Read Last Ride to Graceland for Free Online Page B

audition. A man named Fred listened to a bunch of us sing, one after the other, in the back room of a diner, the sort of place where a Rotary or Kiwanis Club meets.
    I sang the best I could, hit every note on my run, but Fred gave nothing away with his face. In fact, he kept the same sour expression the whole time, whether a girl was good or she was bad. But at the end of the day he picked five of us to, as he said, “await Elvis’s final approval.” He called my name first. Then he said that Elvis was gone somewhere. I got the impression Elvis was almost always gone somewhere. But all that mattered was that Fred furthermore said they were going to move the five of us into Graceland until he got back.
    We squealed and hollered. Put our arms around one another and jumped in a circle. This must have broken the heartsof the girls who weren’t chosen, I guess, like that little room in a Memphis diner was cheerleading and homecoming court all over again. But in the moment I couldn’t stop to think about the others. I could only think that I was right on the cusp of getting everything I wanted. I may have started the day in a Greyhound bus station, but I was going to end it at Graceland.
    It was early summer, that season of endless days, and for the whole next week we had the run of the place. We could swim and race the golf carts and try on the tour costumes with their fringe and beading, modeling them for one another, walking up and down the diving board of the pool like it was a Paris runway. The cook would fix us whatever we wanted, day or night, and what we wanted was mostly cakes and doughnuts. In some ways it was like the best sleepover a girl could imagine.
    But in another way, Graceland was a trap.
    We’d cheered when they’d driven us through the front gate. It had been glamorous, with musical notes woven between the gold-plated bars, and you almost expected to see Saint Peter himself standing guard. But when that gate clanged shut, I’d shuddered. I knew the sound from those times I’d done prison ministry with my daddy. He was always dragging me to some god-awful place to sing—trying to give hope to the hopeless as he said it—and so maybe I understood this particular sad vibration better than the other girls. Maybe I understood that Graceland was one of those places that was harder to get out of than into.
    About a week in, when we were already bored out of our minds, everything changed. All of us girls were running through the mansion, drinking wine coolers out of coffee mugs andshooting water at one another with empty shampoo bottles. At some point I slid down the banister and plopped butt-first on the black-and-white tile floor of the foyer. And then and there, I looked up to behold the King himself, wearing a white spangled jumpsuit and gazing down at my crotch.
    The other girls had frozen in their tracks. The whole foyer had gone dead silent, except for Elvis. He was laughing.
    â€œWhat’s your name, honey?” he asked me.
    I said “Laura Berry,” and he shook his head.
    â€œWell, I’m going to call you Honey Bear,” he said, and that was that. He stepped over me, still chuckling, and went up the long curved staircase that led to the second level and the private hall. The part of Graceland that hardly anyone ever saw, certainly not silly girls like me. A heavy turquoise curtain waited at the top of the stairs. Elvis parted it, stepped behind the cloth, and was gone.
    We never sang for him at all, but the next morning the other girls were packing and crying and heading for home. I was the only one of that audition batch who’d be staying at Graceland, while for everybody else, their big adventure was over before it had begun. On her way out of the room, one of them turned, looked me right in the eye, and said, “Bitch.” It was the first and last time anyone’s ever used that word in connection to me. She must have thought I