Elvis Lives

Chapter 24 - My Idol, My Friend

I couldn't answer his questions fast enough. He asked all about my life and career from my earliest years that I could remember, on until 1958. We sat there on the brown sofa in his hotel room two hours after he realized that the guy who he befriended was his favorite star who the world knew as being gone for over forty years.

"So you were really on the set of King Creole before you came here?" Drake asked me as we sat facing each other on the sofa, and his face had that continuous smile on it, the one he had since we sat down.

"I was. I had just finished performing the song 'King Creole', and me, Michael and Tom got talkin' 'bout my future and about how they think I would be big in the 2000s. I have to say, that was quite the fitting conversation, considerin' what happened a couple minutes later."

"You got conked on the head and woke up here."

"Yep, and the first thing I saw was that coffee joint - star somethin'..."

"Starbucks?" Drake guessed. I nodded. "Yeah, don't have those in 1958, huh?"

"Not that I know of. The only place that I recognize so far since I've been here is McDonald's. We have those in 1958, only they look really different."

"You've seen one burger joint, you've seen them all. They all sell the same basic things - burgers, fries, soda... only now, they have a lot more added to their menus, like salads and pies and things like that."

My stomach pinched. The talk of burgers and fries was reminding me that I hadn't eaten in several hours. "I love me a good burger. Tom gets after me for my obsession with burgers. Says they're gonna make me fat one day." I thought of that image of my future self. I didn't look myself up on that internet for fear that I would see that disheartening image again. "Well... I guess I do  get like that someday. I've seen pictures of my future self. It hurts to find out that I'll end up like that."

"Hey." Drake patted my shoulder once in comfort. "You know about everything that happens in your future, right? You can change all that."

"Yeah, I know. I just don't like that everyone now knows me to be that star who makes it big, yes, but is also the one who gets addicted to prescription drugs that eventually kills 'im, and the one who was unfaithful to his wife and put her and his daughter second when they should've been first."

"But that wasn't you," Hannah put in as she sat on the edge of Drake's bed as she was listening to us chat for the past couple of hours. "I mean, that was the you that's already gone, but not the you now. And Drake's right -you can change everything."

"I don't think she means after you go back home, too," Drake said. "Lisa and Priscilla are around. I think they both may be in California. I'm not sure, though."

I think I get what they were trying to tell me. "I can't take a plane nowhere. I don't have an ID card. All that is back in my dressing room sixty-three years ago." What a bizarre thought.

"There are other ways to travel," Drake said.

"Yeah, I'm sure they've seen you online already with all your new videos that are on there," said Hannah. "I'm guessing that Priscilla about had a heart attack at seeing you. You're about the age that she first meets you, so if she saw you online, then she saw the guy who she met over in Germany at a party."

"I meet 'er at a party, huh?"

"Yeah, it was actually at your place," Drake said. "She was the daughter of an air force pilot who was transferred to that part of Germany, and he was most likely an attendee at this party that you put on, so he naturally brought his family with. History says that you were pretty shy around Priscilla at first, even though you were a good ten years older than her."