8:30 a.m., April 5, 1992
It was going
to be a big day. Jesse knew. Dead celebrities didn't come back from the grave
for visits on the eve of just any day.
They only came back before something really big was going to happen.
The night
before, the ghost of Marty Feldman had come to Jesse in the middle of a Rose's
department store to tell him, one comedian to another, the secret of
comedy. People were milling around,
paying no great attention to the late comic genius, so Jesse had asked,
"Can only I see you or can everybody see you?" The bulbous-eyed comic winked, "With
eyes like this, of course they can see me." Jesse laughed, then thought, "But that
doesn't make sense." "And
that's why it's funny," Feldman said, and vanished in a puff of smoke.
What did it
mean? Jesse thought. It reminded him of
his dream from several nights ago, in which Jane Fonda had come up to him in
B.Dalton's and told him how big a fan she was.
But she wasn't dead. She was just
married to Ted Turner.
He couldn't
make sense of it all. Perhaps he would
finally be discovered as the comedy god he was.
He didn't know. He just knew that
whatever happened, it was going to be big.
9:43 a.m.
Jesse knew he
would have to hurry if he wanted to make it to church on time. He threw on his pink shirt like the one worn
by Hal Linden on Barney Miller, pulled on a pair of Duckheads, slipped on a
pair of Special Limited Edition Donnie Osmond Purple Socks, put on his Nikes,
and flew out the door.
He hopped in
the old burgundy Cadillac Seville, started it up, and drove toward the
church. He noticed the digital clock on
the radio was wrong. The battery had
died last week and he hadn't thought to reset it yet. The clock was alternating "5:15",
like the old Who song, and "1 8", January 8. Elvis' birthday.
Elvis's
birthday! That was it! The sign!
He hadn't even thought of the clock until he saw it read that specific
date. Logically, he thought, the day
before it would have read his birthday, the day before that Nicholas
Cage's.
Tomorrow, it would read Richard Nixon's, and the next day
it would read Rod Stewart's. But he
hadn't noticed the two before, he had only noticed it today, when it read
"1 8."
It had to do
with fate and fate had to do with Elvis Presley.
Or David Bowie,
they do have the same birthday. But would fate really have anything to do with
David Bowie?
He turned the
car around and headed for home. He'd
have to think about this, about what it all meant, before he could go out. Today was too important, too big, to
accidentally waste. He'd have to plan
his ascent to greatness just as carefully in one day as most stars plan it for
years.
10:58 a.m.
Sitting in the
big recliner like the one Art Linkletter sold on TV, in his living room, Jesse
thought about it all. He had been
thinking about it all morning, and, gradually, his mind wandered away from
today's events to relatedmatters, like the day Elvis died.
He had only
been a child then, but he could remember it as clear as day. August 16, 1977. He could still trace the tears streaming down
his mother's cheek as she watched the news footage of the ambulance pulling
into that Memphis hospital. The
same hospital Martin Luther King, Jr., might have been rushed to just
twenty-four years and one day ago. Not
the one that John Lennon, born John Winston Lennon and died John Ono Lennon,
was taken to because he died in front of the Dakota in New York City on
December 8, 1980. He had read the actual
AP wire report in a frame in the Hard Rock Cafe in Washington, DC, located
right next to Ford's Theater, where President Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth
president of the United States, was shot in the back of the head, supposedly by
John Wilkes Boothe, on April 14, 1865.
Of course, he had lived on until the next day, unlike President John
Fitzgerald Kennedy, who died in transit to Parkland Memorial Hospital in
Dallas, Texas, where Jesse's cousin Tom worked, on
November 22, 1963, just minutes after several assassins, he was sure, had shot
both him and Governor John Connally. To
think that Oswald acted alone in the book depository was ridiculous.
Jesse realized
he had become unfocused. He had to get
back to Elvis. August 16, 1977. Elvis's bungalow or something was located at
2001 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, or at least at 2001
Something-Or-Other, in California. His offices in Memphis had been at 2001 Elvis Presley
Boulevard. Elvis, late in his career,
adopted Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" as his theme
song. It played before every concert, right
before he sang "See See Rider."
The song, "Also Sprach Zarathustra," not "See See
Rider," had been used in the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space
Odyssey.
If you add 8
for August, to 16, to 1977, the date he died, it comes to 2001.
If you add 4
for April, to 5, to 1992, today, it comes to 2001.
12 for
December, to 8, to 1980, 2000.
Hmmm.
On that night,
a lone gunman, Mark David Chapman, shot and killed former Beatle John Lennon.
One
gunman. One. 1 plus 12 plus 8 plus 1980, 2001.
11 for
November, plus 22, plus 1963, 1996. 2001 minus 1996, 5. So.
There were five gunmen.
Conclusive proof. That's why they
closed the files. There were five
gunmen. He bet Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't
even one of them. He'd have to call Oliver Stone with the news.
4 for April,
plus 14, plus 1865. So, the congress had
been in on the conspiracy to kill Lincoln.
118 congressmen. John Wilkes
Boothe was innocently framed and killed, and Doctor Samuel Mudd was sent to
Alcatraz to cover it all up.
It all made
sense now.
Jesse was
going to die. His fate had added up
perfectly, like Elvis's, so he would die just as Elvis had. No assassins. There wasn't going to be any conspiracy. At his own hand or by accident, he would
die. Simply.
12:37 p.m.
No.
He just
couldn't give up like that. He couldn't
just sit there and wait to die. He had
too much to live for. He had just come
up with a great idea for a new sitcom that the networks would absolutely love.
It was based
on the life of Saint Thomas A`Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury, except it
was modernized: A wacky, party guy is
somehow appointed as the archbishop of a large metropolitan diocese. He tries to conform to the church's rules,
but, and here's the hook, his drinking-buddy, college roommate comes to live
with him. An ecumenical Odd Couple,
they'd call it. He'd be famous as a
great comedy writer.
And, when they
realize that the perfect star for the show is Sir Richard Burton, and he's
dead, they'll turn to Jesse as the next best, and then he'll be a star.
If he could
just make it through the rest of the day.
Then he would be safe. He
calculated and found that there would only be eight days this year which add up
to 2001. He'd already lived through
three of them. After today, he would be
safe until May 4, and if he could just make it through August, he wouldn't have
to worry again until next year.
The past three
dates, January 8, February 7, and March 6, they were the key. If only he could remember what he had done on
those days.
January
8. The day after his birthday. He had gone out and gotten pretty wasted the
night before, and he hadn't felt like doing much after he got off work at the
movie theater. He couldn't remember
doing anything after work. He must have just come home, watched TV, and gone to bed.
February
7. He had had a date with Ginger. They had gone to a party. She had gotten really drunk and passed out
before midnight. He took her home and
put her to bed, staying up the rest of the night by himself, watching old
"Rocky and Bullwinkle" videos.
March 6, he
couldn't remember. It was a Friday
night, and he had...What? What had he
done?
RRRING!!!
The phone was
ringing. Jesse reached for it
hesitantly. It was Ginger wanting to
know if he wanted to do something tonight.
Ginger. Ginger Alden. Elvis's last girlfriend had been an actress
named Ginger Alden. Now he was talking
to his girlfriend Ginger.
Wait! He thought.
January 8. That had been one of
the dates. It was Elvis's birthday and
it was also at present flashing on his car clock calendar.
He had been
with Ginger on February 7.
Ginger and
January 8 were joining forces against him and soon something from March 6 would
be coming for him. What did he do on
that day?
"Jesse,
are you even listening to me?" Ginger asked.
"Jesse.
Oh my God, my name is Jesse," he shrieked.
"What are
you talking about?"
Jesse. Elvis's twin brother. Possibly strangled by Elvis's umbilical cord,
he died shortly after birth. But not
before Vernon could name him Jesse.
"Elvis's
brother died and was named Jesse. I was
born several years later, the day before their birthday..."
Silence on the
other end of the phone.
"Don't
you see?" he pleaded, "I am the reincarnation of Elvis Presley's brother
and I'm going to die!"
Ginger didn't
see. At all. But she said she'd be right over. She wasn't too worried. He'd been like this before. Last year, when he thought he was Satan
because he kept hearing "Sympathy for the Devil" on the radio. There was a part of her that had always wanted to work on a
psycho ward, but she had never gotten up the nerve to do it. Perhaps, she thought, Jesse's usually
harmless neuroses and obsessions appealed to this other side of her
personality, and that's why she went
out with him.
That, or she
was crazy herself.
She'd just go
over, give him a sedative or something, and let him sleep it off. He would be fine, she told herself. But still, there had been a new urgency in
his voice this time. Had he finally lost
it?
2:03 p.m.
Jesse tried to
collect himself. Could it all be a
coincidence? Could there be no direct
correlation between Elvis and himself.
The car battery went dead a week ago.
Certainly that didn't correspond to anything he could think of, and
that's what had started the whole thing in the first place.
Yeah, he
thought. It was just a coincidence. Maybe.
He couldn't be too careful, but he couldn't let himself get carried away
like that again.
It was
ridiculous. He didn't even really believe
in reincarnation. And Ginger! She had nothing to do with Ginger Alden. He knew full well she had been named after
Ginger Grant on Gilligan's Island.
Tina
Louise. Now there was a babe.
He decided he
would go back to his bedroom and read.
That would help calm him down. He
walked back to the bedroom, grabbed a paperback from the shelf at random, lay
back on the bed, and began to read...
The Omen.
The omen? The sign! He recalled a
picture he had seen in the Elvis Presley Museum in Pigeon Forge, of Elvis at an
airport, holding a worn paperback edition of The Omen, giving the Heavy
Metal devil sign.
And today was
April 5, he thought. Gregory Peck's
birthday.
He flung the
book across the room. It slammed into
his Ziggy Stardust poster and fell to the floor.
Now he was
trapped. If he had questioned it before,
now he had no doubt. He was Elvis
Presley's dead brother come back, he was going to die, and the Anti-Christ
would be the one to kill him.
Well, he'd
just see about that. Ginger was coming
over and they'd stay in and do everything just as they had on January 8 and
February 7 and...
March 6. His old college roommate's birthday. It was a Friday. Of course!
That was the day he had gone to see his grandparents in Tupelo.
So, he and
Ginger would go see his grandparents, come back, she would pass out, and he
would watch "Moose and Squirrel."
He dialed the
phone to tell his grandparents to expect them later.
"Hello,"
a strange voice said. It wasn't his
grandfather, that he knew.
It was his
cousin Tom from Parkland.
Cousin Tom
from Parkland.
He rolled the
words around in his head.
Cousin-Tom-Parkland. Cousin Tom
Parkland. Colonel Tom Parker.
It was almost
uncanny.
He hung up the
phone without saying a word. He couldn't
go down there. That's just what they
were expecting him to do. They had sent
the signs so he would figure it all out, get scared, and play it safe.
Well, he
thought, he would just see about that.
He'd out-thunk them this time.
They thought they were so clever.
As soon as Ginger got there, they'd go out and do something they'd never
done before. Maybe they'd go to a
ballgame.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
There was a
knock at the door. It had to be
Ginger. Or did it? What if it were space aliens working for
Satan, disguised as Jehovah's Witnesses, armed with exploding Watchtower's, and
just waiting to use his blood for scientific experiments that would allow them
to clone Wayne Newton and...
"Jesse,
open the damned door!"
Or maybe it
was Ginger.
He ran to the
door, peeked through the peephole, saw it was Ginger, and opened the door. After she stepped in, he stuck his head out
to see if anyone had followed her.
"Were you
followed?" he asked.
"No,"
she replied gingerly, giving him a peck on the cheek. "You feeling all
right? Have you got a temperature?"
"No, I
don't think so. How was work
yesterday?"
"All
right, I guess," she said, putting a hand to his forehead. "You're a little warm, but nothing
serious."
If she only
knew, he thought.
"You
might think this is interesting," she continued. "Yesterday, when I went in at five,
"Piano Man," by Billy Joel, was on the Muzak."
"So?"
"Well,
the Muzak's on a four-hour cycle, so at that moment I knew that when Billy Joel
said, 'it's nine o'clock on a Saturday,' it would be."
"Was
it?"
"It
should have been, but I forgot about it and didn't notice. Here take a couple of these." She reached into her bag and produced a
bottle of pills. "They'll help you
relax."
He took the
proffered pills. "Thanks."
"I'll get
you a glass of water," she said, waltzing into his kitchen toward the
sink. "So, what's up? With Elvis and everything?"
He told her
the whole story. How he had been going
to church, had seen the "1 8," the whole spiel. Explaining it to her again helped him see
just how silly it all was. He had just
over-reacted. Pretty soon, he would
probably just sit back and laugh about it all.
"How many
should I take?" he interrupted his own story as she came back with the
water.
"Well, it
says two," she answered, "but go ahead and take four."
What was she
saying? Did she want him to O.D, or something?
"What?"
"Just
take four, I don't think it'll hurt you."
"Won't
hurt me? Well, thanks, Doctor Nick, but no thanks."
"Look,
Jess, I just thought..."
"Oh yeah,
you just thought. Like Doctor Nick
thought Elvis, like somebody thought Marilyn Monroe. 'Go ahead, take all you want, we'll make
more,' like some pharmaceutical Jay Leno."
"Hey, I'm
just trying to..."
"Kill
me! That's what you're trying to
do."
"Is that
what you think? Do you want me to just
go?"
A nod of
approval.
"Well,
that's just hunky dory."
And with that,
she was gone.
Watching her
go, Jesse realized how he must have sounded to her. She must have thought he was crazy, really
crazy, this time. He'd probably lost
her. He started after her, but the Pinto
was already charging up the road and out of his life.
Damn, he
thought. The best thing he'd ever had
just walked out that door, probably never to return. He thought about how they got together in the
first place. She was the most beautiful
waitress in town. He had tried to ask her out for months, but every time he almost got the
courage, he would hear either "You Can't Always Get What You Want,"
by the Rolling Stones, or "Dream On," by Aerosmith, and chicken out.
Finally, one
day, he said screw it, and asked her out.
She accepted. Only by working
against his neuroses had he won her, and now, by falling prey to them again, he
had lost her.
He realized
things were out of his hands now. He'd
have to put her out of his mind, or he might do something crazy. That's how Freddie Prinze went out. And he wasn't going out over a girl.
He was going
out to the ballgame.
7:28 p.m.
Jesse sat
alone in the stands. He tried to think
about something other than the events that had ruled the day up until that
point. He tried to think about baseball. After all, what better place to think about
baseball than a baseball park? He thought about his father and how, when
they never had anything in common, come October, they could still sit and watch
the World Series together like best friends.
He also
thought about perfect games and no-hitters.
Was it possible to lose a game in which you pitched a no-hitter? It would have to be done on errors, he
thought. It was possible, but would any
team really commit that many errors? He
didn't think so. Baseball wasn't really
his favorite subject. It reminded him of
his dad.
Suddenly, the
loud speakers crackled into life. It
wasn't the announcer welcoming people to the park. It wasn't the local PTA head asking for
Campbell's Soup label donations. It was
blaring out a stirring rendition of "Also Sprach Zarathustra." He couldn't get away from it.
He had to get
out of there. But where could he
go? Nowhere. This was the safest place for him to be. In a crowd.
And so he sat
and watched the game, having only the occasional hysterical fit when a ball was
hit in his general direction.
Finally, the
home team lost. The pitcher had thrown a
no-hitter, but they had lost it on errors.
11:57 p.m.
Three more
minutes and he would be safe. Could he
make it? The drive home had been horrifying.
Halfway home he had realized he was driving the same type car, a
burgundy Cadillac Seville, that Elvis had bought just before he died. He almost ran off the road.
A lot could
happen in three minutes. Just in the
United States alone, nine people would be shot and killed with a handgun that
someone else could have purchased on impulse, at most having to wait two days,
and that in only twenty
-two states, Tennessee being one in which there was no
waiting period. Elvis had a gun. He shot his TV out with it.
The TV! That was it.
He'd turn on the TV. It would
help him pass the time, and, perhaps, enable him to distract any major threats
that might come his way.
He switched it
on and heard Sally Struthers, Archie Bunker's little goil, the voice of Baby
Pebbles Flintstone, tell the story of poor Five Year Old Melanie, who lived in
a grass hut in India, and had been five years old for at least the last six.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
There was a
knock at the door. He froze. This could be it. Whoever was on the other side of that door
was going to be the one to kill him.
The knocking
continued into David Bowie's video, "Fame," the 1990 re-mix from the
hit movie Pretty Woman, which you could have gotten the cassette single
for free with the purchase of Reeboks, for a limited time only. The song featured John Lennon on guitar. So. It
was coming back to Elvis and Lennon again.
Or it might be
David Bowie.
The book had
landed against his Ziggy Stardust poster.
Ginger had used the words "hunky dory," an odd thing for a
twenty-five year old woman to say if she weren't referring to the David Bowie
album of the same name.
January
8. It was David Bowie's birthday, too,
not just Elvis's. Of course.
He ran to the
door, flung it open, and there was Ginger.
"I've
finally figured it all out," he said, "the world doesn't revolve
around Elvis. It doesn't revolve around John Lennon, and it doesn't revolve
around me."
"Oh
Jesse," she flung her arms around him, "I'm so glad you've come to
your senses. You were really scaring me
there for awhile."
"It
revolves around David Bowie."
"Oh no.
No. Say it's not true. You can't believe..."
Denial, he
thought. He had felt the same way at
first. It was better to let her just
come to accept it, not force her. He had
almost gone crazy fighting it, so he just said, "Of course, I'm
kidding."
They laughed,
went in, sat on the couch. As the night
ran on and they got closer and closer, Jesse couldn't help but think how unfair
it all was.
David Bowie,
the center of the universe, had to change his name from David Jones to David
Bowie because some silly bubble-gum band called the Monkees already had a lead
singer and tambourine player named Davy Jones.
Ah Bowie! Ah Humanity!
