The New Elvis Page 20

  “Elvis is your father,” he said, daring to speak the words he’d written a thousand times in letters never sent.

  Ryan looked at him, completely blank. “You mean my dad is an Elvis impersonator. I know, man. I always suspected it.”

  Logan shook his head emphatically, determined to make Ryan understand him. “The real Elvis. The real Elvis Presley. The famous Elvis Presley. He’s your dad.”

  The tables had turned.

  It was Ryan’s turn to be speechless.

  Chapter 68

  Because traffic was bad, it took a while for Ryan and Logan to make it back to the Logan’s apartment complex in the Hollywood Hills. On the way, Logan explained how he had sold his graphic arts school graduation Caddy to win an online auction for clippings of Elvis’s hair saved by Homer “Gil” Gilleland, The King’s personal hairdresser, just in case he had the opportunity to test it with Ryan’s.

  Still in shock, Ryan mumbled something about DNA tests and followed him to Marilyn’s apartment, allowing Logan to lead him inside.

  “We’re home,” Logan croaked.

  Marilyn dropped the bowl of watermelon she was carrying and pieces flew across the white carpet. Tom rushed in, saw the spilled fruit, saw Marilyn’s astonished expression, saw Logan standing there with Ryan, and didn’t know what to make of it. He dropped to his knees and began to pick the pieces out of the carpet, reaching up toward Marilyn to retrieve the tipped bowl she still held in her hand.

  “Mare, what is it?”

  “He—he talked.”

  Ryan and Logan laughed.

  “Go on in,” Logan told Ryan. “Take a seat on my bed. I mean, the couch. Jeez, I think I need some water.”

  Logan left Ryan with Marilyn and Tom and went into the kitchen.

  Marilyn and Tom stared at Ryan.

  “Hey, you’re the kid from It Factor. You remember, Mare. The one who I said looked like Elvis.” Tom went over to sit beside him. “I bet you get that a lot.”

  Before Ryan had time to reply, Logan returned with his water and sat down on the carpet to finish cleaning up the spilled watermelon.

  “Oh, let me get a wet rag,” Marilyn said. “I’ve got to scrub those spots out.”

  “Actually,” Logan said, taking a sip of water and inspecting a square of watermelon like it was a precious gem, “there’s a whole lot more to the story than you think.” He felt his throat. “I think I’ve got to rest my voice. It’s a little hoarse. You tell them, Ryan.”

  Marilyn returned from the kitchen and sat down on the carpet beside Logan. “How did you get your voice back?”

  Logan pointed at Ryan, who leaned back into the cushions and looked around the room at Logan’s Elvis artwork. “Actually, he had something important to tell me, and I told him he had to tell me if he wanted to tell me. As in, speak. And I guess it was important enough that he did.”

  Marilyn put her hand on Logan’s arm. “What did you need to say?”

  “Well, to start at the beginning, I’ll have to take you back to when I found out I was a sperm donor baby,” Ryan said.

  Marilyn put the rag down and listened.

  “I had just gotten back with my girlfriend Bea after years apart due to my stupidity when my dad called to say my grandparents were in town. I’d never met them because they retired to Thailand before I was born. It was typical and awkward, with them going through my baby album and whatnot. They started to discuss who I looked like and agreed I looked like my mom, but then my Grandma Katherine said something to the effect, ‘Of course Ryan doesn’t look like Gene’, and then my dad quickly interrupted her and tried to steer the conversation in a different direction. My mom left the room to check on dinner, and I followed her and asked her if my dad Gene was my real father. She put me off, and I got angry. Before I made it back to the living room, though, I overheard my dad talking to my grandparents and found out that my mom received a ‘donation’—my grandmother’s polite term—and that it happened in Vegas, she never found out who the father was, and that the doctor who helped her was named Wendall Johns, a guy who liked to keep things confidential.

  “My girlfriend and I figured that since I looked so much like Elvis and my mom went to a fertility clinic in Vegas, there was a good chance my dad was an Elvis impersonator. We started watching tons of movies about Elvis, including documentaries done on impersonators, and tried to see if we could find him that way, and then we watched feature films where Elvis was played by an actor and tried to see if one of those guys might be my dad. One thing we thought was likely was that the guy could probably sing, since I can, and my mom can’t—at least, not very well.

  “We put together a cover story for our parents, and Bea and I convinced our friend Noah to drive us to Vegas. I had found Dr. Johns’s business address and phone number in a calendar my mom kept from 1988, the year I was born. The phone number had been transferred to someone new, so that left going to the fertility clinic and hopefully finding him. When we got there, we found out the clinic had turned into a tanning salon, but a neighbor told us we could find Dr. Johns in Rolling Hills Estates a few miles away. Once we got there, a neighbor pointed out his house, so we went to the door and rang the bell. Logan here answered the door and told us his uncle was out.”

  Tom was amazed. “Dr. Johns was your uncle?”

  Logan nodded, and Ryan continued.

  “We went to Bar Fifty-Six, a new lounge a block off the strip. They had a show featuring Elvis impersonators, concentrating on The King’s first big year, 1956, followed by karaoke. After that, we went back to Logan’s house and met his uncle, who couldn’t stop staring at me. We all thought he knew something, but he denied it, so we gave up and left.”

  Logan finished his glass of water and raised his hand. “I feel better. I can take it from here.”

  Ryan nodded and made a palms-out gesture to let him know the floor was his.

  “That night, I listened to Elvis’ Christmas Album, which I always did before I went to sleep. I must have still been full of adrenaline from going out, which I never did, and it was hard to get settled. I heard Uncle Wendall downstairs, and I snuck a peek into the living room. He buried a folder in a bin we kept next to the fireplace that we used to hold old papers to start fires with. I went back upstairs and waited to hear my uncle’s bedroom door close. I waited, and then I went downstairs and dug the folder out of the pile. I found Ryan’s mother’s medical records and a slip of paper with Elvis Presley’s name on it with a number and the date, August 19, 1974.

  “I knew Uncle Wendall kept matters confidential and never told clients who their babies’ fathers were, and this case was no different. I took the slip of paper and left the folder with most of Ryan’s mom’s paperwork in the burn bin. After I graduated from graphic arts school and came here, I found out I could score some of Elvis’s hair from the guy who used to cut it, so I sold my Caddy to pay for it.”

  Ryan interrupted. “Where is it? Can I see it?”

  Logan got up, went to his desk, opened the top drawer, retrieved the bottle and the signed certificate of authenticity, and handed both to Ryan with all the reverence of a priest handling sacred items. Ryan glanced at the certificate and stared into the amber vial at the clump of dark hair. “I’ve got a friend named Seth who can have this tested against mine pronto.”

  Up on her knees, kneeling like she was in church, Marilyn gasped. “You’re Elvis’s biological son.”

  “Probably,” Ryan and Logan said simultaneously.

  Chapter 69

  The DNA test comparing Ryan’s hair to a sample from the vial won at auction from Elvis’s hairdresser confirmed paternity, and the day Logan’s first story as a tabloid reporter came out, Tom booked the night of August nineteeth at the LVH for a blowout party.

  The afternoon Marilyn and her crew joined Peter Corcioni and Ryan in the Tuscany Sky Villa marked the thirty-second year anniversary to the day Elvis called down to the front desk with a special request, and it was lost on none of them th
at the villa Tom picked for the party had encompassed Elvis’s suite when the hotel remodeled and expanded it to a whopping 13,200 square feet in 1995.

  Logan found the fireplace in the living room where Elvis’s bed had once been and called Ryan over to see it. Like he once clutched Elvis’ Christmas Album, Logan now held on to his issue of DC. The cover ran the headline, “Elvis has a son,” and a photo of Elvis from the late fifties, dressed in a light blue, green, tan, and red striped shirt, a light blue cardigan, tan pants, and blue suede shoes, looking off to the left, faced the mirror image of Ryan, dressed nearly identically, looking off to the right. To celebrate, Ryan wore that same outfit today, but Logan stepped up his game, discarded his old suit, and wore a brand new tux that made him feel like royalty.

  Tobias joined them. “Great story, man.”

  Ryan and Logan simultaneously said, “thanks,” and they all laughed.

  Tobias was in full beatnik garb, even wearing love beads. “I’m telling you, Logan, for your first story as a reporter, you don’t mess around. It’s better than any of mine, better than any of Dan’s, better than any of Kevlar’s.”

  Logan was amazed. “But you set the bar. It was your Helen Hester story that helped me realize just how great a reporter you are. I worship you.”

  Tobias bowed down, his beads clacking against the studs on his vest. “You have surpassed me, sir.”

  Logan blushed and looked at the issue of DC again. He had to admit it was pretty good, but then again, he didn’t have to go out and find the story. It had been with him all along. All he had needed was the opportunity to tell it.

  Someone in the next room was clinking a glass to get everyone’s attention. Tobias, Logan, and Ryan walked toward the sound and found Peter Corcioni standing on a chair, beating his water goblet mercilessly with his spoon, while Ron stood nearby, spotting him in case he wobbled.

  Ryan looked around at the murals covering the ceiling and walls and felt like he was in Northern Italy.

  “We initially tripled our production run, but we’ve sold out everywhere,” Corcioni cried, slipping a bit and regaining his composure with Ron’s help. “I’m in touch with the head of production back in Chicago. An investor in Nagoya wants us to translate the issue into Japanese and run a million copies exclusively for him. He’s already wired the money, so it’s a done deal. We brought in the top translators who are working on the copy now. And since his call, we’ve gotten similar requests from Germany, Australia, Italy, and the United Kingdom, so we’re in the big money now, folks.”

  A cheer went up throughout the room.

  Dressed in a heavily beaded aqua gown, Marilyn was beaming.

  “Are you ready to go?” Tom asked her. He, like Logan, was in a tux.

  Tobias came over. “I’ve let security know we’re on our way.”

  Tom patted Tobias on the shoulder. “Good.”

  Marilyn bit her lip. “Are you sure we need it?”

  Tobias rolled his eyes, and Tom laughed.

  “Mare,” Tom said, “do you have any idea how many reporters are going to be at Bouchon at The Venetian to meet Ryan in person?”

  “As many as can afford a fifty-dollar plate of French cuisine,” Tobias quipped. “Unless you want the Grand Plateau, which is a lobster and sixteen oysters and ten mussels and eight shrimp and eight clam, plus crab when it’s in season for a hundred and ten bucks.”

  Everyone stared at him.

  “What? I checked the menu online. Tom booked exclusive use of the restaurant and courtyard. There’s standing room for a hundred and fifty people and seating for half that number, if they want to eat with us.”

  “You know Cecil Bertrand’s going to show,” Pia said as she joined them, looking fabulous in a red gown slit up the side to her thigh. “Hell, even Alastair Neville might fly in from London.”

  Logan and Ryan came over and joined the circle.

  Marilyn stared hard at the marble floor beneath her feet, but her gaze wasn’t focused. “And if he was mad at me before, he’s going to be even angrier now.”

  Tobias gave her a hug. “Tom and I already thought of that. We gave pictures of everyone who still works at Flash to the security team we have in place at the restaurant. Anyone who makes a sudden move is going to be tackled from all sides. And everyone has to show a press pass, so that rules out the thugs who’ve already hurt you trying to slide in, because our guys know a fake ID when they see it. You know how airport security tightened up after 9/11, and the skies have been safe from terrorists since then? Homeland Security ain’t got nothing on our team. They’re the best. Trust us, Marilyn. Forewarned is forearmed.”

  “If those guys show up, they are dead,” Tom said, and he looked like he meant it.

  Marilyn thought about it. When she and Tom had asked Logan how he’d come to live with his uncle in Vegas, and they heard about what he’d been through, they understood why he had stopped talking. Selective mutism had robbed him of a quality life for too long, and living in fear was no longer an option. If Logan could face the future with confidence, so could she.

  As though Logan had read her mind, he approached her and took her hand.

  “The past is the past. You’ve got to let it go.”

  She looked down at his hand, then into his eyes. “You’ve got a deal.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they were out in front of the LVH on South Paradise Road, climbing into stretch limos like it was something they did every day.

  “You know I love you,” Tom told Marilyn as he helped lift her gown so she wouldn’t step on it as she got into their ride.

  She turned to look back at him, her eyes glinting with good humor.

  “How much do you think Alastair Neville would pay to sleep with me now?”

  About the Author

  Wyborn Senna has a Masters in Professional Writing degree from USC and is published by the fierce, fabulous, fantastic Full Fathom Five Digital. Senna currently holds a 9-to-5 job in the entertainment industry and lives in Burbank, California…but her story doesn’t start there. Born in Buffalo and raised in Amherst, New York, Senna pecked out her first novel at the age of eleven, and eventually fell headlong into roles as editor of the school newspaper and yearbook, while also embracing Gleeky activities such as singing and acting. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Journalism/Mass Communication from St. Bonaventure University in New York, she worked at the Olean Times Herald, Ellis Advertising, and Studio Arena Theater. Senna then headed west to Los Angeles where she studied at the University of Southern California under writing great Tommy Thompson, started the ManUSCript newsletter for the graduate writing program, and co-founded the USC Playwrights Guild. While writing for The San Luis Obispo Telegram Tribune and doll magazines such as Barbie Bazaar and Miller’s, Senna sold the Virginia Stewart Barbie collection on Ebay for an unprecedented $77,500 to a private collector, and then went on to publish three identification guides for Barbie’s little sister, Kelly. A compilation of the guides identifying over 800 dolls and outfits is due for release, but Senna’s writing interests aren’t solely focused on dolls. In addition to Bury Me With Barbie (inspired by angry collectors who wanted her to break the Stewart collection into lots), her involvement in the entertainment industry inspired Porter’s Fortune, and her interest in Adam Lambert’s soaring musical career, looks, and talent inspired The New Elvis.

  Visit Wyborn on:

  Facebook: /lumpy.radford

  Twitter: @wybornsenna

  Pinterest: /wsenna/vintage-barbie/

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  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Full Fathom Five Digital is an imprint of Full Fathom Five

  The New Elvis

  Copyright © 2014 by Marsha McLaughlin Radford

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this text may be used or reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in review, without written
permission from the publisher.

  For information visit Full Fathom Five Digital, a division of Full Fathom Five LLC, at

  www.fullfathomfive.com

  Cover design by Anna Grigoriu

  ISBN 978-1-63370-037-6

  Second Edition