Tall Girl Blues [Elvis]

Chapter 7 - You Don't Know You're Beautiful

A week whizzed by, and I found myself on the sidelines of one of the boxing scenes. I stood off near a wooden house maybe one hundred feet away from the boxing ring that had many of the main actors surrounding it—Charles Bronson, Lola Albright, Gig Young... This included Elvis's boxing trainer and championship boxer Mushy Callahan, also Annie's father. She and the girls were standing with me as we watched from a distance. What a scene this was, with the tree-filled mountains surrounding us.

The girls and I had become fast friends after my first day on the set. They were actually staying in the same hotel as me and my family, and I would go out some nights to one of their rooms, and we would all just hang out and chat like girls do. I was thrilled, mainly since I found some friends. They all were a little older than me, but my height made up for the age difference.

My height made up for the age difference between me and a lot of people older than me. Of course, there were people—actors, crew and townspeople alike—who physically looked older than me, so that was easy to tell, but for those who were in their twenties, or around thirty, I seemed older than them, including Elvis. Even though I had a young face, people thought that I was older than him. Then he would stand right next to me, and they could see that he looked a little older. Still, it was bit of a complement to seem older than a famous person, a famous person who I had talked to many times over the past week. They weren't lengthy conversations, sadly, but they were conversations nonetheless. Thankfully, I hadn't appeared in the paper again.

"He's not actually hitting Elvis, right?"

Priscilla's question jolted me out of my thoughts. Annie answered her, "No, no, he's not hitting him. Would they actually let a guy hit Elvis until his nose and mouth starts bleeding?"

"Then... they just add sound effects," Penny inferred.

"M-hm. Dad told me that they add the sound effects every time Elvis is quote-on-quote punched. He's there to make sure that Elvis looks like he's being punched. You know, moving his head at the exact moment and so forth."

"That's interesting," I commented as we all watched the scene and watched Elvis in those really short shiny blue shorts. Phil was constantly having to stop the take to change things. I pointed. "See? That man is putting something on Elvis's face."

"Fake blood," Penny said. "Clever."

We were far away, but I could see that Elvis looked over at us—the perks of being far-sighted. He put up a hand—or more a boxing glove—and waved it around at us, smiling.

"Oh, look, he's smiling and waving at us!" Priscilla gushed, and we all waved back. A few of the actors looked over at us and smiled, probably amused. Elvis loved his fans, especially the girls.

"Do you think he's interested in any of us?" Penny asked, her brown hair shining in the sunlight. "He's talked to all of us before on multiple occasions."

"I think he's talked to Deanne most of all," Annie put in. "My dad may be working with him daily, training him and such, but I don't get to talk to him that often." She bumped my arm. "He's interested in you, Deanne."

I shook my head. "I don't think he is. Yeah, like I said before, he's said some nice, encouraging things to me, and has tried to help me not be so impacted by the attention I get, but... that's what friends do. I'm in awe just to say that I consider him my friend."

"And friendship can turn into something else," Penny said with a glint in her eye. "I bet once Joan Blackman shows up, his head's gonna be spinning with confusion because he's in love with two women on the set."

My heart pulsed, and I looked down at her, eyes wide. "Oh my heavens, he's not in love with me, Penny!"

"Yeah, that's not the case," Priscilla added. "We established that."