When Logan pulled up at quarter after one, she was sitting on the steps, listing the proposed displays
and arrangements and dividing up the labor of creating them.
She got up even as he climbed out of the truck. 'I got hung up.'
'No problem. I kept busy.'
'You okay riding in the truck?'
'Wouldn't be the first time.' She got in, and as she buckled her seat belt, studied the forest of notes
and reminders, sketches and math calculations stuck to his dashboard.
'Your filing system?'
'Most of it.' He turned on the CD player, and Elvis rocked out with 'Heartbreak Hotel.' 'Seems only right.'
'Are you a big fan?'
'You've got to respect the King.'
'How many times have you been to Graceland?'
'Couldn't say. People come in from out of town, they want to see it. You visit Memphis, you want Graceland, Beale Street, ribs, the Peabody's duck walk.'
Maybe she could chill, Stella decided. They were just talking, after all. Like normal people. 'Then this
is the first tic on my list.'
He looked over at her. Though his eyes were shielded by the black lenses, she knew, from the angle of his head, that they were narrowed with speculation. 'You've been here, what, around a month, and you haven't gone for ribs?'
'No. Will I be arrested?'
'You a vegetarian?'
'No, and I like ribs.'
'Honey, you haven't had ribs yet if you haven't had Memphis ribs. Don't your parents live down here?
I thought I'd met them once.'
'My father and his wife, yeah. Will and Jolene Dooley.'
'And no ribs?'
'I guess not. Will they be arrested?'
'They might, if it gets out. But I'll give you, and them, a break and keep quiet about it for the time being.'
'Guess we'll owe you.'
'Heartbreak Hotel' moved into 'Shake, Rattle, and Roll.' This was her father's music, she thought. It
was odd, and kind of sweet, to be driving along, tapping her foot, on the way to Memphis listening to
the music her father had listened to as a teenager.
'What you do is you take the kids to the Reunion for ribs,' Logan told her. 'You can walk over to Beale from there, take in the show. But before you eat, you go by the Peabody so they can see the ducks.
Kids gotta see the ducks.'
'My father's taken them.'
'That might keep him out of the slammer.'
'Whew.' It was easier than she'd thought it would be, and she felt foolish knowing she'd prepared several avenues for small talk. 'Except for the time you moved north, you've always lived in the Memphis area?'
'That's right.'
'It's strange for me, knowing I was born here, but having no real memory of it. I like it here, and I like to think— overlooking the lack of ribs to date—that there's a connection for me here. Of course, I haven't been through a summer yet—that I can remember—but I like it. I love working for Roz.'
'She's a jewel.'
Because she heard the affection in his tone, she shifted toward him a bit. 'She thinks the same of you.
In fact, initially, I thought the two of you were ...'
His grin spread. 'No kidding?'
'She's beautiful and clever, and you've got a lot in common. You've got a history.'
'All true. Probably the history makes anything like that weird. But thanks.'
'I admire her so much. I like her, too, but I have such admiration for everything she's accomplished. Single- handedly. Raising her family, maintaining her home, building a business from the ground up.
And all the while doing it her own way, calling her own shots.'
'Is that what you want?'
'I don't want my own business. I thought about it a couple of years ago. But that sort of leap with no parachute and two kids?' She shook her head. 'Roz is gutsier than I am. Besides, I realized it wasn't
what I really wanted. I like working for someone else, sort of troubleshooting and coming in with a creative and efficient plan for improvement or expansion. Managing is what I do best.'
She waited a beat. 'No sarcastic comments to that?'
'Only on the inside. That way I can save them up until you tick me off again.'
'I can hardly wait. In any case, it's like, I enjoy planting a garden from scratch—that blank slate. But more, I like taking one that's not planned very well, or needs some shaping up, and turning it around.'
She paused, frowned. 'Funny, I just remembered. I had a dream about a garden a few nights ago. A really strange dream with ... I don't know, something spooky about it. I can't quite get it back, but there was something ... this huge, gorgeous blue dahlia. Dahlias are a particular favorite of mine, and blue's
my favorite color. Still, it shouldn't have been there, didn't belong there. I hadn't planted it. But there it was. Strange.'
'What did you do with it? The dahlia?'
'Can't remember. Luke woke me up, so my garden and the exotic dahlia went poof.' And the room,
she thought, the room had been so cold. 'He wasn't feeling well, a little tummy distress.'
'He okay now?'
'Yeah.' Another point for his side, Stella thought. 'He's fine, thanks.'
'How about the tooth?'
Uh-oh, second point. The man remembered her baby'd had a loose tooth. 'Sold to the Tooth Fairy for
a crisp dollar bill. Second one's about to wiggle out. He's got the cutest little lisp going on right now.'
'His big brother teach him how to spit through the hole yet?'
She grimaced. 'Not to my knowledge.'
'What you don't know... I bet it's still there—the magic dahlia—blooming in dreamland.'
'That's a nice thought.' Kill it. God, where did that come from? she wondered, fighting off a shudder.
'It was pretty spectacular, as I recall.'
She glanced around as he pulled into a parking lot. 'Is this it?'
'It's across the road. This is like the visitors' center, the staging area. We get our tickets inside, and they take groups over in shuttles.'
He turned off the engine, shifted to look at her. 'Five bucks says you're a convert when we come back out.'
'An Elvis convert? I don't have anything against him now.'
'Five bucks. You'll be buying an Elvis CD, minimum, after the tour.'
'That's a bet.'
* * *
It was so much smaller than she'd imagined. She'd pictured something big and sprawling, something mansionlike, close to the level of Harper House. Instead, it was a relatively modest-sized home, and
the rooms—at least the ones the tour encompassed—rather small.
She shuffled along with the rest of the tourists, listening to Lisa Marie Presley's recorded memories
and observations through the provided headset.
She puzzled over the pleated fabric in shades of curry, blue, and maroon swagged from the ceiling and covering every inch of wall in the cramped, pool-table-dominated game room. Then wondered at the waterfall, the wild- animal prints and tiki-hut accessories all crowned by a ceiling of green shag carpet in the jungle room.
Someone had lived with this, she thought. Not just someone, but an icon—a man of miraculous talent
and fame. And it was sweet to listen to the woman who'd been a child when she'd lost her famous
father, talk about the man she remembered, and loved.
