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As I opened the car door, Chief Porter said, You sure you don’t want me to drive you hory I’h the door for breakfast at the Grille

They don’t open till six

I got out, bent down, looked in at hieons for a while

We don’t have pigeons

Then I’ll feed the pterodactyls

What you’re gonna do is sit in the park and think

No, sir, I promise I won’t

I closed the door The patrol car pulled away froht, I entered the park, sat on a bench, and broke my promise

EIGHT

AROUND THE TOWN SQUARE, CAST-IRON LAMPPOSTS, painted black, were croith three globes each

At the center of Memorial Park, a handso from World War II--was usually illuht had probably been vandalized

Recently a s that the statue be replaced, on the grounds that it was militaristic They wanted Meestions for the subject of the new ed from Gandhi to Woodrow Wilson, to Yasir Arafat

Someone had proposed that a statue of Gandhi should be reat man in the movie Then perhaps the actor could be induced to be present at the unveiling

This had led Terri Staest that a statue of Gandhi should be modeled after Brad Pitt in the hope that he would then attend the cere deal by Pico Mundo standards

At the sa, Ozzie Boone had offered himself as the subject of the memorial Men of my formidable diameter are never sent to war, he said, and if everyone were as fat as I am, there could be no armies

Some had taken this as mockery, but others had found merit in the idea

Perhaps someday the current statue will be replaced by one of a very fat Gandhi modeled after Johnny Depp, but for the moment, the soldiers remain In darkness

Old jacarandas, drenched with purple flowers co, line the nificent phoenix pal the street The nearest street laly ruddy loo besidefrom the late 1950s I can’t say with any authority whether it was actually a uniforht have been a costume that he wore in GI Blues, which had been fil the ar dead of my acquaintance appear in the clothes in which they died Only Elvis manifests in whatever wardrobe he fancies at the moment

Perhaps he meant to express solidarity with those ished to preserve the statue of the soldiers Or he just thought he looked cool in army khaki, which he did

Few people have lived so publicly that their lives can reliably be chronicled day by day Elvis is one of those

Because even his hly documented, we can be all but certain that he never visited Pico Mundo while alive He never passed through on a train, never dated a girl from here, and had no other connection whatsoever with our town

Why he should choose to haunt this well-fried corner of the Mojave instead of Graceland, where he died, I did not know I had asked hi the dead was one that he would not break

Occasionally, usually on an evening e sit inroom and listen to his best e hin language to reply: thumbs-up for yes, thumbs-down for no…

He just looks at me with those heavy-lidded, half-bruised eyes, even bluer than they appear in his movies, and keeps his secrets to hiive me a playful punch on the arm Or pat my knee

He’s an affable apparition

Here on the park bench, he raised his eyebrows and shook his head as if to say thatin trouble never ceased to amaze him

I used to think that he was reluctant to leave this world because people here had been so good to hih he had lost his way badly as a performer and had become addicted to nuht of his fame when he died, and only forty-two

Lately, I’ve evolved another theory When I have the nerve, I’ll propose it to hiht, I think he’ll hen he hears it He so of Rock ‘n Roll leaned forward on the bench, peered west, and cocked his head as if listening

I heard nothing but the faint thruazing along the empty street, Elvis raised both hands pal soine, a vehicle larger than a car, approaching

Elvis winked at netis in search, perhaps I had settled where I knew--somehow--that my quarry would cruise to me

Two blocks away, a dusty white-paneled Ford van turned the corner It ca for soshadows of the phoenix palht froh the interior of the van as it passed us Behind the wheel was the snakythat Ito my feet in surprise

My movement didn’t catch the driver’s attention He drove past and turned left at the corner

I ran into the street, leaving Sergeant Presley on the bench and the bats to their airborne feast

NINE

THE VAN SWUNG OUT OF SIGHT AT THE CORNER, AND I ran in its windless wake, not because I aer, which I also am not, but because inaction is not the mother of redemption

When I reached the cross street, I saw the Ford disappearing into an alley half a block away I had lost ground I sprinted

When I reached the hter behind me, with the consequence that I stood as silhouetted as a pistol-range target, but it wasn’t a trap No one shot at me