Elvis Has Left the Building by Charity Tahmaseb

Elvis Has Left the Building
    By Charity Tahmaseb
    I am a second-generation Elvis impersonator.
    Every morning during the summer that my voice changed, I followed my father to the garage. It had, according to him, the best acoustics. After gargling with a concoction of warmed distilled water, salt, and baking soda, I stood in the center of the oil splotch. My father circled me, a drill sergeant inspecting a raw recruit.
    “Remember. It doesn’t come from here.” He cuffed my head—gently. “But from here,” he continued, with a slap over my heart. “And here.” The blow to my solar plexus was never unexpected—or cruel—but it always left me breathless. “One of the gospels,” my father commanded. “Any hack—”
    “Can mug his way through Jailhouse Rock ,” I said.
    My father grinned one of his rare, warm Elvis grins. “From the top.”
    Elvis had a range of more than two octaves, and I butchered each and every note that summer. To my father’s credit, he never cringed, never chastised. After my singing chased the dog under the porch, he would place a hand on my shoulder.
    “Enough for today, son.”
    I read a lot that summer, a slew of stories about disappointing sons, several volumes of history. I read how Lenin believed the Russian Orthodox religion would die along with the old women. That single fact fueled hope. At my father’s performances, I scanned the crowds, mentally aging them.
    Then on a day so hot sweat gathered at the back of my knees, I hit a high note, followed by a low note, and all the ones in between.
    “Alice,” my father called. “Come out here.”
    Dishtowel in hand, my mother emerged from the kitchen.
    “Do it again, son.”
    I sang, watched them exchange glances.
    “Today of all days.” My father took the dishtowel and wiped his forehead. “Sweet Jesus.”
    I looked to my mother, who had commandeered the towel to dab her eyes. “It’s the sixteenth, honey.”
    Of August. The day Elvis died.
    Like Russian Orthodoxy, the Church of Elvis endures. On Friday and Saturday nights, I preach the gospel of Elvis according to my father. The elders come to remember, the newly indoctrinated to believe, the skeptics to be converted. They come as if to communion. They come, as my father always reminded me, to pay homage to Elvis. Except for Aimee.
    She came to see me.
    At thirty, I’m at that awkward age as far as impersonators go—too old for the young Elvis, but I’ve yet to don the white Pinwheel jumpsuit my father wore. I’ve compromised by having a replica made of the two-piece leather suit Elvis wore for his ’68 comeback special. It’s dangerous looking—very James Dean—and the number of women willing to pay tribute to the King has increased tenfold since I started wearing it.
    I was wearing it the night I met Aimee in the lounge of the north side Holiday Inn. The lounge’s bartender doesn’t water the drinks—at least not mine—and that night, I needed my scotch undiluted.
    “You got a new fan,” he said, with a nod toward the end of the bar.
    She smiled. They all smile. I remember them smiling at my father without understanding why. But Aimee was different. Maybe it was the untamed hair, or the too-long jacket paired with the too-short skirt, but I did something I never do.
    I made the first move.
    With two drinks in hand, I inched down the bar. She murmured thanks, a fine blush blazing up her cheekbones.
    “You have a beautiful voice,” she said.
    “Thank you, thank you very much.” The imitation never failed to get a giggle; it often led to a great deal more.
    But Aimee didn’t giggle. She surveyed me with clear, guileless eyes and asked, “Do you write your own songs?”
    “Do I—”
    “I especially liked—” She drew a breath and sang the first few lines of Are You Lonesome Tonight in a sensuous alto.
    I scanned the bar, searching for heads bent in conspiracy, straining my ears for the inevitable snickers. Lounge chairs were scattered across the main