“Of course, Marisita,” he said, and licked his lips over his sharp teeth as he said her name. “Are you ready?”
Marisita looked to the stage. It was decorated as if for a birthday celebration, with flags and lights strung between the upright stands. A small umbrella protected the microphone from her stormy presence. It would have been a fine setting for the beginning of a love affair, or for the reunion of a couple long separated. But she supposed it was also a fine setting for a night supplying comfort to a dying young man. She smoothed her hair, cast her eyes over the watching owls, and tried not to think about all the saints who were listening.
“Yes,” she said.
It was 1955, and Texas was drying out.
It had started drying out in 1950 and would keep it up until 1957, but in 1955, they didn’t know that it would have an end. It just seemed like it would go on forever. Dust drifted over driveways and highways and filled swimming pools and elementary schools. Crops turned to black ash like a biblical punishment. The dry-eyed sky stared down as farmers burned the needles off cactuses so the cattle could eat them. Students held hands with each other on the way from the school to the bus so they would not lose each other in the dust storms. If you were the sort who liked to sing sad songs, you sang sad songs. If you were the sort who liked to stay alive, you moved to the city.
Marisita’s parents were the sort who liked to stay alive, and so, when she was nine, they moved the Lopez family to San Antonio from the ranch they had worked on for Marisita’s whole life. There were six of them: Marisita’s mother, Maria; and her father, Edgar; three younger sisters; and Marisita. There was also Max, the oldest brother, but he was sometimes not quite like family. They traded the house on the ranch for an apartment in an old hotel. Even though it was still dry out there in Texas, in the city, it was a different picture entirely. San Antonio was a modern city of half a million people. There were shopping malls, racecourses, subdivisions, highways bustling with cars. There was water—in the river, in the old gravel quarry, and in ponds in the cemetery Marisita passed on the way to school each morning. On her way home, she’d sometimes see boys fishing in the cemetery.
“What are you trying to catch?” she had shouted once.
“You, baby!” one of them shouted back, and Marisita didn’t ask after that.
There was less drought to be found in San Antonio, but there was less money, too. It was expensive to live in the city, and Maria and Edgar both worked two jobs to afford the apartment. Max was probably old enough to work, but he couldn’t—he got angry very easily, and Maria and Edgar told Marisita and her sisters that Max was working it out with God. God didn’t seem to be working through it very quickly, however, and so the Lopezes had to do without Max’s income. They managed, though, and Marisita made friends and taught herself how to be as perfect as she could.
In 1956, Elvis Presley came to San Antonio.
He was scheduled to play at the San Antonio Municipal Auditorium, the building where Edgar Lopez worked as a maintenance man. It was not as rewarding as working on the ranch, and Edgar was a lesser version of himself than he had been, but it was a paycheck. Or at least that was what Edgar told himself as he moved ever more slowly in both his body and thoughts, worn to ordinariness by the slow-motion tragedy of life. Edgar didn’t complain about his fate, but the truth was, years of doing what needed to be done and nothing else was getting to him; he was getting old.
In 1956, the King of Rock and Roll was pretty near the beginning of his career, quite a bit further away from the slow-motion tragic end of his own life, and San Antonio was unprepared for the newfound force of his fans. The plan had been for Elvis to play two shows and then sign autographs for any interested listeners. This plan was trampled by the six thousand girls who queued up hours before the show and then refused to leave after. “We want Elvis!” they chanted, as Elvis fled into his dressing room. “We want Elvis!” they chanted, lining the halls until forced to leave. “We want Elvis!” they chanted outside, as Elvis waited them out in the now-empty arena. He played a few tunes on the pipe organ while reporters and Edgar Lopez listened.
No one had seen anything like Elvis before Elvis—especially an older man like Edgar Lopez, a man who never went to concerts, a man who worked two jobs at an ever slower pace. The show was nonstop action—Elvis sang, danced, played the guitar wildly, and gyrated his hips in a way that made Edgar avert his eyes and some mothers cover their children’s eyes. Elvis was tireless. No wonder the girls screamed, Edgar thought, because they were witnessing a rock-and-roll saint.
But if Edgar had only experienced the show, nothing would have changed for Edgar himself. The show was memorable, yes, but not life changing. But that combination of events, which led to Edgar and Elvis being together in the performance hall once everyone else was gone, was life changing. Because Elvis was trapped in the San Antonio Municipal Auditorium long after his show, Edgar got to see him while not performing. While waiting for the girls to leave, Elvis sat at the organ, picking out “Silent Night” without any particular craft.
It was this that moved Edgar. He would not have been prompted to action by Elvis performing, because Edgar could tell himself that Elvis wasn’t real. But seeing Elvis afterward proved that this was indeed the work of a man. Perhaps an extraordinary man, but nonetheless a mortal like Edgar. Edgar decided he would no longer live his life in his diminished state; he would become, like Elvis, the loudest version of himself.
And so that night, after Elvis had finally gone and Edgar was cleaning up after the horde, he sang a bit of “Blue Suede Shoes” and jogged up the stairs of the municipal building with renewed vigor. He was much older than Elvis, and much less practiced at vigor, so he caught his foot sideways on one of the steps and fell all the way to the bottom, breaking his leg.