Falling in Love with a King [Elvis]

Chapter 1 - Getting In

You better get those questions answered, or it's the can, Miss Miller.

I huffed as my boss's words echoed in my brain. This was the third time that I tried to get some questions answered by Mr. Elvis Presley, but I had always been shoved aside while all the men got the questions. This was 1957, for crying out loud. We women had rights!

But they were unheard as I pleaded to let me through to ask my questions. It was first come, first serve in this setting. The young, handsome twenty-two-year-old Mr. Presley had just finished a concert and was in the main lobby of the theater to answer questions by the press. I wasn't shouting, but simply asking to be let through. My heart thudded in irritation and desperation. My job depended on these five measly little questions.

"If I could just get through..." I said to one man, but he shoved me aside. If I was a proper, posh lady, I would say "Why I never...!" But here, it was every man—or woman—for themselves. I had to get this. If I got fired, I had to forfeit my apartment, and my roommate Alice would have to move out as well since we shared the rent, and she couldn't pay it by herself on her hotel receptionist salary. If she were with me, she would show her boisterous Southern character and would be shouting at everyone to move aside in order to get a word with the dashing man with slicked dark brown hair, and who was answering a question that I couldn't hear. I could barely see him over all the men's heads. I wasn't that tall. I knew that Mr. Presley was about six feet tall... I would go up to his shoulder probably.

"Okay, just do it," I ordered myself. I pushed up my white blouse sleeves and plowed through with all my might, of course saying "excuse me" as I went. I got about three people in when I was somehow shimmied out of the group of reporters and photographers. That was another thing—I didn't have a cameraman. If I did, at least he would be able to get a picture. I just had to get the questions to go along with a picture we had already gotten two weeks ago by happenstance. I wasn't there of course.

"Ow!" I hollered as one man stepped on my foot that was in a black pump. No one seemed to notice, aside from one. One man looked back at me, then said snidely, "Away with ya, missy, let the men work here."

I took in a breath in frustration and annoyance. I shouldn't let that get to me. I got myself ready to have another go. I went on in, but immediately as I went for it, another man, whether he realized he did it or not, pushed me away with his arm, and I bounded to the floor, onto my left side, my wrist hitting the burgundy carpet first. I didn't squeal in pain, even though I felt pain shoot up my arm. I immediately came back up as one man, a different one from the other two, had a held out a hand.

"Are you alright, miss?" he asked.

"Thank you, sir, I'm fine."

"You sure?" asked the middle-aged man with a notepad.

"Yes, I'm alright." At least one of them was gentlemanly.

He turned back to the front. He was able to get through, and I saw him come up to dark hair. At least, that was what I saw from where I was standing. I looked back at the doors to the theater and saw guards there keeping screaming girls out. I looked down at my left wrist that I was holding. It was changing color—dark pink then a bit blue. I sprained it. I moved it and winced.

"Yes, just a sprain." I heard questions being asked, and I heard Mr. Presley's iconic Southern voice. There was no use. "Darn it all. Maybe Mr. Gregory will let me off this time since I got injured."

I walked away from the group and went on down a hallway that led to the theater room, the one the concert was in. I found a cushion bench in the lone hallway and sat down, and I noticed a brown curl fall down my forehead. My hair came out in my fall, at least a bang. I tried to fix it with my right hand but couldn't. I needed two hands. I looked in my black purse, took out my little hand mirror with a handle and assessed my look. Fair skin free of wrinkles, and brown hair that was up perfectly, aside from the curl that fell out. I tried to get it with my left hand but gasped at the pain in my wrist, and I dropped my mirror because of the sudden pain. It thudded to the carpet, much like I did earlier.

"Oh goodness me..." I exasperated, very done with this evening.

I leaned down to get the mirror, but right as I was about to grab it, a pair of shiny black and white loafers appeared in front of them. I looked up black pants and a black dress shirt and let out another gasp, only from utter shock. There, standing in front of me, was Mr. Elvis Presley himself.

Maybe my evening wasn't done after all.