Elvissey Read online

  "Yes, John, love," I answered. "It'll not harm to pause momentslong. Work enough awaits."

  I held him until at last his shaking ceased, and assured calm came to him anew. None trailed us, and for a time we sat sleepless in our car, resting upon each other as dawn brillantined the city's skyscrapers. Their America lay beyond, and in it, if lucked, our E; if blessed, our reunited soul, its unity once more a given.

  Having transversed the middle passage safely, I attempted to reset my mindwaves, that I might process all thought in the words of their lingua, turning my tongue so white as my face. As I employed their wordpatterns-those rambled phrasings, rich with prepositional flow and adverbial complication-I thought I must have learned the lines as a child, so naturally did they come to me. By thinking in their mode, I allowed a penultimate layer to be flayed from my soul's skin; it essentialled that I become what I beheld.

  "Situate me, Iz," John said as we drove away from where we'd rested. "We're westbounding?"

  "On Northern Boulevard, I believe. Hold, I'll assure." When I unfolded our period-vintage map it fragmented, crumbling in my hands, as if having accumulated so many years it couldn't withstand losing them. "Northern Parkway, on this side," I said, spotting a sign as I rained map-flakes floorways. "Similar route, evidently. Cross at the 59th Street Bridge, then over to Fifth and from there down to the library."

  "It's assured there're phonebooks to peruse there?"

  "Library provided such service once, they said. If there's one for Memphis we can certify his existence before moving on.

  John glanced out his side window as we aimed toward Manhattan. "Iz, eye that," he said, nodding leftward. "What is it? They've walled off Brooklyn from Queens?"

  "There'd be no reason here," I said, gleaning through a haze's shroud what appeared to be a high concrete barricade, stabbing between buildings, lofting over roofs. "It's an expressway, I think. The old LIE, could be. There's a bridge in the mid-thirties here never built in our world. Possibly that's its feeder."

  Above Manhattan the haze patinaed the sky sepia. Some few familiarities poked through the ocher clouds: the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, Dryco's old shaft, several others familiar enough though long-erased. Lemony morningshine bronzed their brick, transmuted their stone into gold. The 59th Street Bridge emerged from the strata ahead, its iron webs blood-red and fuzzed, appearing as a primeval relic confronted in some island swamp.

  "Fog's an eyeburner, however thick the glass," said John, rolling up his window. My lenses stung me till I readied to pop my tearing eyes from their sockets; the pain almost supplanted my nausea, for which I was grateful. I'd eaten nothing to so unsettle my stomach. "Check the color," said John. "Toxicity plus in that. A spillcloud, mayhap."

  "Peasoup," I murmured to myself, recalling a phrase of my mother's.

  "Soup?" he repeated. It surprised that he caught my mut- terance over the metal roadway's hum, a beebuzz raised by our tires' spin. "Hungry, Iz? I've fruit-"

  I shook my head; marveled at the myriad untried paths to misunderstanding we would surely discover here. As I eyed their Manhattan our trainers' warnings came again to my mind: that, if thoughtless, we would look upon theirs not as a separate world, but rather see within it our own as it had once shown, enabling insidious nostalgia sans reason for a place never known to affect our actions. But even as the strange spires clarified before me, I knew I was reading my wishes into the city's image, as I did into my husband's, chancing again that perception, for once, could roughshod reality. Leaving the bridge we bumped over 59th Street's cobblestones, entering a cliff-walled stream along with a thousand other cars.

  "Careful now, Iz," said John. "Caution essentials hereout till we're countrysided."

  "We're already sunk," I said, grasping at once a prime problematic. My couture unhauted to such a degree here as to be laughable. It evidenced that this world's women garbed themselves in nothing resembling my sheath; wore instead kneegrazing skirts puffed out by starched slips, ensembles apted more for revelation than concealment. Women trotted along on heels higher than mine, and I couldn't imagine how they walked with such hooves.

  "What is it? What troubles?" John asked.

  "Your executive drag'll do you right," I said. "I'll never pass go. Check the dolls."

  John shifted his look from curb to curb as we crossed Park Avenue. "None match you," he said, pleasing me enough to reassure, if but momentslong. Watching the women struggle to keep their skirts from flipping up in the wind gladdened; nothing enslaved me, fashion least of all. We lefted onto Fifth; we'd reached Rockefeller Center when I realized, looking downtown, that the expressway we'd earlier seen crossed Manhattan aboveground.

  "Godness-"

  "Iz,"John said, seeing what I saw. "Evident misprediction. There's a backup plan?" The public library's building still stood in our world, if in ruins; here, it and its site had gone missing, overrun by concrete supports twenty meters high, bearing the expressway westward. A car-clogged ramp alongsiding the columns ascended from Madison's direction, rising toward Sixth. A green directional affixed to the overpasses read: Al Smith Midcross Arterial / To Long Island / Interstates 1-11 / West Side Hwy.

  "Hang right. Look, phone boxes," I said, spying wooden windowed sheds aligned along 42nd Street's northern ped- way. "Pull over. I'll tap into info."

  John curbsided our car in a spot evidently legal. Once outside, inhaling air both purer and dirtier than that of our New York, I hacked myself blind, choking on the chemical tickle in my gullet. When I recovered I pulled, then pushed the doorhandle of a booth and stepped in. John sat fingertapping the wheel while he watched cars slog up the ramp to the roadway. After dialing the operator I heard a short ring, followed by a click.

  "Information, help me," I blurted into the receiver, conscious to word as they would. "Get me Memphis, Tennessee."

  "Moment, please," said a woman's voice. Hearing undigi- talized tones surprised me; I'd not expected to speak to something not programmed. "What number in Memphis?"

  "You got me," I said. "There's a listing for Presley?"

  "Moment, please." Detecting a rustling sound above the static, I fancied that she might be thumbing actual directories, however impossible that would have been. "First names of your party?"

  "Vernon," I said, "or Gladys."

  "I have neither a Vernon nor a Gladys Presley listed in Memphis, Tennessee," she said. "I do have an Elvis Presley listed."

  "Shoot me," I said.

  "Pardon?"

  "Address, I mean. Please." She recounted; I transcribed. "Crazy. Many thanks." Extricating myself from the booth after hanging up, I returned to our car; shouted to John through the open windows.

  "He's there," I said. "We're on."

  "Seat yourself and let's fly."

  "A map's essentialled," I said; glanced behind me. "There's a magazine store. They'll supply."

  "Hasten," said John. My skirt hobbled me from rushing; as I tried to dash I sensed a lightheaded feel, as if I were airshort after only a few steps. The store was small, no wider than three meters; the single window was curtained by rows of magazines held with metal clips. Within, racked magazines papered one wall; stacks of newspapers laid atop a radiator bulwarked the window. The proprietor looked to be seated behind a barrier of candy, and it was a moment more before I realized that he stood. His other customers, two prepube boys, pawed comics and stared as if they were mentally denuding me.

  "Hi ho," I said; the proprietor stonefaced me. "I need a road atlas. Can you give me aid and comfort?" He pointed an ink-blackened finger toward a shelf near the boys. "What's the damage?"

  "Half a buck," he said. "You can't read, lady?"

  "Fifty cents," I repeated to myself, trusting that I could accurately convert. Finding two silver quarters in my purse I handed them over, and he slung them into a wooden box; they chimed, landing atop previous receipts. "And a newspaper," I added, seizing one of the smaller atlases.

  "Okay. Which one?"

  Nin
e stacks of different titles awaited my selection. "This'll do," I said, retrieving a Daily Mirror, gathering from its mast that it was national, not local.

  "Nickel." The ones I had bore a bust of an AboriginalAmerican on one side and an animal on the other. He sneered at my coin. "Lady, this ain't a nickel."

  "Sorry," I said; another error of research. From my purse I withdrew a dollar.

  "Nothin' smaller?"

  I shook my head; as he coined me in return I examined one of his nickels, but couldn't recognize the figures depicted. "You haven't history books, have you?" I asked.

  "Why would I?"

  "Would anyone nearby? I'll pay through the nose."

  "Hey lady, you want a history book?" one of the boys asked. His voice broke as he spoke; from his look I'd have judged his age as no more than eight, but his sound suggested fifteen. I wondered if they went manly sooner, over here. "You can buy mine," he said, passing me a hardcover he carried. Its torn orange cloth bore the words The Growth of the American Republic, Fourth Edition; the author's line pronounced it writ by Casner and Gilbert.

  "You don't need it?" I asked. "For schooling?"

  "I'll tell 'em I lost it. How much you give me?"

  "A fin?" I suggested, slipping him one of my tens.

  "Yeah, swell." He and his friend evidenced no suspicion as they admired the bill; I sighed, relieved that it suited, and gratified as well that our mission's minor task had been successed so soon. Taking my buys, I readied to depart. "Hey, lady," the child said.

  "Yes?"

  "How much for this?" He drew his forefinger in and out of his mouth, slurping as if lunching up noodles. By his laughter I gathered that the proprietor appreciated the boy's mimesis; I didn't. Walking out sans reply, I briskfooted as I'd entered, returning to our car.

  "Police roundabouting," John said, shifting into drive as I seated myself. "Our look peculiars in unguessed manner, I'd reason."

  "Let's take that big road," I said, peering downstreet; at 42nd's terminus was a tangle of ramps, resembling a razorwire barrier tumbled groundways. "Onload there. It'll send us soonest, fastest."

  Neither police nor any others approached as we merged into traffic; at Ninth Avenue John steered us onto the Jerseybound ramp. Cars ahead stopped, started and stopped again; walls on either side of the ramp blinded our view of what awaited, and it was only as we readied to blend that our chosen course showed plain. The Midtown Arterial carried twenty lanes; cars, trucks and buses hurtled by at unnerving velocity.

  "This wasn't forewarned," I said.

  "Little has been," John said. "It's an Indy racecourse. Brace, Iz. We'll thunder road."

  We were over the river, on the highway's towerless bridge before we commingled with the traffic flow; the water was unseeable from where we'd laned ourselves. "Aim me, Iz," John said, twohanding the wheel, stilling the wobbles raised by car-wind. "Which way?"

  "Moment." Opening our new atlas I studied the metro map, marveling at the network charted. "John, it's so different-" Two express routes-I-1 and 1-2-cut across Long Island, splitting into four crosstowns before entering Manhattan; another pair, 1-3 and 1-4, came down from New England, slicing the Bronx and Harlem before they, too, divided.

  "Shit, "John said, his stare fixing roadways. "Iz, it's hellbound. Viz this, would you?"

  The six Manhattan crosstowns shot into Jersey, coalescing atop the remnants of Weehawken and Union City, thrusting an eighty-lane boulevard into the blurred horizon. Not even LA had such roads in our world, in our day.

  "What's the speed limit?" I asked as he floored. "Hypersonic?"

  "None, as evidenced," said John. "We're topping out." He held our car within our entry-lane; around us vehicles bearing like look to ours, though of subtler hue, paced and overtook us sans seeming exertion. The preponderance of cars were a smaller model that was no more than a bulge with running boards; appearing, grouped, as insects swarming over the highway's gray hide. Some lanes were used solely by double-length trucks and buses, moving so fast as the cars though they held ten times the mass.

  "Where now, Iz?" John shouted. "Inform! Hasten-!"

  "Hold," I shouted, glancing forthback, attempting to overlay the print grid with the one through which we mazed. High steel towers, each shingled with a dozen directionals, stood at roadside every hundred meters, forecasting which lane would carry which vehicles where; in our rush their words were indecipherable. Oversized billboards began lining the expressway's low outbanks, spaced every twenty meters, positioned at an angle visible, if unreadable, to all who drove by. "I'll have it, momentslong-"

  "Which way?" Seven lanes on our right plunged earthward as their course redirected north.

  "1-3, bearing south," I said, fixing our position on the Jersey map. Staring through the overcast I eyed an upcoming tower's signs; sighted the guidemark needed. "Go left, ten lanes across."

  "Ten?"

  "As told," I said. 'john-!" One of those buggish cars almost slipsided us as we underwayed our sidle. My husband jerked the wheel; I cycled my feet against the floor as if, against reason, I might assist in braking us. Horns blared, sounding as a flock's migratory blast; no one struck our car, however close they came. As John swerved the car into the proper lane I saw his arms shaking; he was so pale as to look leeched.

  "Straight on from here?" he asked. "Iz-?"

  "A direct slipstream, the map claims." Our lane elevated, shooting off into the south. It shocked to see how ivoried I'd turned; my hands looked as if they belonged not solely to another, but to another's corpse. I tried untensing by studying the roadlining ads as they showed, one riff per second, gleaning such phrases as I could: IT'S FUN TO PHONE/WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS/DOCTORS RECOMMEND CAMELS/BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS/DIXIELAND ONLY 275 MIS"ONE MORE" FOR THE ROAD? MAKE IT RUPPERT'S-

  "There but for grace," John said, staring past me. "Below."

  Our road lifted us ten additional meters above the inbound lanes as they curved away from the mainline; following my husband's nod, I looked down and watched an ongoing accident. Vehicles piled up as if they'd been dumped out from a bag, blocking fifteen lanes; oncoming cars and buses sutteed themselves upon the pyre sans cease. Through the black billow I re-reregarded New York; the city was already unseeable, blotted not so much by the smoke as by the haze which, I now saw, hung heaviest above the interstate. Our lane rejoined earth, alongsided nineteen similar and carried us away.

  "They'll back up to Pennsylvania," I said, hypnotized by the plume of the accident. Closing my eyes, I felt my aches anew; whether brought on by fear, by stress or by ozone, my head's pain doubled as if my brain was swelling beyond the confines of my skull. "You're calming?" I asked my husband.

  "By comparison," he said. "Should we have prepped at all, considering? None of this is as they said."

  "They estimated, nothing more," I said. His voice's tremble matched that of his body. "We're safe enough for now." When I attempted to stroke his shoulder, he shook me away, as if my touch might sear.

  "So they believed," he said, nodding back toward the flames.

  " `The Federal Interstate Road Network,' it says, `designed by Robert Moses in 1943 in accordance with the transportation directives of President Willkie's Provisional War Orders of 1942, continues to serve the nation as it never needed to in war-' "

  "They're built to carry tanks, then?" John asked. I flipped through the atlas's intro. "Does it detail?"

  "No theory, only fact," I said, glancing across each page; returned to my reading. " `Built between 1944 and 1953 at a cost of-' "

  "You adjust to it with such ease," he said, one unshaking hand at rest upon the wheel; with his other he plucked fruit from the bag he brought. "A smoother ride's unimagined."

  My husband's apparent peace intensified mine; I put away the atlas, and gazed windowways. Between the unending ads I glimpsed Jersey suburbs, the treeless redbrick veldt. Forestpatches dotted the undeveloped stretches that remained, resembling a futon's stuffing aburst at the seams. It struck me tha
t the billboards commanded, rather than sold; they told this world's consumers to sleep eight hours nightly, brush their teeth with chlorophyll paste, fulfill civic responsibilities whenever called, smoke tobacco products, marry the right girl, keep regular, report suspicious behavior and visit Dixieland.

  "Dixieland's a city or country?" John asked, seeing another of its ads; this one had as centerpiece an upright pig playing a violin as it hoisted one trotter skyward. SOOEE, its words read, YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT.

  "A song, I thought." The interstate narrowed to fourteen mirror-smooth groundbound lanes between cities; but at Trenton's outskirts, at Philadelphia's and Wilmington's, it reascended, cleaving each city's heart as it unthreaded, mul- tilaning ever upward as if to the moon. One billboard, seen repeatedly, proclaimed Three Days Coast to Coast by Interstate and it must have been so; we reached Baltimore in two and a quarter hours.

  "You medicated again before we left Queens?" I asked John, noting his lingering pallor, fearing that this world's germs had stormed his defenses.

  "I'll redose this evening." The time approached eleven; by our clocks it should have been that night, or the next morn ing. I uncertained which; my circadians hadn't yet attuned to the off-beat.

  "You've a bloodless look," I told him. "Aware me of any complaints, John. Inoculations notwithstanding, unknowns could be infecting even as we speak-"

  "No complaints while partnered," he said, his voice so gentle that I barely thought it his. "None to file. Look roundabout, Iz. This is as it should be."

  Whether John referred to the world without or the world within our car was unguessable, and he didn't elaborate. How much of his calm resulted from faux-nostalgia's sedative was unguessable as well. Were imagined memories of this illusory past endorphing him with thought of tranquil comfort, or were we simply feeling ourselves reborn as teenylovers, run away from an unendurable home? I couldn't pin my own feeling, much less my husband's; continued studying this world's fossils, frozen in the amber air. I wondered if one recalled a lover's lost qualities as one rebuilds, in mind's eye, a lost house or school or street; were the true lines inevitably remodeled when seen again through a haze made heavier by years?