Elvis is in the building

Last Thursday, January 8th, would have been Elvis Presley’s seventy-fourth birthday. Elvis died on August 16, 1977 in his bathroom upstairs at Graceland. I’ve been to Graceland and you aren’t allowed upstairs. After being found on the bathroom floor he was rushed to hospital where they pronounced him dead. The coroner recorded his cause of death as cardiac arrhythmia, which means that the heart was beating irregularly, and in Elvis’s case finally stopped. While strictly true the attending physicians kept quiet about the fact that what had apparently caused Elvis' heart to beat so irregularly, and then stop, was an overdose of prescription drugs which included Morphine, Codeine, Demorol and Valium.

Elvis is in the building

When I awoke they were sitting there quietly in the corner of my hotel room. I was pretty sure that they hadn’t been there the night before when, at around midnight, I’d left the bar and my pharmaceutical convention colleagues to continue drinking, and gone up to bed. At least I didn’t remember them being there, but then I was pretty drunk. As I stared at them I wondered if they’d been watching me as I slept, watching and waiting for me to wake so that they could dare me to wear them. I knew it was silly, but as I moved towards them I was sure that I could feel them staring and smiling.

How did they get here? Where had they come from? Had someone crept into my room in the middle of the night and put them there? They must have; after all shoes don’t walk by themselves. Perhaps that big guy on the desk was playing a joke on me; I thought I saw him give me a funny look when I’d checked in.

I crouched to inspect the shoes. They were suede, pastel blue, elasticated at the sides and with sharp toes. Not my shoes, not even my type of shoes. Elvis shoes, Elvis blue suede shoes. Yeah, it had to be the guy on the desk or one of the other hotel employees, they were having a hoot at my expense; very funny. Perhaps everyone in Memphis had a warped sense of humour?

Pressing down on my knees with my hands I stood up and looked down at them. They were nice shoes and they looked about my size. I was tempted to try them on just to see what my feet looked like in them. It was very tempting, and I wondered how they would feel on my feet as I continued to watch the shoes watch me back. Well, its one for the money, what harm could it do? Two for the show, after all they were in my room. Three to get ready, someone must have put them there. Now go, cat, go. Perhaps they put them here because they wanted me to try them on? On the other hand, perhaps not and this was some sort of trick. Or maybe it was a message and the message was that I could do anything that I wanted to do, but uh-uh, Honey, lay off of my shoes.

Maybe if I tried them on the big guy on the desk would know that I’d done it, rush in, knock me down, step on my face, and then go back to the lobby and slander my name all over the place for trying on his shoes. Yes that was it. They were his shoes and this was a test. He didn’t want me to step into his blue suede shoes and he’d put them in my room to test me. He didn’t care what I did so long as I lay off of his blue suede shoes and if I were to try them on; well I’d better be prepared for the consequences. No sweat, I was ready. Do your worst big guy…and stop right there! This was crazy! None of this made any sense. Why would anyone want to test me with a pair shoes? They might burn my house or steal my car, even drink my liquor from an old fruit jar; but testing me with a pair of blue shoes? It just didn’t add up.

I reached down and slipped on the right shoe, it felt good against my naked foot; I slipped on the other one, a perfect fit. These shoes didn’t belong to the guy behind the desk. These shoes didn’t belong to anyone who worked in the hotel, these shoes belonged to me, they were mine.

Picking up my samples case, dressed only in my blue suede shoes, I walked across the flat brown carpet to the bathroom. I knew what to do next.