Saguaro Riptide

TEN

Priscilla stood in the shadow of Graceland, the desert wind at her back strong enough to muss her heavily sprayed bouffant. It was a hot wind, and dry, like everything else in Arizona.

Everything but the lonely teardrops spilling from her eyes.

Ellis didn’t like her coming out here alone. A lot of time there was no use arguing with him about where she could go and when she could go there-the bruise on her ankle proved that-but tonight he had really surprised her by not kicking up a fuss when she said she was going for a walk. He’d said sure, go ahead. . I’ll play with the cats. . watch some TV. .

Sometimes she could handle him just fine. Mostly he just sat in front of the TV with a cat or two curled up on his lap. But other times. .

Priscilla’s ankle began to ache. She didn’t want to think about those other times. She didn’t want to think about Ellis. He was back there in the trailer watching a letter-boxed video of Viva Las Vegas. Priscilla had hurried outside as soon as he shoved that one in the VCR. She couldn’t watch it. Not for a minute. Not tonight. If she did she’d start crying for sure. And it wouldn’t have had anything to do with Ellis.

Her tears would have been for Vince.

Priscilla had met Vince in Las Vegas two years ago. It was one of the few times in her married life that Ellis let her do something without him, and the only reason he’d let her go was that she made the trip with her big sister.

Just a quick weekend to celebrate Rorie hiring on as a deputy with the Pipeline Beach Sheriff’s Department. Rorie used to love to do crazy stuff like that-take road trips on the spur of the moment. But now Rorie had Wyetta, just the way Priscilla had Ellis. They were still sisters but they hardly ever saw each other, even though they lived in the same small town.

Sometimes Priscilla wished she could talk to Rorie about Ellis. She wondered if Rorie felt the same way about Wyetta, because things didn’t seem to be too great between the two of them. But Priscilla didn’t seem to know how to start that kind of conversation, and neither did Rorie. They always found stuff to talk about, only none of it seemed very important.

Priscilla thought about it. Things seemed to happen so fast. Slip a ring on your finger. . let a stranger share your bed. . and your life changed forever. Priscilla didn’t think that was fair.

She also knew that she couldn’t do one little thing about it.

But she didn’t want to think about that. Not tonight. Tonight she wanted to think about Vince, and how wonderful he’d been on that first night in Vegas.

Vincent Komoko had spotted Priscilla and Rorie in the casino at the Casbah. He had some kind of job there. First thing, he asked Priscilla where the King was. That kind of threw her off guard. For a second she thought Vince must have been a friend of Ellis’s from his days in Vegas. She only thought that for a second, though, because it was plain that Vince was too young to have been around when Ellis was shaking things up as the hottest Elvis impersonator on the Strip. Then Vince gave her that big wink she’d come to know so well, and she realized that her first guess had been wrong-he was only complimenting her because she really did look like the real Priscilla. The way the real Priscilla had looked when she was married to Elvis, before she ran out on him and went Hollywood.

Well, that broke the ice. They got to talking. Vince was easy to talk to, and Priscilla was hungry for that because Ellis didn’t talk much. And then talking led to drinks, and drinks led to dinner, and then. .

Rorie was a good sport about the whole thing. She didn’t even bat an eye when Vince moved in on Priscilla. Certainly, she wasn’t jealous-Rorie wasn’t much interested in male affection. And Priscilla linking up with Vince kind of left Rorie free to cut a path of her own, though she wasn’t the kind to say so in so many words. Besides, Rorie didn’t much like Priscilla’s husband. She said that Ellis was too old for her sister, too set in his ways, said that he might as well have traded his dick for a TV remote a long time ago. It was Rorie’s sisterly opinion that Priscilla should do a Tammy Wynette on the fat old hound dawg and get a D-I–V-O-R-C-E.

And maybe that was what Priscilla should have done. Maybe she should have made a clean break. Instead of sneaking around with Vince, waiting for him to make those little side trips down to Pipeline Beach when he ran the mob’s money into Texas. Satisfying herself with a couple stolen hours at the Saguaro Riptide every month.

Ellis never caught on. Priscilla was sure of that. Because if Ellis had had the least little inkling of what was going on, Priscilla would have never set foot outside their trailer again. If Ellis had even been suspicious, he would have fixed it so she couldn’t do anything while he was away on those weekend road trips of his.

Priscilla shivered. If Ellis had known about Vincent Komoko. . well, forget about bruises on the ankle, he would have killed her. No question about it.

Vince, too.

God, but she’d loved that man. Every minute with Vince had been something special. All those times together at the Saguaro Riptide, and she’d never once gotten her fill of him.

She knew she never would, no matter how much time they had together.

Priscilla would have left Ellis if Vince had asked her to. She’d known that from the start.

But Vince never asked.

After a while Priscilla figured out that Vince was never going to ask. They were never going to run off together and start a new life. Things weren’t going to happen fast this time. Her life wasn’t going to change.

Not ever. That had already happened once.

It looked like once was all you got.

Priscilla didn’t think that was fair, your life changing just once and then you were stuck with it the rest of your days.

That was when she started hating Vince.

The hate built up inside her. When she couldn’t stand it anymore she asked Rorie if she remembered the guy they’d met in Vegas. Of course Rorie remembered. So Priscilla told her all about him, being sure to mention that he ran mob money from Vegas to Texas.

Rorie told Wyetta.

Wyetta liked the idea of that mob money.

Split three ways.

And now Vince was dead.

And her husband wanted her to make a couple of deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, sit down and watch Viva Las Vegas with him and his cats like everything was okey- dokey.

And some stranger was calling her on the phone, asking about the time she’d spent with Vince at the Saguaro Riptide Motel.

And the caller didn’t sound like anyone to mess with. And he knew where she lived. And he wanted to talk to her, face-to-face.

She couldn’t stay home with all that going on. So she’d come here, to the ruins of Graceland.

Only she wondered if you could really call a place a ruin if it had never been finished. Ellis had run out of money when the house was about halfway done. Lost his enthusiasm for it, like he did with everything else. To this day there wasn’t a single pane of glass in the windows. There wasn’t even a front door in the gaping entranceway behind the unfinished Georgian columns. What there was was a sand dune in the front hallway, and a nest of scorpions in what should have been the Jungle Room, and a family of kangaroo rats in the kitchen, and a whole lot of nothing everywhere else.

Except for that statue of Elvis up in the bathroom. And now even it was busted, missing its head, stained with Vincent Komoko’s blood.

Now it was a ruin, too.

Priscilla sat down on a rock. She rubbed her sore ankle. The dusky purple color might fade, but the bruise never went away anymore. Not really. Neither did the ache. Sometimes she could ignore it, but not tonight.

Quiet surrounded her. Her gaze wandered to the big bronze marker at the side of the house. In Memphis the area was called the Meditation Garden. Here it was just another patch of sand and scrub, though the grave marker was a twin to the one that covered Elvis Presley’s grave in Memphis.

She rose and walked past the grave, which was, of course, empty. She didn’t notice the burrow at one corner of the marker or the fresh earth heaped around the opening or the lone footprint in the fresh sand. She walked past those things as if they did not exist. She walked into the desert, moving slowly, searching for a spot where the earth had been disturbed.

The spot she was looking for had to be nearby. Rorie and Wyetta wouldn’t have dragged the body far. Not with a storm blowing all around them.

She walked for five minutes, then ten. Her ankle hurt and she began to limp, but she knew that the spot she was looking for had to be here somewhere just as surely as she knew that Rorie and Wyetta wouldn’t want her looking for it.

Just as surely as she knew that she had to look.

And if she found it. . why, if she found the spot she’d stand over it with her eyes closed. She’d let tears stream down her cheeks without shame, let them fall on churned earth out here where there was no one to see.

And next time she’d bring flowers. If she could find the right place. And she’d sit with Vince, and she’d tell him how pretty the flowers were. And she’d tell him about all the secret hopes and dreams she’d had for them that she’d never shared, and all the things she’d left unsaid because she was so afraid of the things he’d say in reply.

But now she’d tell him, and she wouldn’t be afraid.

Tumbleweeds, golden brittlebrush, teddy bear cholla, and rusty tangles of barbed wire at the property line-but she kept walking. The sun sank slow and easy into the west, guiding her progress like a friend who kept all her secrets, and she followed its path until it was gone and she was alone in the still shadow of twilight.