Excerpts from the Novel

"…it's like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody's ear, and somehow, we all dreamed it."–Bruce Springsteen

Elvis walks into a pet shop, and the dogs all leap in their cages for attention. "Yes, it's me, Elvis Presley."

Excerpt One

We were on the highway, Norma Jean driving her Kia very fast, the car's speakers throbbing with "Jailhouse Rock."

"What you do?" she hollered over Elvis.

"What?" I shouted back. A mileage marker whipped past in such a blur I couldn't read it.

"What are you? How you live?"

"Structural engineer."

She shook her head. "Don't know what that means."

"You always drive this fast?"

"Don't you like to get where you wanta be fast?"

"Some times I just like to enjoy the scenery."

"Not much scenery to enjoy right here. Pretty dull part of Tennessee if you ask me." She moved her head back and forth in rhythm with the music.

As we whooshed past a semi, the wind stream pushed the little car about three feet toward the concrete highway divider.

"I like the idea of getting places alive, too!" I shouted.

"Huh?"

"I want to live!"

"Oh, yeah, honey. We're gonna have us a good time, don't you worry."

"If we get there alive!"

"Don't worry. We've got years ahead of us. Especially me. Now you're about … how old?"

"I stopped counting at thirty-nine."

"So you're about forty-nine? Anyway, I figure we've got 'bout thirty years together. That's enough time to have some fun. Hey, I like your suit, but you can take your tie off now and relax a little. You know Clide--she's named after her great-grandma--it's 'Clide' with a 'i'--she thought you were a federal agent. She told me she'd seen that look before."

"What look?"

"Your look. Clide's paranoid. Always has been. She thinks between federal agents and space aliens she never really gets any privacy. Course with a name like Clide she grew up with everybody makin' fun of her. When I was a kid I told my mom I wanted to change my name to Priscilla. I like your name. Paul. You weren't named for Paul McCartney, were you?" Before I had a chance to answer, she went right on, talking now at about the same speed she was driving. "No, you're too old. When you were born, nobody knew who he was. You think it would be bad to name a kid 'Elvis'? If you and me have a boy, I think we oughta name him Elvis. For Halloween, we'll get him a little Elvis costume--ohhh, he'll be so cute. I don't think the other kids will make fun of him. Do you?"

I was squinting into the glaring sun. The highway shimmered, unreal, and I was thinking that maybe I now knew how astronauts felt taking off from the launching pad, those G-forces scrambling your gut and your brain.

I said, "Pull over. Please."

"Huh?"

"Pull over. Anywhere along here."

"Why? You sick?" She turned Elvis down.

"No."

"My drivin' really scarin' you that bad? You wanta drive?" The landscape was slowing down. I felt like I was making the transition from an Impressionist painting to a Realist one. "No, you can keep driving. We just need to stop and talk for a minute."

"We been talkin'."

"I need to tell you something. I need you to understand something about me."

Excerpt Two

I dropped to the ground in the nearest shadow and scanned the grounds again. I saw nothing at first. The sounds of vehicles drifted up from Elvis Presley Boulevard, but I feared that anybody within a mile could hear me sucking for air.

Then to my left in the distance toward the memorial gardens, I discerned a lean young man in a brown uniform standing in the light of a lamppost. He was smoking a cigarette. He was not looking my way. He was looking up at the sky, maybe at the red light of the plane that was passing over.

The night was incredibly clear, and the security guard kept looking up at the sky long after the plane passed. I figured he must have been observing the stars. The tip of his cigarette glowed when he took puffs. When he exhaled, the smoke swirled up in a ghostly fashion in the light and dissipated among the stars. A walkie-talkie hung from his waist and crackled alive suddenly with the voice of a police dispatcher giving information to a patrol car somewhere in the city.

I lay perfectly still, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into. And while I lay there, the security guard and I together watched a star fall from the sky. It raced brightly to earth and vanished--nearby, it seemed, but it was hard to judge distance from where I lay trying to sink as far as I could into the warm earth, the grass tickling my chin. I heard the security guard say softly to himself, "Cool."

Then he dropped his cigarette butt, stepped on it, and walked away. He did not come toward me and he quickly disappeared, but I continued to lie there. I kept looking for him to re-appear. Several minutes passed. I listened for any sound. I heard nothing but those traffic sounds drifting up from the boulevard until I heard a howl. It was the howl of an old hound dog.

In my head, I was rehearsing several stories I could tell the police. I was a respectable, tax-paying citizen, a partner in an engineering firm and … and I merely had a professional interest in the infrastructure of the property; I meant no harm, of course; I wasn't even aware that the estate was closed for the evening; I had been taking some very powerful sinus medicine and therefore my judgment may have been impaired; I recently had a tragic loss in my life; I had been brainwashed by a cult of Wiccans; I had recently turned fifty and admittedly needed to see my doctor for a check-up; I was willing to make a substantial donation to the police auxiliary fund and to all of Elvis Presley's favorite charities; in fact, I was on the property … that is, I was inspecting the property for the location of a sculpture I planned to have commissioned and would be donating to the Presley estate … I was an alien from the Zurtug galaxy and unaware of human protocols . . . .

Excerpt Three

"Yeah. So what's wrong with you?"

"Why does something have to be wrong with me?"

"There definitely has to be something wrong with you. So what is it?"

I nodded. "Okay." I looked into the sun. "I know the future."

"What?"

"I can see the future."

"You mean you could like work for a carnival or somethin'? Five bucks and you could tell people their fortunes?"

"I know how things would turn out if I ever got married. Or lived with somebody. Or had any kind of serious long-term relationship."

"You can't see the future. You're just scared."

"It's not like in the movies."

"What's not?"

"Relationships. In the movies, people always start out hating each other. You know, some guy and girl meet and, yeah, they find each other vaguely sexy, but they can't stand each other. Then they end up loving each other and living happily ever after. In the real world, people start out being crazy about each other. Like us. At least like I'm crazy about you. They think they've found the one special person. But then they end up hating each other. I have a friend who's been married five times. Every time he's certain he's found his … his soul mate. And every time, every damn time, the glow fades, the rose-colored glasses crack--whatever you want to call it. And he suffers a hundred times in misery what he experienced in bliss. His wives, too. I told you, my father was married four times. My mother three times. I didn't even tell you about my step-fathers. Jesus, look what happened to your own parents."

Norma Jean was looking at the last glow on the horizon. "Why do people do that? Go from lovin' to hatin'?"

"They get to know each other. That's what does it. They get to know each other too well. We like people we don't know very well. We like people we know a little but not a lot. You live with somebody and things change. For the worse. Because you get to know them too well."

"It's not like that for everybody. Not everybody. Some people--"