“Show me.  I don’t believe it.”  She kept on making toast.

“And that’s why you’ll never know,” he sighed  and returned to being ordinary.

But due to inclement whether, there’s been a delay.

Being deceased, he cannot see himself in a mirror.

The dead have no style or sense of time.

The hostess at the All Night China Buffet screams a monosyllabic sing-song announcing the presence of the dead king.

The staff is accustomed to this and pays no attention whatsoever.

Elvis temporarily forgets where he is and starts to rock back and forth in his heeled leather boots, singing “Hunka, hunka, burnin’ love” into a teaspoon.

The wait staff are again indifferent as they have witnessed these antics on previous nights.

They bring out more General TSO’s chicken as a distraction.  It works.  It always does.  The dead Elvis loves his spicy chicken, loves it tender, loves it sweet (and sour).

And when he has had enough, he pushes the plate across the table and removes his extraordinarily large sunglasses.  As he places the shades across the crest of the epic black pompadour, the wait staff gasp at the glory.  They will attempt to emulate the effect to no avail.

The influence of the dead king surpasses all time.  In his world it is always now or never.

Elvis reaches for the token fortune cookie, consistent in its content:

Your lucky numbers are:  4, 14, 28, and 31.

Your Chinese word is:  picture Chinese characters – “platinum”

The dead Elvis flips the slip of paper over as he crunches on the last bits of tasteless cookie.  The reverse side reads:

“You’ve always been a friend of mine”   (in bed)

He rises to the majesty of his full sequined height, bows respectfully to the staff of the All Night China Buffet and pivots on the words:  “Thank you.  Thank you very much.”

And so departs the legend as the “Open” sign in the window of the All Night China Buffet flickers quickly and then shorts out.

I have aided and abetted you as a willing accomplice for so long now that there is no more felony left in my soul.

Yet I will not perjure myself with words dredged deep out of the mouth of another.

Nor wil I bear false witness in a hostile second skin.

Rather, I will enter the kangaroo court lip-synching mercy, stuffing innocence into pockets of new testifying pants.

(Dedicated to Stuie, who never had to wear those pants.)

Blood drips between my fingers and the pulsating rhythm of ventricles radiates up my arms, jumpstarting my own heart into synch.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” I ask in a panic.

“You’ll figure it out.”

What surreal films play tonight in your forbidden sleepy cinema?

And, more painfully, who is tonight’s chosen star?

“Don’t make yourself so crazy,” she used to preach.
“There’s enough of you to go around the way you are.”

The brash pounding of waves beseeches an entrance and my ear is damp with the cackle of conchs and whispers of the oyster bed.

She is here.

It is Mid-Summer’s Night Eve and she is here, the mermaid of my youth, the one others call figment, hallucination, psychosis -  the one I have named Stella.

(For Stella, who did a kind favor to a stranger)

the fragile move between no and yes,

the place where hope twirls in white petticoats,

 revealing perfect legs and absolute balance.