Forever Odd

suffered sudden mood swings.
        Dead more than twenty-seven years, with no purpose in this world but unable to move on, as lonely as only the lingering dead can be, he had reason to wallow in melancholy. The cause of his distress, however, appeared to be the salt and pepper shakers on the table.
        Terri, as devoted a Presley fan and authority as anyone alive, had given me the two ceramic Elvises, each four inches high, which dated to 1962. The one dressed in white dispensed salt from his guitar; the one in black gave pepper from his pompadour.
        Elvis looked at me, pointed at the salt shaker, at the pepper, then at himself.
        “What’s wrong?” I asked, though I knew that he would not answer.
        He turned his face to the ceiling, as though to Heaven, with an expression of abject misery, sobbing silently.
        The salt and pepper shakers had stood on the table since the day after Christmas. He had previously been amused by them.
        I doubted that he had been moved to despair by the long-delayed realization that his image had been exploited to sell cheap, cheesy merchandise. Of the hundreds if not thousands of Elvis items that had been marketed over the years, scores were tackier than these ceramic collectibles, and he had not disapproved of licensing them.
        Tears streamed down his cheeks, dripped off his jaw line, off his chin, but vanished before they spattered the table.
        Unable to comfort or even understand Elvis, eager to get back to the Blue Moon alleyway, I used the kitchen phone to call the Grille, where they were in the breakfast rush.
        I apologized for my bad timing, and Terri said at once, “Have you heard about the Jessups?”
        “Been there,” I said.
        “You’re in it, then?”
        “To the neck. Listen, I’ve got to see you.”
        “Come now.”
        “Not in the Grille. All the old gang will want to chat. I’d like to see them, but I’m in a hurry.”
        “Upstairs,” she said.
        “I’m on my way.”
        When I hung up the phone, Elvis gestured to get my attention. He pointed at the salt shaker, pointed at the pepper shaker, formed a V with the forefinger and middle finger of his right hand, and blinked at me tearfully, expectantly.
        This appeared to be an unprecedented attempt at communication.
        “Victory?” I asked, reading the usual meaning in that hand sign.
        He shook his head and thrust the V at me, as though urging me to reconsider my translation.
        “Two?” I said.
        He nodded vigorously. He pointed at the salt shaker, then at the pepper shaker. He held up two fingers.
        “Two Elvises,” I said.
        This statement reduced him to a mess of shuddering emotion. He huddled, head bowed, face in his hands, shaking.
        I rested my right hand on his shoulder. He felt as solid to me as every spirit does.
        “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what’s upsetting you, or what I should do.”
        He had nothing more to convey to me either by expression or by gesture. He had retreated into his grief, and for the time being he was as lost to me as he was lost to the rest of the living world.
        Although I regretted leaving him in that bleak condition, my obligation to the living is greater than to the dead.

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    FOURTEEN
        
        TERRI STAMBAUGH OPERATED THE PICO MUNDO GRILLE with her husband, Kelsey, until he died of cancer. Now she runs the place herself. For almost ten years, she has lived alone above the restaurant, in an apartment approached by stairs from the alleyway.
        Since she lost Kelsey, when she was only thirty-two, the man in her life has been Elvis. Not his ghost, but the history and the myth of him.
        She has every song the King ever recorded, and she has acquired encyclopedic knowledge of his life. Terri’s interest in all things Presley preceded my revelation to her that his spirit inexplicably haunts our obscure town.
        Perhaps as a defense against giving herself to another living man after Kelsey, to whom she has pledged her heart far beyond the requirement of their wedding vows, Terri loves Elvis. She loves not just his music and his fame, not merely the idea of him; she loves Elvis the man.
        Although his virtues were many, they were outnumbered by his faults, frailties, and shortcomings. She knows that he was self-centered, especially after the early death of his beloved