The Speculative Short Fiction of Janet Berliner by Janet Berliner

Author:Janet Berliner
Language: eng
Format: epub

***

"Hrrmph." Joe cleared his throat. He always cleared his throat before he sang and he always sang around the cages while he fed his people. Elvis’ songs. Their songs.

He swatted a mosquito from the bald pate of his flat bullet head. "Bald since I was thirty," he said, scratching the bite.

That was something else Joe always did. He talked to them. The rest of the world out there was welcome to believe that he was crazy or had Alzheimer’s or something. Well, they knew better. His people knew better. Especially Alicia. Shit, he was barely eighty. She’d known him the longest, since before Elvis died. She was a scene, that one. Not too bright to begin with, falling for Elvis’ line and then for his, but what the Hell. She was company. He had preserved her well. Couldn’t do anything about her hair falling out, but the wig had fixed that good and proper. She looked pretty as ever. Sad. But pretty.

He stroked her head and sang her song, figuring it would improve her spirits.

“Wenn i komm, wenn i komm, wenn i wieder wieder komm; kehr i ein mein Schatz bei dir."

"When I come, when I come, when I come back again," he translated, enjoying the old German folksong that Elvis had turned into just one more hit. "I’ll come back, My Love, to you."

Wooden Heart. That was what they’d called the song. Stupid title for The Man. Broken Heart maybe. His heart was sure broken when he went to Germany. Better yet Golden Heart, to match the Cadillac Elvis gave him way back. He pretty much lived in it these days, even though he had the house that he’d bought when he’d come trailing back from Wiesbaden after he’d closed his Elvis Shop. Leaving everything behind, except Alicia, of course. He could never leave her. He’d promised to take care of Alicia until Elvis came back and that’s what he was doing.

’Sides, he couldn’t stand those damn boarders roaming around. Better to stay here, out of sight. Hey, he didn’t bother no one as long as no one bothered him.

"Remember the first time we met?" He shoved a half a tuna sandwich through the bars of Alicia’s cage and took a bite out of the other half. "At the Casino in Wiesbaden. You picked up that ashtray and I thought you might be wanting to hurt him and I told you to put it down and the look on your pretty little face." He chuckled. "Something to see. I was his bodyguard. Didn’t have no choice. You understand don’t you?"

He had no trouble remembering them days. Yesterday, that’s what he had trouble with. When he thought about yesterday, the fuzzies came and they went his head full of grey cobwebby stuff like the shit that hung from the trees around here. Forty years ago, that was easy. He could remember that like.... He grinned. "Like it was yesterday," he said. They’d gone to that small cafe at the far end of town, she and Elvis, Joe trailing behind.

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