When they reach his table, the Yank speaks first. “Are you a Beatle?” he asks Reg so abruptly it can’t help sounding accusatory.
The young man and woman laugh. “No,” says Jasmine, “he’s Elvis Presley.”
Bewilderment flits across the Yank’s face. He narrows his eyes, studying them on the other side of the ale he’s barely drunk. “You’re not Elvis Presley,” he decides; they laugh again. “I don’t think he’s in music, then,” Jasmine says to Reg, who worries, He’s much older than I. She was just winding me up. For a moment the other man seated at the table is uncomfortable, slightly irritated before he forces himself to laugh as well. “You’re not him,” he declares with more certainty.
“Not Elvis, anyway,” Reg says.
“Not the Presley part either,” says Jasmine.
“Hey, you lot in management came up with that.”
“If you’re not a Beatle, then you might as well not be anybody,” the Yank says, and it isn’t clear to Jasmine if he realizes or cares how rude it sounds, though he does feel bound to add, “What I mean is, you might as well be a Beatle, for all that I know.”