The minute Jones came onstage Lula went ape-shit. Lula didn't care about anything but Tom Jones. 'Hey, Tom, honey, look over here,' she yelled out. 'Look at Lula!'
All around us women were throwing room keys and panties onto the stage. And then from the corner of my eye I caught sight of Lula pitching a giant hot-pink satin thong at Tom Jones. It was the biggest thong I'd ever seen. It was a King Kong thong. It hit Tom Jones square in the face. Wap!
'Holy crap,' Connie said.
Tom Jones staggered back a step, snagged the thong from off his face, looked at it, and forgot the words to the song he was singing. The band was playing, but Tom Jones was just standing there staring at the thong.
'Maybe I should throw my bra, too,' Lula said.
'No!' Connie and I said, worried Tom Jones would go into cardiac arrest at the sight. 'Not a good idea. Overkill.'
Tom Jones snapped out of his coma, stuffed the thong into his tux pocket, and went back to singing.
'I don't think Tom Jones looks all that good,' Connie said to me. 'He looks different somehow. Like he's had a face-lift that went wrong.'
'And he's sort of fat,' I said. 'And he can't sing anymore.'
'That's blasphemous to say about Tom Jones,' Lula said. 'You can't go dissin' Tom Jones.'
Wayne leaned across Lula. 'It's not Tom Jones. I thought you knew that. It's a Tom Jones impersonator. They're having a convention here, too.'
'What?' Lula yelled. 'I gave my underpants to an impostor?'
'He's pretty good, though,' Gus said. 'He's got a lot of the moves down pretty good.'
'I want my underpants back,' Lula shouted to the stage. 'I don't go giving away perfectly good underpants to impostors. You got my underpants under false pretenses. And you can't even sing! I bet these two Elvis impersonators could sing better than you.'
The guy on the stage stopped singing, shaded his eyes against the lights with his hand, and squinted over at us. 'Elvis impersonators? I've got some goddamn Elvis impersonators at my show?'
'Uh oh,' Wayne said. 'Elvis impersonators and Tom Jones impersonators don't get along.'
A low rumble went through the crowd. Elvis impersonators, they were grumbling. The nerve!
'Get them,' someone shouted. 'Get the dirty lousy Elvis impersonators.'
Someone reached for little Wayne, and Lula stepped in. 'Hold on here,' she said. 'We came with these guys. They're good guys. They got us in here.'
'Get the Elvis impersonators and their bitches,' someone yelled. 'The Elvis impersonators have bitches!'
The room was packed, and we were getting jostled and shoved. A Cher impersonator with a beard and mustache reached for Connie. Connie cold-cocked him and he went to the floor like a sack of sand. After that it was bedlam.
Lula took to the stage to wrestle Tom Jones for her underpants, and Connie and I scrambled after Lula to help with the thong retrieval. We were getting pelted with beer nuts and wasabi peas, and I could see casino security at the door, trying to make its way through the crowd. Lula ripped the thong out of Tom Jones's hands and we all ran backstage.
'Which way out?' I asked a greasy-haired guy in the wings.
The greasy-haired guy pointed to a door and we all crashed through it, ran down a hall, through another door, and found ourselves back on the casino floor.
Connie smoothed out her skirt and felt to see if she had any beer nuts stuck in her hair. 'That was fun,' she said. 'I'm going to go play craps now.'
'Yeah,' Lula said, stuffing her thong into her purse. 'I'm hitting the slots. I'm gonna start there.'
'Wait a minute,' I said to Lula. 'Where'd you get the thong?'
'I had it in my purse,' Lula said. 'I read somewhere that you should carry emergency undies when you travel.' Lula squinted at my hair. 'You got something green slimed in your hair,' she said. 'It looks like someone got you with one of those fancy drinks.'
Great. 'I'm going back to the room,' I said. 'I'm going to wash my hair and go to bed. I've had enough excitement for one day.'
'What about the slots?' Lula wanted to know.
'Tomorrow.' Maybe.
AT SEVEN IN the morning Lula and Connie still hadn't returned to the room. I pulled on jeans and a Lakewood Blue Claws T-shirt that had the message Got Crabs? printed on the front. I covered my hair with a baseball cap and went downstairs to look for Lula. I found her in the cafe eating breakfast with Connie. Lula had about two dozen scrambled eggs and five pounds of sausage links on her plate. Connie had coffee.
Lula looked wired and not much different from everyday Lula. Connie looked like she'd died and come back from the dead. Connie's black hair was completely frazzled, sticking out at odd places. Her mascara had smudged, making the bags under her eyes more pronounced. Most shocking of all… she was without lipstick. I'd never seen Connie without lipstick.
I took a seat and I snitched a sausage link from Lula.
'What time is it?' Connie asked.
'Seven-thirty,' I told her.
