beer could make things any messier than they already seemed to be. Yet that seemed too jovial a choice, and far too obvious. I felt like I was in a movie, so that I could just order a beer without specifying a brand. And time seemed to be shifting-I could almost believe that I was in a speakeasy surrounded by dames and gangsters drinking hooch from bathtubs hidden in the backroom.
It bothered me, though, that I continued to think in terms of clichés. That was the biggest problem with my writing, and it was the main reason I stuck with writing newspaper articles, my whorish quick fix, instead of working on fiction, my true aspiration. I had trouble coming up with ideas-nothing seemed fresh, and even when I found a hook that pleased me, I had no idea where to take it.
I ordered a jack and coke, and as I waited for it I lit a cigarette and looked around me. I wondered who of the customers could become characters-creating back-stories for strangers helped pass the time when I was alone. Most of the faces were washed in shadows, and even though I knew the lighting created that effect, I couldn't help but wonder if the patrons had purposefully sought out the darkened corners, to hide or reflect the cloudy contents of their characters.
"Jailhouse Rock" began playing, and it seemed to rouse my neighbor to the right. "Dancing through it doesn't work, you know," he said to no one in particular. "Whistling in the dark's about as helpful as howling at the moon. We're in jail, a big fat shithouse, and even if you forget for five minutes, eventually you remember."
I just sort of looked at him, startled to hear so many hackneyed and bleak phrases strung together in a row, and he turned toward me, his mouth crinkled upward in imitation of a smile. "Cheers," he said and took a swig from his bottle.
I raised my glass to him and took a sip. "I don't know," I said. "Isn't being able to forget sometimes one of the things that makes life worthwhile?"
He scratched his stubble and regarded me for a minute. "That depends. Are a few minutes of ignorant bliss worth a lifetime of regret?"
"Well," I said, "I've had happy moments dancing or whatever, and I don't regret them, so I don't know what you mean."
"I know that, kid. I'm just warning you," he said.
The woman to my left leaned across me. "You're drunk," she said to the man. She turned to me. "He's drunk," she said. Her face looked more bleary than drunk, but her words were staggered and deliberate, so it was hard to tell just what was wrong with her.
"This is a bar, missy. I'm here to drink. What are you here for?" the man said.
"Well, don't talk about the pointlessness of forgetting when that's what drinking offers you. That's why you do it," she said.
"No," he said. "I don't drink to forget. I drink so's I don't mind remembering so much…. But it only works sometimes. It's a crap shoot."
"Yeah, sure. It's a crap shoot in a shithouse. That's life in a nutshell, huh?" she said, and she laughed harshly, leaning back to sit upright on her stool. I felt like I was surrounded by bad actors in a cheaply made film. The outlines for characters were there, but their line deliveries were wooden, tinny, and the cigarette smoke dulled their colors without softening the edges.
"So, okay," she said. "You opened up the discussion. Well, you talked to him," she said, and gestured to me, "and I-I, well, I grabbed onto the talk like a drowning person grasping for a life vest, I guess. So… what's your story? What are your lifetime regrets?"
The man looked at her, looked at me, and then drained his bottle. I didn't know what to do, so I sipped again from my glass and tried not to look at him expectantly. The woman arched a brow, swished her dark hair, and grabbed her glass with a flourish. "My turn, yes?" she said and slurped loudly on her straw. She let out an exaggerated "ahh" and said, "So let's order another round and have at it, shall we?"
She motioned to the bartender, and when he came over she said, "Another round, barkeep. Bartender. Mixologist. Which title do you prefer?"
The bartender looked 40ish, and everything about him, especially his nose and ears, drooped. He frowned at the woman and turned away to fetch our drinks.
"Mixologist," the man said. "I hate that PC crap…. He doesn't study drinks; he just makes 'em and pours 'em. And we drink 'em up."
"Well, but titles seem to matter these days. Gotta make the business cards look swank," she said. "And even if that is ridiculous, words certainly matter. I'm a semioticist."
"You're a what-icist?" the man said. "You're a nutjob is what you are. You're lucky you're cute."
Finally, I saw an opening. "A semioticist studies words," I said. "She looks at how we use words, how we express ourselves… but I'm willing to bet she doesn't get paid for it."
She cocked a brow again and said, "I will eventually, though. I'm still in school. Give me some time."
We were served our drinks, and she raised hers first and said, "Okay, so what do we drink to? Shithouses? Elvis's birthday? PC-isms?"
"To nutjobs," the man said. I considered making an inappropriate remark but managed to refrain.
"So… are you ready to share, old-timer?" the woman asked and then gestured to me. "Me and my friend here are all ready to listen." She rose somewhat clumsily to scoot her chair closer to mine. "Don't get excited," she said to me. "I just want to hear better."
I didn't feel particularly excited; I was more curious than anything else. The man was right that the young woman was cute; her eyes glittered blackly in the dim lighting, and her lips were full and softly red. But she was also awkward and fidgety, and she avoided eye contact. It seemed clear that her sharp tongue was a defense mechanism, but I had no idea what her bravado was trying to hide. Perhaps she had a story I could use.
"Burnin' Love" had begun playing. "Did you know this song never made it to number 1?" the man asked, with a mirthless laugh. "Chuck Berry's 'My Ding a ling' kept it at number two. Makes sense, o' course. Title-wise, it's a pecker beating the clap."
"Your offensiveness won't deter my 'burnin' desire to know whether you have a right to be so cynical, so move a little closer and start talking," she said.
The man shrugged and inched his chair slightly closer to mine. "What's to say? Well, I was in the navy thirty years. Seen countries all over the world. Seen lots of things…. Men so lonely after months at sea they took to slow dancing with each other, and it almost looked normal, even to those of us who didn't join in. Huh, always wondered about that…. Doesn't matter, though. You've heard the sea's a fickle mistress? Well, so's women in general. So's the navy…. And so's alcohol.
"Same old story. When I was your age, kid, people loved when I got a drink on. I charmed the pants off my wife-literally--with my drunken fool talk. She found my whiskey breath 'masculine' and my tattoos 'rebellious.' My superiors thought me the life of the party, and they also knew I could be depended on when need be, too.
"But, eventually that all changed. The wife got tired of moving around, she got tired of being left alone, she got tired of me. She got mad when I was home; she got mad when I was away. She got mad when she got pregnant…. And I just kept on drinking.
"You're probably waiting for me to say that I ended up hitting her, but I never did. Sometimes I wanted to, but I never did. She would get mad, and she would take off her shoes and throw them at me. Her feet were little, so she never hurt me physically, but it still hurt, you know. She could be one mean woman…. And I'd be so drunk that I would just end up crying 'cause I felt so bad, and that would make things worse. She said she thought she was marrying a masculine rebel but she ended up with a brainwashed crybaby…. She wanted to cure me of that, and she sure tried. She put me down in front of the kid. She laughed at me in front of my friends. One day, I came home and she was laying one of my friends right in our bed. And… I cried. She wanted me to kill him or beat her or both, but I just cried. I just… felt so helpless, I didn't know what to do….
"She left the next day. Took the kid. I got divorce papers later that year, but I didn't sign 'em. I guess we're divorced, anyway, but it wasn't 'cause I gave in…. That was twenty years ago, and I haven't seen her or my boy since.
"So, like plenty of sailors before me, I decided to make the sea my only woman, but she screwed me, too, in the end…."
During his speech, I sat as if spellbound; the old man's slow and halting words created a moving picture in my head, and I could see his bitter, unfaithful wife, his snot-nosed kid with a sagging diaper, his shameless, tight-muscled friend. In fact, I could imagine them so well that I wondered if maybe I'd heard the story before. It all just sounded too familiar.
Apparently the woman agreed with me, because she soon broke in. "The whole time you've been talking I feel like I've been listening to the plot of some black and white B film from the 40s that maybe Sinatra starred in back when his acting wasn't getting much notice. But by all means, keep going. How did the sea 'screw' you?"
"Tell me, missy," the old-timer said. "Where do you think movie plots come from? From life, that's where. You know why some plots seem tired? Because they happen over and over again. Times change; people don't. So, the way I see it, till the end of time, folks will drink too much, and folks will cheat, and blues music will always be popular… because human misery will never end. And the fact that the same thing happens over and over again is the saddest thing I can think of, 'cause it means there's no way to break the cycle…. You know what I mean? A million men could share my story, and that does nothing to change the fact that it also happened to me, and that it hurt like hell."
"Nevertheless," the woman said, "you sound like a cliché. I mean, I'm guessing that your drinking eventually got so out of control that the navy dumped you, right?"
"Well… that's one way of putting it. But it isn't quite how I see it. Once upon a time, the sea and me were soul mates. No matter what, I always knew what she was thinking, and she always took care of me, no matter what kind of shape I was in. But somehow, it seems to me she just stopped caring; she became unpredictable, and I couldn't understand her…. And we betrayed each other. I blamed her for my mistakes, and she took any opportunity to trip me up." The man paused and looked at the woman, whose eyebrow was so cocked it looked ready to fly off her face. "I'm not saying the liquor had nothing to do with it. I know it did. But the real problem is that I keep trusting women, and women just aren't trustworthy."
"Okay," she said, "I know that the sea is called 'she.' And boats are called 'she.' But, newsflash: neither of them are actually women."
"Shit, missy. The sea was the first woman; she'll probably be the last one, too. And I think that maybe the land is man…. Yeah. Water surrounds and shapes the land, but it also corrodes it, wears it away. So it seems to me that water and land are the first and last love affair, and the water, the woman, always wins…. You know it's so, don't you, sonny?" the man said, turning to me.
"Uh, well… it works really well as a metaphor, no doubt," I said. I knew that I didn't really fit into the scenario. My role was that of observer, and I felt uncomfortable when the man tried to break the fourth wall of the story I was creating in my head.
"God, that's such a male perspective of things. A heterosexual male perspective," the woman said, with an exaggerated and frustrated flip of her hair. "Do you really think women view themselves as destroyers of men? Even you just said that women shape men, like the water shapes the land. Is it the women's fault that men crumble instead of shaping up? Is it my fault that man is weak?"
"What man?" the man asked, and I could almost feel my ears prick up. For more reasons than one, I wanted to hear her tale.
She frowned at him, her face scrunching into a sour impression of a prune. "Any man," she said. "Just 'man.' The fall of man. I wasn't being specific."
"We're all 'hound dogs,' eh? Come now, girlie. You've heard my story; you see why I'm here tonight. But what about you? Drinking alone, at a bar like this-there has to be a reason why," the older man said.
She looked at him sharply and said, "I didn't want to stay in tonight. And I'd never been here before. That's about all there is to it."
"Come on," I said, breaking my code of silence to push her along. "You bullied this poor guy into spilling his guts. It's only fair for you to reciprocate."
"You think I should play Blanche DuBois and rely on the kindness of strangers, huh? Well, I… well, why not? I mean, what the hell. I guess I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to talk, right? Okay. Okay…. Oh great, 'I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.' Fantastic. A love song," she said with a sigh, before motioning to the bartender for another round of drinks. I found myself surreptitiously looking at her profile. Her hair was a cascade of brown silk flowing over her shoulders that rushed forward and blocked her face from view when she lowered her head. I felt a sudden urge to reach out and brush her hair back behind her ear, but I shrugged it off; I didn't want my hand bitten off.
"What's the matter, little miss? Are you heartbroken?" the man asked, not unkindly.
"No," she said. "Well… yes, but-but not in the way you mean. I… well, I'm 23 years old, and… this will sound stupid, but… you see… I've never been in love. And no one has ever loved me either. So… yes, I know it's silly, but… I AM heartbroken. Because I want to know what it's like to love and be loved. I feel like I'm missing something-there's this-this vacancy in my heart, and… it hurts. Plus, I'm… I'm just really embarrassed…." Her face, which had already been flushed from drink, grew still redder, and she stared down at the bar. Her hair again fell forward, and she impatiently shoved it behind her ears.
"Why are you embarrassed, honey?" The man leaned across me to smile encouragingly at the woman.
"Well, because. I mean, all my friends have been in love-pretty much everyone my age has been. I just feel so… well, so unlovable. And I feel like this-this child… because I've never had that defining experience… you know? It's funny, I guess: I was so hard on you, but, really, I'm way more pathetic. It's bad enough that no one will love me, but here I am crying into my beer about it… At least you have a story. I have a NON-story…." She hid her face in her hands and peeked at us through her fingers.
I felt an alcohol-tinged wave of disappointment wash over me. She was right. His story was too hackneyed to work with; even if it's true that all plots are recycled, I knew I didn't have the talent to make his seem fresh. And the woman had nothing but back-story, exposition. Something else needed to happen, but I didn't know what.
"Look here, little girl. You're awful young to be worrying about this," the man said. "Give it some time. Focus on your words studying…. You'll be all right. Besides, love causes nothing but trouble, right boy?" He nudged me and nodded, waiting for me to corroborate what he'd said.
I sat there stumped for a minute, wondering what to say. The woman lowered her hands and looked at me. "What about your story?" she asked. "What lifelong regrets bring you here?"
"I don't know that I have any lifelong regrets yet," I said. "I just came here because… I don't know, because I was curious about this place, and I wanted something to do."
"But have you ever been in love?" she persisted.
I didn't want to talk about myself. Getting involved in the story would make it too autobiographical, and therefore limited in scope. "Well," I said. "I don't know. I've had some girlfriends I was pretty serious about, I guess. But… I try to stay on the outside of things. I'm more of an observer. That's my job, for one thing… and it's just the way I've always been."
"God, what a typical male remark," she said, and her eyebrow shot up again. "It's better to be detached, right? Because that way you don't risk anything. It's safer. You don't have to fear failure or being vulnerable. Right? I know I'm right, even if you won't admit it…. You're the worst cliché of all."
"What about you?" I shot back before I could stop myself. "All that self-pity talk about not finding love. It's easy to complain about it, isn't it? It's totally different to search for it, try for it, but look where you are: here at a crappy bar spilling your guts to strangers who you never have to worry about seeing again. Maybe fear is your problem, too."
The woman's mouth dropped open and she blinked her eyes several times. I felt like a heel; she had exposed a weakness in herself, and I had immediately thrown it back in her face. And on top of that, I had gotten involved in something I wanted to stay out of. I didn't know what to do, and I found myself awkwardly patting her hand a few times while keeping my eyes glued to my drink.
When I looked over at the man, he grimaced and shrugged. "I think that maybe fear is everyone's problem, son…. We're all scared of something, and that affects everything we do. But maybe the good thing is, fear can make us do what we need to do, just like it can keep us from doing it."
"What do you mean, it makes us do what we need to do?" I asked.
"Well, take this little lady here. Maybe you're right that she's scared of love, but one day she might be so scared of being alone that she'll be willing to risk giving love a shot. Same goes for you. It's strange, isn't it? Fear doesn't have to be all bad. Sometimes I forget that…."
"Then maybe loneliness is what affects everything we do," the woman said. "The pain of being alone, and the fear of being alone forever."
"Maybe so. I don't know." The old man scratched his head and smiled a little. I looked at him a little more closely than I had before, and I realized it was impossible to guess his age. His face had the burnt red crispiness of a sailor, and years of drinking surely had aged him as well. His light eyes shone brightly, but whether that was natural or from the haze of inebriation, I couldn't tell. His shoulders were hunched, and yet somehow his back remained straight, erect. Everything about the man screamed failure, and yet I had to feel a little respect for someone who could sit like that, and who could be so gentle toward a woman who for the most part hadn't offered him one word of kindness.
"Well, can I ask you something?" the woman asked, leaning across me to stare at the man. "Do you still love your wife? Or even the sea? I mean, what I'm asking is: does love last?"
"Oh, well… I think that's different for everyone, little miss. I don't know. For me, well now… I love the way I used to feel about my wife, early on. I dunno if that means I love her now…. I dunno if it matters whether I still love her. I remember the feeling. When it made me happy and when it tore me apart. But the thing is… I can't remember why I loved her. I just know that I did. With the sea, it's different. I felt it was a part of me. Or I was a part of it. I loved its beauty and its moods, and I just knew I couldn't be away from it. Even now, I feel that way about it; that love has lasted. My wife… I loved her beauty, but I hated her moods… and I had no choice but to be away from her. So I don't know if love lasts, when it comes to people. All I know is that the memory of it does."
"Do you wish you hadn't loved her?" the woman asked.
"No point in wishing, now is there? If it hadn't been my wife, it'd have been someone else, prob'ly. Sometimes I think maybe I should have just stuck with the sea…."
"But do you think that being in love has made you a better person? Or has it at least given you a more universal view of the world?" she asked.
The man laughed, gently but without humor. "I just now told you about my life regrets. No… I don't think love made me a better person. But, for a while, it made me a happier one. It also made me a lot sadder…. I guess love is like fear in a lot of ways. It makes us do things, some good, some bad. We run from it; we run to it…. I don't know, little girl."
"But don't all emotions have the power to make us do good and bad things?" the woman asked, draining her drink through her straw.
"Well now… I guess so. But not to the same extent," the man answered.
"Talking about love is frustrating," the woman said.
"Being in it is frustrating, too," he said.
Our drinks were empty, so I motioned to the bartender to bring us more. I wanted for there to be some sort of climax, but I had no idea what it should be. The young woman couldn't end up with the older man, and it didn't look like they were going to fight anymore. Something had to happen. I tried to catch her eye, to see if she was still upset with me, but even though she must have felt my gaze, she continued looking at the man.
"All Shook Up" began to play, and the woman cocked her head to one side, listening. "Hey, old-timer," she said playfully. "You wanna dance?"
"Oh, missy…. You should dance with this young buck here. I'm too old to dance," the man said, but his smile grew large.
She glanced at me and swished her hair. "Maybe later," she said. "But for now, why not us? Maybe we CAN dance through it, just for a little while. I know it won't be the same as dancing with a man while out at sea, but…."
The man laughed out loud, and shook his head. Slowly, he stood, and he held out his hand to the woman. She took it, and sort of rolled off her stool. They were the only two dancing, and he took her gently in his arms as he swung her around the floor. He twirled her and did some move that looked like the jitterbug or something, and she was laughing as she awkwardly twisted and dipped her body to the beat.
I liked watching them, but I wasn't content. The story couldn't end this way. Plus, maybe it was the liquor having an effect, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like to not be the audience for once. Maybe I could be a player; after all, as much as I'd fought against it, I was already playing a part, anyway. I rose a little unsteadily and made my way over to the jukebox in the corner. As I flipped through the options, I saw that all of the songs were by Elvis, and that was fine, for I knew what I was looking for.
After making my selections, I walked back to my stool and continued watching the floor. A few more couples had joined the woman and man. Watching the dancers' faces, I saw a range of emotions. Some people looked fatigued, as if either just going through the motions or hoping to find a second wind. Others looked shiny and dazed, as if not quite sure of what they were doing or just determined not to think about it. Only the expressions of the young woman and older man looked real. Their smiles were embarrassed but relieved, and it didn't seem that liquor was the cause of either emotion.
When the song ended, the woman leaned in to give the man a brief hug. She patted him on the back and kissed his cheek. As they walked back to their seats, the first song I selected began. I intercepted the woman and said, "How about that dance now?"
She shrugged and blushed and let me lead her back to the floor. I held her to me, close but not tight, and we swayed back and forth as Elvis sang "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"
"Hey… are you putting the moves on me?" she asked, leaning her head back to look at my face. She still avoided my eyes, though; she seemed to be staring at my mouth.
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe. Should I?"
"Well, isn't it a little out of the blue? You've hardly talked to me at all, and when you did you were rude."
"I know, and I'm very sorry for that…. But I wanted you to hear this song," I said, not totally sure of what I was saying. I felt rather drunk, but not even close to wasted. In fact, I felt I was thinking very clearly, but like my thoughts had nothing to do with what I was saying. I felt like I was outside my body, watching myself with the woman from a distance-both with her and not with her, all at the same time.
"But I've heard this before," she said, "and of course I'm lonely tonight. I'm lonely every night."
"Yeah, you made that clear. But I want you to hear this one part where he talks. It's kind of cheesy, but how apropos is this first bit? Listen…"
"Um… yeah, that's definitely cheesy," she said. "And it's apropos how, exactly?"
"Well, because. It's symbolic. You and I-and the old-timer over there-are standing on the stage. We have no lines to read, so we have to make them up-and we throw them out there, waiting for someone to catch them, react to them…. And, I mean… maybe this is Act 1. For you and me. It's possible, isn't it?" She was still staring at my mouth, so I stuck my tongue out at her.
She laughed and looked me in the eye. "But I thought you liked to just watch?"
"Sure, but… that only works when there's something to observe. When there isn't, I have to make it happen. You know? Or… maybe I'm just lonesome tonight…."
She stared down at her feet for a minute, and then she laughed and looked at my mouth. "'If your heart's broke, don't fix it.' Do you think Elvis ever really came here?"
"You think the King thing is just a gimmick?" I asked.
"I don't know. It could be."
"That isn't a very optimistic view," I said. "Why don't we ask the bartender? And how about this, we'll make a sort of bet. If Elvis came here for real, we'll take it as a sign, and you'll go with me for a cup of coffee."
"A sign of what?" she asked.
"A sign that optimism is better than cynicism," I said. I wondered dimly what I was doing, but it seemed smarter to concentrate on how good she felt in my arms. Maybe together we could create the story we both were searching for.
"Well, that's kind of a no-brainer, but okay. And if it's all a hoax?"
"We'll take our separate paths and continue to stew in our fears."
She scrunched up her face at me and laughed a little. "Okay, it's a bet. But the bartender doesn't like me, so you do the talking."
The song "Surrender" began playing as we walked over to the bar, and I had to roll my eyes at the obviousness of my song choices. The old-timer smiled at us when we approached. "You looked real good out there together."
The woman smiled back, and she told him our bet. "Well," he said, "you can ask the bartender if you want, but I can give you the answer myself because I once asked the owner that very question."
"Okay, tell us!" she said, and she and I sat on our stools.
The man looked at her and then at me, and he smiled. "The answer is, yes, the King was here. It was in December of 1970, the night before he met President Nixon. Elvis sailed his boat into the Annapolis harbor for the night, and it seems he was looking for a low-key place where he could pass some time. Back then, this place was called Jessie's Joint-Jessie was the owner's mama, and she ran the place back then. And Jessie was the name of Elvis's twin who died at birth, so he saw it as a sign.
"So he came in and had a few Pepsis and cheeseburgers. The place was almost empty, so he just sat and talked to Jessie for a spell. He was excited about meeting Nixon, God knows why, and they chatted about that, and about their kids and music…. Plus, he and Priscilla had started having problems by then, and I guess the King was feeling lonely. He held Jessie's hand while they talked, and he danced with her while he sang 'Heartbreak Hotel'--that was her favorite song of his. He was a real gentleman, and Jessie respected that, especially since her husband had recently died, and she was all alone, too. So… there you have it. Looks like you two are going for coffee."
Right then, the last of my song selections began to play. Appropriately enough, it was "Heartbreak Hotel." I couldn't help but grin. I didn't know if the man was telling the truth, but, either way, I finally had my story: the meeting between Elvis and Jessie. And I'd also gotten the girl-for coffee, at least. The woman looked at me and cocked a brow, but she kind of smiled as she did it.
"Hey, sir, would you like to come with us? We'd like you to," I said, and the girl nodded her head.
"I thank you kindly," he said, "but I'm going to stay right here with my beer and the music of the King."
I slapped some bills onto the bar and said, "Okay, well, the next round is on me."
The woman and I each shook his hand, and then we walked towards the door. "So where should we get that coffee? 'Down at the end of Lonely Street'?" I asked.
"Sure, we get there riding the streetcar named desire, right?" she asked with a flip of her hair.
I smiled. "Lead on, Ms. DuBois. Maybe we'll find Graceland on the way."