TRUE LIES, A-BOOM-BAM-BUM!

/, Sound, Blesok no. 120-121/TRUE LIES, A-BOOM-BAM-BUM!

TRUE LIES, A-BOOM-BAM-BUM!

I can’t walk out, because I love you too much baby

1. EP and His Wife

I

It is 1959.
Pricilla sits in her simple room. The table and the chair are a set from the antiquity store, pulled out from the dust only for her love. She cries. She touches the magnetophon with nervous moves. It was a brand new and modern dictating machine, a GrundigStenorette, produced in Germany, that same year. The voice that addresses her is familiar.

I walk down 7th street. The city is perfect at these moments. I would not change anything. Multi-coloured cabriolets drive on all sides transferring joined black and white rhythms. Yes, you know better the meaning of Elvis’s decision to dance with his hips and knees on our small stage, in our club. Cilla, I don’t love him as you do, but, believe me, we belong to the same gang. In the end, I launched the hairstyle before him. You know that yourself. You will regret travelling to Europe and missing all this, that is why I am recording everything. This tape is my ultimate gift to you. You can feel my and your day. I hope everything will be as I planned. You know, I have to return some money to Fat Al until tonight or his gorillas will throw me into the river. I know, I know, you’ll say I am an idiot for taking money from him, but I had to pay off the car, buy some nice clothes and a ticket for a concert. For you, this time, it all has to be classy. Or I will simply rent a room in the fucking Broken Hearts Hotel and become part of the inventory there. Don’t worry, dear, I have a plan.

She switched off the machine, stood up and went to the window. She could no longer cry. She cried out everything — tears, sweat, urine… She only had some blood to draw. She went back to the magnetophon and activated it again. The voice waited for her
Buddy has a business for me. We’ll meet in five minutes. I will help him screw some dumbasses and take the cash.

II

As he was saying this, Frankie confidently walked the streets that he had grown on. He had never been a daddy’s boy, but he was far from not being good. He had always lived for music. He walked for music, he dressed for music and he loved women. After finishing his studies, he opened a small law office, but it did not last long because he couldnot cope with the system. Since then, from time to time, he helped at the Club and he managed around doing insignificant little dirty jobs like the one that he was supposed to do today. He usually wore dark blue jeans, white T-shirt and black leather jacket. Today he also had the small gun of his relative, without bullets. He hated weapons, but sometimes it was necessary. As soon as he entered the bar, a guy gave him the agreed sign. No, nothing will go wrong. He would simply hand over the small package, take the money, send it to Fat Al who would take theguerrillas off his neck. If only time did not pass so fast. It was already six o’clock. He has to be skilful and stay alive.

Pricilla turned off the machine again. She knew that the tape has to be listed until the end and then move further, wherever it takes her. She received the tape several hours ago from a red haired man who still waited on the ground floor. This same man was the head of security at Elvis’s concert on the day that was recorded on the tape. Yes, the tape waited for her.
Frankie tried to note this day in an intelligent manner. He knew that the recorded concert would be the biggest gift to his girlfriend, but he hoped that the motive would win over the material, that he would win Elvis on that recording. For this purpose, he spoke the dearest verses from Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”. He could barely wait to return and tell her things that could not fit on any tape. For example, how he discovered that character, his name was Kerouac, and his delight with his discovery, that poetry and the mad prose that the word had not seen before. He had not seen it. Soon! It was seven twenty, and by seven, he was supposed to return the money to Fat Al. It did not worry him too much. He felt good. He walked to Al’s hiding place, the money was in the small green bag and the time ticket as it was supposed to. At the very entrance he was joined by somebody who led him to the notorious boss. He was previously taken away the small gun without bullets. He held the back firm as it was the only way to keep hold of life. Fat Al sat in the armchair peacefully and he stroked the old cat. The animal was so long with him that they started to look like each other.

“Money is here. Everything is in the bag, even the interest. Thank you.”

III

Hey, imagine, Cilla, when I arrived, he had already ordered that they take me. Only because I was several minutes late… fuck it… Nobody can believe anybody. Of course, as soon as I handed the money, everything changed. The concert starts in half an hour. I am already in the 7th street. I can’t believe that I will see Elvis, probably even meet him, it is my club, after all.

He walked with his head up as he said this. He had a brand new grey coat on and the same white T-shirt that he believed brought him luck. He saw the crowd at the entrance to the Club. He saw all of these girls, but not Priscilla. He thought about the irony of it all and he walked to the entrance when two hands grabbed him from the back. Another man came from the front. Their eyes met, as he cut into his stomach with a knife. He lost his balance, and in the distance there was a cold voice that transmitted the message, not knowing that it was cancelled.

Everything turned pale until it finally became black. In his left hand he still held the magnetophon. He lied on the street, bleeding and mumbling the final words. Did it work for him to intelligently note this day? The rain started. A real shower, it rained cats and dogs. In a minute enough water was collected to also carry a gush of blood down the street. In front of the doors of the Club his white T-shirt became red.

Unbelievable! Here, in front of the fucking Club my T-shirt was no longer white but red… how stupid.

These were the last recorded words. Priscilla turned around the room once again and then she ran down the stairs. She was expected by the man from whom she had received the recording, Frankie was already dead when he took the magnetophon from his hand. That is how he came to the track. He told Elvis everything, and he sent him to the girl. As the limo slowly glided towards Graceland, Priscilla thought about his happiness.

2. Detective Jazz

IV

It is August 1977. The middle of the month. Skies and earth are on fire. Detective Lt. Rust Martinez arrived in Memphis in the beginning of the year. Before this, for a whole decade he made a grudge with everybody in thestreets of San Francisco.

They hated him equally from both sides of the law. That is how he ended in Memphis. What they set as a punishment was understood just like that — as a revenge that he would ever forgive them, nor let it go. Fucking peasants! The system might be stronger, but that is why Martinez was uglier and crazier, and he had music. In the 1950es he skipped rock-and-roll, and later all other trends of popular music in the 1960es and 1970es. He was one of those jazzy-smooth-but-don’t-fuck-with-me guys. He got hooked up on beebop with the first hearing and he never let it go. He owner a trombone and he played on it when nobody listed and he secretly dreamed that one day he would open a bar in New York, and return theglory of Five Spot Cafe at Manhattan. Still, when he was sent to Graceland on August 16, he did not remain indifferent to thesouvenirs of the life of the one who was proclaimed the king of rock-and-roll.

Until he faced a wall things had some sense. He saw the shadows of the beginning, he knew how to smell the end, put the things in their frames. However, this was quite different. He fixed his hat. He had a theory that the angle of the fixed hat on one’s head was very important for the energy of the person and the thin line between life and death. As hypnotized, he stared at what was written on the bathroom tiles just above Elvis’s dead body.

the year in which I live
perversely turns romantics
into habit
because of this
almost cold I want to know
why you remind me
of former Bridget Bardot
look at me
stay as you aren’t
come closer so we love each other
we will endanger the roads
pretending we have no
plans
cadillac
money
only imagine and come
let’s leave Las Vegas together

Poetry in Elvis’s toilet?! What the fuck! Does it mean that he was killed? A plot of the secret services, poets and mercenaries who cry? All of a sudden everything has become symbolic and he saw signs in everything.

He wished that the King was alive, that he could prepare him one of those famous banana and peanut butter sandwiches of his. You think much better with your stomach full. Rock-a-hula baby a-boom-bam-boom!

V

The investigation never found out whose lipstickwas used by Presley to write down on his Graceland toilet tiles what would turn out to be the last lines of his life in art. And his life in general. Ginger Alden persistently and hysterically claimed that the lipstick was not hers. The polygraph, driver, gardener and the pool cleaner all confirmed her story.

AuthorMehmed Begić
Translated byElizabeta Bakovska
2018-09-20T12:35:11+00:00 September 19th, 2018|Categories: Reviews, Sound, Blesok no. 120-121|Tags: , |0 Comments