Curing the Blues with a New Pair of Shoes Page 12

  Edwina’s words did nothing to salve the humiliation growing within Avery. Still, she allowed herself to be dragged to a styling chair and even allowed her shoulders to be draped in a silver plastic cape.

  But no hairdresser I know nothing about is touching my hair, she vowed mentally. “I really didn’t come for a hairdo,” she said.

  The hairdresser placed her hands on Avery’s shoulders and looked into her eyes via her reflection in the mirror. “Hon, you’re really uptight. Lord, your neck and shoulders are tied in knots. Have another Bloody Mary.”

  Debbie Sue stepped up and handed Avery another glass of red liquid.

  “The joke was really on Debbie Sue,” Edwina went on. “I told him to pretend to be gay to fool her.”

  Avery couldn’t stop thinking about the incident with Sam Something in the parking lot. He would have to be a moron, a blank check, to have missed how his overt flirting had affected her in the car. She had practically swooned, had been almost unable to talk coherently. The thought of how close she had come to actually kissing him made her want to crawl into a corner and howl. And the three Bloody Marys she had already had were doing little to erase that embarrassment.

  And it had all been a joke on his part.

  God, you are so lame, she told herself. No wonder you’re still single!

  She hoped she never saw Sam Carter again.

  chapter thirteen

  I came in here to see the shoes,” the elderly woman said, a distant stare in her eyes. Her gaze came back to Sam’s. “Have you seen them yet?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sam answered. “But to tell the truth, I didn’t study them.”

  “Why, then, let’s just go take a look.” She slid across the vinyl seat again.

  Sam quickly got to his feet. She reached out to him and he took her hand, helping her to stand. She obviously knew her way back to the area where the shoes were located, so he followed her. No one even attempted to collect five dollars from them.

  In the middle of the room, among other tables and chairs, on a table covered with a purple velvet cloth sat a locked Plexiglas box. Inside, mounted on a clear pedestal, was a pair of what appeared to be house slippers, and Sam couldn’t even guess the size. Nor were they blue suede. Gray fabric was a more fitting description. He still found it hard to believe these were Elvis Presley’s famous blue suede shoes.

  Despite his doubt, Sam realized he was in uncharted territory. Who was he to question an icon that was famous before Sam Carter had been born? He pulled his digital camera from his coat pocket and snapped several shots from different angles while the woman stood seemingly mesmerized by the sight of the shoes.

  “I read that he actually owned a dozen pairs of blue suede shoes made especially for him,” he said to her.

  “I read that too,” the woman said, “but this is the first pair.”

  The statement had a note of certainty to it. His interest in this little old lady was piqued. He lowered his camera and leveled a look at her. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I gave them to him.”

  Sam didn’t dare let himself believe what he was hearing or thinking. She had to be delusional, might even have Alzheimer’s. With old people, it was best to just go along. “Wow. You knew him?” Moving in closer, he snapped another shot of the shoes. “I guess in someone’s world these shoes would be priceless. Do you know how Hogg’s was able to get them?”

  “I heard a museum in Las Vegas loaned them out especially for this festival. I couldn’t believe it was the real ones when I heard it, but here they are. I’ve seen them with my own two eyes. And they’re the ones.”

  Sam looked at her again, still trying to decide if she was for real. If she was, his good fortune was overwhelming. She started to turn away. “Tell me your name again, ma’am.” She repeated her name and he wrote it in his notebook. “How do you spell that?” he asked.

  She spelled her name and dabbed a tear away with her finger. “When I first met Elvis he was only nineteen, just starting out. I was twenty-nine. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Anyone who ever met him never forgot him. Women, men, children. It didn’t matter. When he walked into the room, it was like…it was like…”

  She seemed to be at a loss for words. “Magic?” Sam said.

  She smiled up at him. “Yes. It was surely that. Magic.”

  Sam hadn’t often seen film footage of Elvis Presley. Most of what he knew of the man came from what he had heard or read, much of it since he had been handed this assignment. He had viewed covering this event as a step backward on the path to his goal. Now he wished he had burned some midnight oil, had done more research on the Elvis Presley phenomenon. When he considered it more thoroughly, he could think of no sports figure who had ever made the impact on American culture that Elvis Presley had. The man had changed popular music and spawned a revolution.

  “How did you meet?” Sam asked, now fearful someone else would hear their conversation and scoop him on this story. At the same time he was doing an arithmetic calculation in his head, trying to determine Mrs. Wiley’s age, debating if he dared ask her. “Look, let’s go back into the dining room and sit down where we can talk with a little more privacy.”

  He walked her back to the table they had left a few minutes earlier and let her talk. She told him of working as a receptionist at an Odessa radio station and how Elvis, while making a tour through West Texas small towns, had come to her station for an interview and how she brought him to Hogg’s for a hamburger.

  Sam scribbled madly. “So you could say you were the first to introduce him to these famous hamburgers?”

  “Oh, they weren’t famous then. He made them famous.” The old woman leaned across the table and lowered her voice to a near whisper. “I was the first to introduce him to a lot of things,” she said, then gave a sly wink.

  Sam knew what that remark accompanied by that body language in any other interview with any other person meant, but he wasn’t sure how to judge it with someone of Mrs. Wiley’s age and gender. Nor was he sure how to react.

  “That surprises you, doesn’t it? You young people forget that us old people weren’t born old. We got to be like this with time, and so will you. Just remember this.” She pointed to her birdlike chest. “There’s nothing you can do, think, read or write that we haven’t already done.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sam replied, feeling like a little kid who had just been put in his place.

  “Please don’t call me ‘ma’am,’” she said patting his hand. “That sounds like I’m an old woman. Call me Maudeen. Now, what other questions do you have?”

  For the next hour and a half Maudeen talked and Sam scribbled. He bought her a Coke. Occasionally he asked questions. She was open and candid, sharing all the memories she could think of.

  “I’ve told lots of people about me and Elvis,” she said. “Not everything, but it didn’t matter what I said anyway, because no one’s ever believed me. That’s never bothered me. I know what’s true and that’s what matters.”

  For the first time during their ninety-minute interview she appeared tired and looked her age. “It was so sad what happened to him,” she continued. “To die so young.” She shook her head and looked away.

  “Yeah,” Sam said, thinking about the fact that Elvis had died around the time he had been born.

  “But I’ve decided”—Maudeen faced him again—“that he wasn’t meant to grow old with the rest of us. I can’t even imagine him as an old man. He was too beautiful”—She pointed to her own face—“to have had to put up with this every day. His death kept him young for the world. And for me. He’s always been young to me and always will be. Young and beautiful, the most beautiful man I ever saw.”

  Sam was touched. The Caleb Crawford story aside, he felt his instincts were right in that he was sitting across from the biggest story to come out of the weekend.

  Whether he actually wrote it and turned it in was another matter.

  Her intimate memories see
med best left for her to tell whomever she chose to. He knew how most of the press would treat her story if it became public. He feared she would be mocked and ridiculed.

  Nope, he decided. The story would stay between the two of them. He couldn’t prevent her from talking to other people or other members of the press, but he wouldn’t be the one to tell her secrets.

  “Yessir,” she sighed and spoke again with a far away look in her eye, “the most beautiful man I ever saw.”

  Debbie Sue watched with a dubious eye as Avery used her foot to push against the vanity table and pulled it back just in time to keep it from interfering with her ride on the Styling Station’s hydraulic chair. The woman was on her fourth or fifth Bloody Mary. Edwina had gone home to pick up some snacks.

  Avery pointed toward the front door with her empty Bloody Mary glass. “Are you ’ware there are hundreds of Elvis impersonators on the other side of that door?”

  “Yeah,” Debbie Sue answered, holding a fresh pitcher of Bloody Marys in her hand. Now she was doing nothing more than playing hostess. She had stopped after the first Bloody Mary, after she saw Avery gulp down two and show no sign of curtailing her thirst.

  “I need this reshipee,” Avery said.

  “I’ll write it down.” But Debbie Sue made no move to find a pen and paper. “I don’t use that bottled premix shit, you know. I fix it one ingredient at a time. It takes a little longer, but it’s worth it.” Setting the pitcher down on her styling counter, she glanced at the front door. Babysitting Avery was becoming a burden. And since, in reality, they were strangers, she didn’t know what to expect from the woman. She had already surprised her by drinking a whole pitcher of Bloody Marys. “Wonder what’s taking Ed so long?”

  “Is she really bringing back some armadillo eggs?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Debbie Sue said, watching Avery in the mirror. “That’s what she said.”

  “You know, I didn’t even know armadillos laid eggs.” Avery leaned forward with her empty glass outstretched.

  Instead of filling the glass again, Debbie Sue sank to the chair next to Avery and turned herself to face the mirror. She picked up a hairbrush and began brushing her own long hair. “Why don’t you wait ’til she gets back with the peppers. If you think those Bloody Marys are good now, you won’t believe how good they taste with Vic’s famous snacks.”

  Avery’s nose scrunched into a frown. “Peppers? I thought she said she was bringing armadillo eggs.”

  “Hell, girl,” Debbie Sue said turning to face her guest, “armadillo eggs are peppers, jalapeno peppers stuffed with some cheese shit that Vic makes up. You must know less about cooking than I do.”

  “I don’t cook. I don’t drink, either.” She extended her empty glass again.

  “I can see that,” Debbie Sue said and poured the glass only a quarter full.

  “I do like these Bloody Marys though.” She started to reach for the pitcher, but the back door opened and Edwina appeared carrying a platter wrapped in clear plastic wrap.

  “I told you I thought we had some left over,” Edwina said triumphantly. “Wait’ll you taste these, Avery. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without them. My honey is a helluva cook.” Edwina stripped off the plastic covering and placed the platter on the station counter in front of Avery.

  Avery eyed the platter, but made no move to pick up one of the peppers. “Are they hot?”

  “Depends on what you call hot,” Edwina answered. “Vic likes ’em hotter than hell. I like ’em a little more north than that, so he compromises and buys peppers more to the middle.”

  “What’s in them?” Avery asked, picking one up and inspecting it.

  “He splits the pepper and stuffs it with cheddar cheese, molds sausage mixed with biscuit mix around the pepper, rolls that in more biscuit mix and bakes ’em.”

  “That does sound good,” Avery said. She nibbled one end of the pepper. “Oh, that is really good.” She popped the entire pepper into her mouth and reached for another.

  Debbie Sue leaned forward and took one too. “I like mine with a thick rib eye.”

  Waving half of a pepper for emphasis, Avery said, “Shrimp! This would be so good with bacon wrapped—”

  She stopped and her eyes rounded. “Holy shit!”

  “Bacon-wrapped holy shit,” Edwina said. “Now that’s a new one.”

  Avery fanned her hand in front of her mouth. “I need liquid.” She picked up the glass of Bloody Mary, tipped it back and gulped.

  “Avery, don’t—”

  “Avery, wait—”

  Ignoring Debbie Sue and Edwina, she grabbed the pitcher and tipped it up, too.

  “Avery, stop!” Debbie Sue leaped to her feet and yanked the pitcher from Avery’s hands. She dug into her station drawer and found a package of saltine crackers she kept there.

  “Actually,” Edwina said smugly, “tomato juice is a good neutralizer against heat.”

  Debbie Sue stuffed crackers into Avery’s hands, glaring at Edwina. “And what about the half bottle of vodka I put in that batch of Bloody Marys? What’s gonna neutralize that?”

  “Oh, that. Well, yeah, that’s gonna be the end for her.”

  “Well this is just great, Ed. We get a visitor in here from a major newspaper and we kill her. That’ll be a big boost for the Domestic Equalizers’ reputation.”

  “What the hell? You’re the one who made the Bloody Marys. I’ve been saying all along a half a fifth of vodka in a quart of Bloody Mary mix is too much.”

  “Fuck,” Debbie Sue growled.

  “Aw, she’ll be okay. But I guess we’d better keep an eye on her. She’s drunker than a hillbilly at a rooster fight. Guess we’ll have to drive her to her hotel.”

  Debbie Sue couldn’t keep from worrying, continuing to assess Avery’s condition. “Good thing we closed the shop for today,”

  “I’d say it’s a good thing we closed the shop for the weekend,” Edwina said.

  A huge saltine-cracker grin came from Avery as she twirled in her chair.

  Sam walked from Hogg’s Drive-In to his car parked nearby. He had an invigorating sense of euphoria. It wasn’t just the mouthwatering hamburger that had satisfied his hunger: It was the thrill of discovering a hidden treasure, a story buried in an old woman’s memories brought to the surface and revived. He understood how an archaeologist must feel excavating an art object of historic significance, how a mother must feel looking upon the face of her newborn child.

  He slid into his car and fired the engine. As he backed and turned toward the main street, he noticed what looked like an old gas station. Two antique gas pumps stood in front, or at least he thought they were gas pumps. Someone had dressed them up in fifties clothing. The sign overhead read The STYLING STATION. A smaller sign read THE DOMESTIC EQUALIZERS.

  Of course! This was the salon owned by Edwina and her partner. But what the hell was a Domestic Equalizer?

  His eyes were drawn to the parking lot and a royal-blue vintage Mustang. Man, what he would give to own that car. He recognized Debbie Sue’s big truck and horse trailer…and a white Aero. Could that be the hot Miss Avery’s car?

  A little streak of excitement slithered through him. He didn’t even try to suppress the grin he felt form on his lips.

  He parked alongside the Aero, pulled down the visor and checked his image in the mirror. Just to make sure he didn’t have something caught in his teeth or mustard smeared somewhere. He fished a small comb from his back pocket, gave his short hair a quick swipe and opened his door. As he stepped out, he remembered Avery’s reaction to his cologne. He leaned back into the car and pulled a bottle of Armani Code from the glove compartment, spilled a small amount into his hands and splashed it on his neck.

  As he stepped through the doorway, Christmas bells announced his arrival. The three women inside the room looked at him like awakened owls. Obviously, they weren’t expecting company. “Hey,” he said. “Like the Christmas bells. Does every door in this town have an announcement? I’
m almost afraid to go to a bathroom.”

  “I thought I locked that door,” Debbie Sue snapped.

  Oops. Sam backed toward the door, reaching for the doorknob. “I’m sorry, I assumed—”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean to sound so grouchy. It’s just that we’re closed today and I thought…look, please come in.”

  “Yeah, Sam. Come on in,” Edwina said.

  The two women might be smiling and congenial, but Sam’s instincts told him something wasn’t right. Tension hung in the room like a curtain of glass. Then he spotted Avery.

  She was no longer the sharp-as-a-blade, upwardly mobile professional woman he had met earlier. Her clothes looked disheveled, strands of hair had escaped her bun and her makeup was smudged.

  Spotting him, her posture changed. She sat board straight and slung one leg across the other. She missed and her leg slid down her shin to the floor. She was drunk! Very drunk. But the other two women in the room appeared to be sober.

  “Hi, Avery,” he said softly.

  “Hello, Sam,” she slurred, lifting her chin defiantly.

  “You should have gone back into Hogg’s with me,” he said. “I discovered quite a story.”

  “I ’scovered something too,” she said, this time successfully crossing her leg over her knee.

  “Really? Care to share?” He moved closer, concerned for her condition.

  “Sure do.” She leaned toward him, her eyes unfocused. “I ’scovered you’re a shicken chit. A one hunder person shicken chit.”

  “Uh, wait, Avery…” But before he could finish, her body went slack. She fell back against the chair, passed out.

  Befuddled, he glared at Debbie Sue and Edwina. “What in the hell is going on here?”

  “We can explain,” Edwina said.

  “I’d like for you to do that,” Sam said.