it.'
Joel turned away as if he could no longer bear looking at her. His eyes returned to the workbench and the cluttered assembly table. When he spoke, his voice was frigid. 'You've made a poor bargain, Susannah. You've tied your future to a hoodlum and a toy that no one will ever want. If you hadn't betrayed me, I could almost feel sorry for you.'
'I didn't betray you. I-I love you.'
'You've turned into a tramp. An ungrateful, cheap little tramp.'
His words struck her like small, deadly pellets. She wanted to protect herself against them, but she had no defenses left. A deafening silence filled the small garage.
They all stood without moving, as if they had nowhere else to go.
'Don't you think you might be getting a little carried away here, Mr. Faulconer?' The jingle-jangle of charm bracelets came from the doorway of the Pretty Please Salon.
As Angela came into the garage, Joel gave her a look so malevolent that most women would have retreated. But Angela was a sucker for great-looking men, no matter how foul their dispositions, and Joel Faulconer was great-looking, even if he was a son of a bitch-a fact she intended to point out.
'Your daughter is one of the finest young ladies it's ever been my pleasure to meet. And as for what you said about my son-calling him a hoodlum-I want you to know that I don't appreciate that one bit.'
Sam took a step toward his mother. 'Stay out of this. This doesn't have anything to do with you.'
Angela held out her hand. 'Just one minute, Sammy. I haven't had my say yet.'
Joel stared at Angela as if she were a particularly loathsome reptile, and then his eyes made a path from her swaying plastic earrings to her gold-lamй sandals. 'By all means let your mother speak. She's obviously a woman whose opinion deserves to be heard.'
Sam's arm shot back and his breath released in a hiss. Susannah leaped forward to put herself between him and her father. 'No, Sam! You're only going to make it worse.' She spun on Joel. 'The problems between us don't have anything to do with Mrs. Gamble.'
Angela planted her hand on her hip, 'Let me just tell you one thing before you go, Mr. Faulconer-'
'Mom! Don't say any more.'
Angela waved Sam off and concentrated all her attention on Joel. 'Let me just tell you that you might want to think twice about casting aspersions at my son, since you don't know who he really is.'
The threatening tone in Sam's voice grew stronger. 'Don't do this, Mom. I'm telling you.'
Angela lifted her chin, more than willing to take on the chairman of FBT. 'My son-the one you called a hoodlum-the one you think isn't good enough for your daughter-'
'Stop it, Mom!'
'My son happens to be the only male child of Mr. Elvis Presley!'
The garage went completely still. Sam's face looked as if it had been carved from stone. Susannah's lips parted in astonishment. For several moments Joel Faulconer didn't move. When he finally turned to Susannah, his expression was haggard.
'I will never forgive you for this,' he hissed. And then he left.
Susannah started to run after him, but Sam caught her arm and hauled her up short before she could take a step. 'Don't you dare,' he snarled, pushing her down at the assembly table. 'You stay right here! Godammit, don't you even think about going after that bastard.'
Without a word of explanation, Angela returned to her elderly ladies. Sam waited for Joel's car to leave, and then he stormed from the garage. Susannah rubbed her arm where he had grabbed her and reached out to pick up the soldering iron. But her hand was shaking so badly that she couldn't manage it. She sat in silence for some time while she waited for the pain to go away.
Sam still hadn't returned by dinner time, although Yank and Roberta had shown up several hours earlier. Roberta's mindless chatter coupled with Yank's unrelenting silence strained Susannah's frazzled nerves to the breaking point. When she couldn't stand her thoughts anymore, she retreated into the kitchen and began assembling ingredients for a salad. As she tore apart a head of lettuce, Angela came inside.
'It'll probably just be you and me for dinner, Susannah. I wouldn't count on Sammy showing up for a while.' Angela squirted some dishwashing liquid into her hands and washed them under the kitchen faucet. 'Let me cut up some cheese and salami and we can have ourselves a big chef salad-ladies' night special.'
'All right.'
Angela's bracelets clinked against the refrigerator door as she opened it to pull out several deli packages. 'You like olives?'
'Olives are fine.' Susannah fumbled for the paring knife.
'I'm really sorry about that awful scene with my father. It's bad enough that I'm mooching off you all the time without putting you through something like that.'
Angela waved away her apology. 'You're not responsible for your father. And I like having you here. You're a real lady. You're good for Sammy. The two of us-you might have noticed-we don't get along too well. He's ashamed of me.'
A polite denial sprang to Susannah's lips, but she bit it back. If Angela had the courage to be honest, she wouldn't insult her with well-meaning evasions. 'He's still young,' she said.
Angela's face softened. 'Young and a rebel. What a time I've had with him.'
The pain of her confrontation with Joel had overridden her curiosity about Angela's strange revelation. Now she remembered it. 'His father…?'
'Frank Gamble was a decent man, I guess. But he didn't have any imagination.'
Susannah's hand stilled on the lettuce. She hadn't expected to hear about Frank Gamble. What about Elvis?
Angela began unwrapping the deli packages. 'I had to marry him because I was a good Italian girl who had gotten herself in trouble, if you understand what I mean. But we didn't have too much in common. And when Sammy was a teenager, Frank was always screaming at him about being a hippie and a bum, and Sammy kept running away. It was terrible. I loved Sammy a lot more than I ever loved Frank. When Frank left me for another woman a few years ago, I was actually relieved, although whenever I went to Altar Society meetings, I pretended I was broken up about it since I'm Catholic.'
'I see.' Susannah quartered a cucumber as she tried to put it all together.
'Of course, it was hard having Frank run off with somebody in her twenties, especially when my boobs were starting to sag and my face didn't look as good as it used to. I was so pretty when I was in my twenties,' she said dreamily. And then she gave a self-conscious laugh. 'Listen to me. You'd think I was ready for the grave instead of just hitting my prime. You want to know about Elvis, don't you?'
'Not if you don't want to tell me.'
'I don't mind. It's just-Sammy hates it when I talk about him. I know I should have kept my mouth shut out there in the garage, but your father was-pardon my French-acting like a real bastard.'
'He's not like that all the time. I'm afraid I've hurt him pretty badly.'
'Sammy hurts me all the time, but I don't ever go after him like that.'
Tears welled in Susannah's eyes. She blinked them away and briskly rinsed off a tomato. 'When did you meet Mister-uhm, Elvis?'
'Every once in a while during the fifties, I used to drive down to L.A. and work as an extra. I got a job on
Something didn't seem right to Susannah. Sam was twenty-four. He had been born in 1952. Surely Elvis wasn't starring in movies that early. 'When was that film made?'
'I'm not too good with dates. I met him for the first time much earlier than that anyway. In-I guess-'fifty-one. I went to Nashville with a girlfriend. Elvis was called the Hillbilly Cat then, and he was getting ready to sign his first record contract. You should have seen him. Young and sexy, with those eyelids drooping down and his hair all greased back. Don't get me wrong, Susannah. I was a good girl. I always went to mass. I even thought about being a nun for a while. But with Elvis, it was sort of holy anyway. Do you want hard-boiled egg in your salad?'
