4 Joanna

Eight hundred bucks and a free meal wasn't too bad for two hours' work. But by god, she'd really have to earn it. All the posing for pictures and questions about Elvis. Was he a good kisser?—It was supernatural, as if you were pulled into a vortex and shot with electricity from your head to your toes.Was he as generous as everyone says he was?—I once saw him hand the keys to a Cadillac to a beggar on Sunset Boulevard.Did you ever sleep with him?—A lady never tells but always remembers. Elvis was the entire reason she'd packed up her life in West Hollywood and come to Memphis to live in a place where the name Joanna Grayson still meant something. Her daughter, Tippi, had been furious about the move. We are moving where? Oh god, Mom, you must be kidding. But here Joanna was, again holding court as she did back in 1967 as the Promising Star of Tomorrow right before she signed a contract with Hal Wallis to make two—TWO!—pictures with Elvis Presley. Even though only one panned out—the sunken treasure musical Easy Come, Easy Go—she'd always be connected to him. And despite making two spy spoofs in Italy after (one with Sean Connery's talentless brother, Neil) as the familiar femme fatale in a scuba gear and bikini, and then some really god-awful vampire films for Hammer, that one Elvis picture, shot in its entirety on the Paramount lot, is how she'd always been known.

"Oh god," Tippi said now.

They'd just walked into the house hosting tonight's event, a simple brick ranch with a low brick and wrought-iron fence on Audubon Drive in East Memphis, a place that Elvis himself had bought for his parents back in 1956 not long before he purchased Graceland. Joanna had been told the current owners were huge Elvis freaks and had turned back the clock to that same period, the wife telling Joanna that she'd painstakingly removed five different layers of wallpaper to find the correct pink poodle paper from a Life magazine spread about Gladys Presley.

Tippi had made some hors d'oeuvres for the VIP Elvis Fall Fan Event only to now discover her puffed pastries would share a table in the historic kitchen with macaroni salad and what looked to be chili spooned over Fritos. The horror.

"I don't know how you stand it," Tippi said.

"This appearance pays our rent for a month."

"But, Mother," Tippi said, "these people make my skin crawl. There's something ghoulish about all this. Elvis has been dead a very long time."

From the kitchen window, Joanna watched the fans who'd paid three hundred dollars each to attend a pool party with one of Elvis's leading ladies. A large, pale man with dyed black hair and a belly swelling over a pair of Hawaiian swim trunks performed a cannonball off the diving board, splashing several geriatric fans holding margaritas. A DJ played the soundtrack to Clambake and asked everyone to sing along.

Tippi made an unpleasant face. The girl was twenty-six and soft. By the time Joanna had turned eighteen back in London, she'd already been in a wrestling match with Otto Preminger and had been drugged by and fought off Roman Polanski. Twice!

"Any chance you might tell different stories tonight?" Tippi said. "You know, just to spice it up a little."

"I always tell different stories," Joanna said.

Tippi frowned and began to make a plate, arranging mini beef tourtieres beside a hideous slab of lasagna. Joanna found it odd that Tippi had been so critical of the food and then went straight for the most obvious and American item on the kitchen island. Private school in Switzerland had not affected her appetite. Of course, they hadn't eaten all day. Their apartment refrigerator had grown a bit bereft lately, several weeks past Death Week in August where she had a paid appearance every day, sometimes two.

Joanna could feel her stomach grumble a bit from hunger. But she was used to it. Lemon water and cigarettes for days when she'd made that picture with Richard Harris in Martinique. When she arrived on the set, she could barely fit into that yellow string bikini, and three days later she'd looked amazing. She stacked a fat dill pickle on her plate, recalling long, drunken nights with dear Richard.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" a man asked.

It was the fat man from the pool, dripping wet in a gold terrycloth robe. His dyed black hair was plastered against his giant head. So black, she expected the trickles of pool water to run the same color.

"Lord," he said. "I can't believe it. The real Joanna Grayson. I used to clip pictures of you and hang them in my bedroom ceiling when I was a boy. That scene with y'all doing yoga. Whoo-wee."

"‘Yoga Is As Yoga Does.'"

"That old woman singing, what did she say to Elvis, I can see you can't get settled. Ole Elvis struggling like hell trying to do them poses."

"Elsa Lanchester," Joanna said. "She studied dance under Isadora Duncan and later married Charles Laughton."

"Lady," he said, "no offense, but I don't know any of those folks. But I sure laugh every time when Elvis says back to her, How can I, twisted like a pretzel? Haw. Haw. I don't care what folks say. I sure love that picture. That tight black turtleneck you was wearing sure woke me up in the middle of the night."

"Oh," Joanna said. "That's, um, kind of you."

Joanna tried her best to look modest, thanking the man and turning her back. Tippi leaned against a red vintage refrigerator, biting her lip and nearly convulsing from trying to stifle her laughter. The hefty man's eyes looking to her daughter now, noting the same thing everyone else did. Tippi looked identical to Joanna's younger self despite her darker hair and all that god-awful eye makeup.

"And who is this little lady?"

"This is my daughter," Joanna said. "Tippi."

"Like the actress?"

"Tippi Hedren is a dear friend," Joanna said as she had countless times. "We met while on safari in Tanzania. I was the first to introduce her to the majesty of the lions."

"Ain't that something," the man said, standing there dripping black dye across Elvis's original checkerboard linoleum floors. "The woman had lions living with her without getting killed."

"A male lion did maul and try to eat her daughter," Tippi said.

"Good lord," the man said.

Joanna looked at Tippi and winked. "So there were some advantages," she said.

"Well," Tippi said. "That was both enlightening and lovely."

"Must you be so catty?"

It was dark by the time they left the little party, Joanna's daughter zipping in and out of cars along the brightly lit interstate in a hideous Ford Fiesta that they'd borrowed from a fan. Memphis was such a small town in so many ways. She'd only been here for a little more than a year and already had a lovely network wrapped around her little finger. Like poor Omar, who was impatiently waiting for her at the antiques mall even though she told him it could be nearly ten o'clock.

"That man dripped his hair dye all over me," Tippi said. "Yuck."

"Once you've made a film, you belong to the public," Joanna said. "Hal Wallis told me that. Your private life is over whether you like it or not. It's really more of a responsibility than anything."

"You appeared to be having a ball."

"Would you rather for me to behave like a spoiled old bitch?" Joanna said. "Besides, you looked pretty content by the craft service table."

"You mean the kitchen?"

"That was a large portion of lasagna," Johanna said. "A moment on the lips, darling."

"Top form, Mother," Tippi said. "Talking like you'd never even been kissed before you came to America. I mean, come on. You totally shagged Elvis."

"Elvis was special," she said, checking out her lipstick in the visor mirror. "More like a brother to me. We had a spiritual connection that no one will ever be able to understand. Did you know we both shared Natalie Wood's spiritualist?"

Tippi turned off an exit ramp, a drive-in theater glowing down below, four gigantic screens lit up with those lovely faces larger than life. Joanna didn't go to the shop at night and it was her first time noticing the drive-in, thinking how wonderful it had been the first time seeing herself so incredibly big. Her eyes so very blue and hair so blond it was nearly white. She'd never gotten over it. There was something God-like about being on film.

"But the virgin act," Tippi said. "You do know I read your diary when I was twelve."

"You were such a naughty little girl."

"Not as naughty as you, Mother," she said. "I never shagged Terence Stamp and his flatmate at the same time."

Joanna stifled a smile, Tippi damn well knowing all about the cocaine orgies with Bowie and Bolan, too. A kind of a movable feast in London of delicious debauchery, Joanna Grayson making the rounds in that wonderful velvet top hat, Soho parties in kitten heels and little else. Wondrous white linen tables with smoked salmon, Beluga with loads and loads of good toast and champagne. Her second husband, Tippi's father, had an entire garage filled with pink Veuve Clicquot that he'd bought on the black market.

"Mother," she said. "I love you... but I want to go home."

"Back to Hollywood?"

"England."

They traveled along Summer Avenue, far away from the cloistered green-lawned neighborhood where they had been, entering an endless stretch of pawnshops, check cashing businesses, used car dealers, convenience stores, and secondhand churches. So very American. Finger Lickin' Good. Jesus Saves. Yo Gotti: Product of the Public Schools.

"England isn't your home, darling," Joanna said. "You've barely spent a season there. Not since your grandmother did the right thing and finally died."

"You're so hard on her."

"Am I?" Joanna asked. "You didn't really know her. Not the real her. She showed you a side that wasn't exactly accurate. Tea parties and teddy bears and all that rubbish."

"But this isn't home. This is purgatory in gold lamé."

Joanna should have never involved Tippi in her personal appearances. If Tippi hadn't been so insistent on driving after Joanna had those two drunk-driving incidents, her daughter could be at home right now watching some mindless reality show instead of handselling One Night with You: The Joanna Grayson Story along with signed 8x10 glossies of Joanna with Elvis and a few skimpy bikini shots she had from her time in Rome. Joanna truly had the most delicious little figure back then.

"I'm doing the best I can."

"I know, Mother."

"And I'd like you to stay."

"I know, Mother," Tippi said. "But this Elvis business is so beneath you. Beneath both of us."

"Remember, I had to make do during the Blitz. And we can make do now."

"You were born after the war, Mother."

"So much you don't know, Tippi," Joanna said.

"Please promise me this business with Omar won't take long."

Tippi wheeled into the lot of Summer Antiques and Oriental Rugs, the plate glass windows glowing a dim grayish blue through the security grates. It was nearly ten and Joanna hoped that Omar had waited for her.

She had something very special to show him.

It took three different keys but she was finally inside the antiques mall, after knocking and knocking for Omar, who had promised to stay up and wait. He was usually so vigilant, always concerned for her safety late at night. These people here will kill you, Miss Joanna. You are too beautiful a flower to be on the streets at night. Come walk with me, I have a big gun and will hold your hand.

Joanna hit the bank of switches and the overhead fluorescents tripped on across the endless ceiling as she walked over to the front desk, where Omar eyed the whole operation on a bank of small black-and-white TVs when he wasn't devouring pornography. She'd once caught him transfixed by some intense sadomasochism, whips and chains, maybe a donkey somewhere, and she knew she had him. He was so embarrassed, shutting down his computer and standing up with a very noticeable erection. Omar, you bad, bad boy, Joanna had told him, wagging her finger.

Where the hell was he?She could see his tiny blue Honda parked right outside the front window.

She opened her purse and pulled out the item she hoped would get them through the next few months, a string of pearls she'd nicked at the Audubon House. No one had seen her go in the room that had been Gladys Presley's, and no one had seen her come out. Only she and Tippi, and that stray fat man, had been allowed inside during the pool party. Joanna wasn't exactly sure if the pearls were real or synthetic, but it was clear that they had indeed belonged to Elvis's mother, GP initialed on the sterling silver clasp.

She hadn't noticed it at first but now she saw Omar's desk was a real mess. An overturned coffee cup, papers scattered across the floor, along with a broken VCR of some sort. Through the plate glass windows, she could just make out Tippi behind the wheel of the car, headlights shining into the mall. It appeared Tippi was waving for her to hurry up.

That girl would be her undoing, she thought, as she held on to the filing cabinet to step up onto Omar's chair and reach up to the air vent where he'd often leave her cash after hours. The dear little man so helpful when she'd fallen behind on rent a time or two.

She lifted out the vent cover and was about to set the pearls inside when she found a thick envelope that she hoped was stuffed with the cash he'd promised. She took it and slipped it into her shirt and under her bra as she climbed off the chair, now noticing all the wires to Omar's monitors had been cut and the desk drawers ransacked. Two security cameras lay on the floor and appeared to have been pulverized with hammers.

Oh god. Someone had broken into the place.

She ran down a long corridor with dozens of open booths, the attic smell of old furniture and soured upholstery strong. As she turned the corner, she spotted the sprawled figure of a man, crooked and misshapen, on a short stack of Oriental rugs. Joanna's heart felt like it would stop, her mouth dry as she inched toward the figure and knelt down.

It was Omar, very dead and horrid-looking, with a gaping mouth and wide-open eyes. Blood was seeping out of him from god knows where, soaking the rugs he advertised as SPECIAL DEAL. BIG DISCOUNT.

She covered her face with her hand, trying to block that sickly, wet coppery smell, and nearly gagged. Joanna had absolutely no idea what had happened but didn't want to be there if these thieves were still around, nor did she want to wait all hours of the night to speak to a bunch of nosy policemen. She daubed the sweat from her face and checked her makeup in case she was arrested on the way home. The words of the immortal Liz Taylor in her ears, "Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together."

Joanna made her way to the back door, wiping off the light switches with Kleenex as she shut them all down. By god, she'd been in enough awful BBC procedurals to know how to behave. She let herself out the back door, deciding at the last minute to lock up, feeling like some kind of grave robber who'd entered a great, giant tomb.

Joanna walked across the lot, climbed into the passenger seat, and shut the door. She pressed the locks and they snapped shut with a hard snick.

Tippi backed up and then turned around, the headlights shining bright onto the darkened stretch of Summer Avenue as they headed back to the interstate. How did one get here from having one's own series in France, roving about the countryside in a new, forest-green MG? The It Girl, the loveliest face in all of Britain, scrounging for pearls among swine.

"Oh god, Mother," Tippi said. "Check your face. You're such a mess."

Joanna pulled down the visor and looked in the mirror, seeing a bright smear of red across her cheek. It wasn't lipstick. She jabbed into her purse for the Kleenex to wipe it away, her stomach tumbling.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Lovely," Joanna said. "Just lovely. Do we still have any good gin at home?"

"Unfortunately."

As Tippi drove, Joanna reached down into her bra and pulled out the envelope. She used her nail to slit it, but instead of a wad of cash, she found a neatly folded stack of official-looking documents. It appeared to be a shipping manifest of some sort from Turkey. Omar's beloved home country.

"What's all that?" Tippi asked, glancing down.

"Darling," she said. "I have absolutely no idea. But Omar certainly went to some trouble to keep it hidden."