Edge of Reality [Elvis]

1957 - Jailhouse Rock, a Memorable Sequence

My life really made a wild turn. At least for me, it seemed like the case. I was so busy last year with all the concerts I had to do. When the year was through, the Colonel and I counted up to almost two hundred concerts that I did the whole of the year. There was a movie thrown in there as well. And that was the wild turn—moviemaking. It started out with Love Me Tender, then I did Loving You. Now, Jailhouse Rock was in the process of filming. My third movie. I could hardly believe it, after wanting to try my hand at acting. I wanted to be a singer before, now, I was both a singer and an actor.

The whole set was a bustle the moment I stepped into the building. I saw people running around carrying clip boards and people wearing the uniforms for the number we would be doing. According to my film director Richard Thorpe, this was a number that hadn't been done before, at least in the style we were shooting for. He said it would be remembered into the next century. I doubted it. I was famous at the moment, yes, but would I be around fifty years from now? When I would be an old man? It was mind-boggling to think that in the year 2000, I would be sixty-five years old. A grandfather.

"Mr. Presley, great to see ya again."

As I walked through a hallway of this busy set with my manager, people greeted me. This man looked my age. "Good mornin'," I told him. "Great to see ya again, too, Adam. You holdin' up alright?"

We had chatted the day before. He was fairly new to this job, and he seemed a bit nervous. He said, hugging a clipboard. "Yeah, I am. This is my first time working on something big. I mean, this is my first time in a real job. I mean... golly, I'm sorry."

The poor guy. I patted his shoulder. "Hey, don't sweat it, alright? You're doin' a swell job. I gotta go now to get dressed."

"Right. Good luck with the number today. It's going to be incredible. It's going to make history, from what I've heard."

"That's what I heard, too. We'll see, I guess."

"Right." I about left, but Adam said my name again, like he remembered something. "I apologize, I just wanted to say that a young lady was looking for you earlier. May not seem like much to you since you're surrounded by girls all the time, but she seemed pretty desperate to know when you were coming in and when she could see you."

My interest was piqued. "Was she a pretty girl?"

"Oh, yes, she was a vision."

"Blonde, brunet, redhead?"

"A blonde. Her hair was up in a bun, so I couldn't tell if she had curly or straight hair, but she had large blue eyes. Honestly, I could hardly speak when I talked to her earlier."

A pretty blonde with big blue eyes, huh? "How long ago was this?"

He checked his watch. "I want to say a half-hour ago. I've never seen her before, but I've only been here for a week, so I'm a poor judge. She may have been a reporter. A young one. She looked to be younger than us."

I instantly thought of another blonde, blue-eyed girl I thought was a young reporter, a girl who never left my mind and who I became a bit crazy about. But there were a lot of blonde, blue eye-eyed girls in the world. I had to remember that whenever I saw some girl who looked like Meara, or when I really thought I saw her in the past several months in the various cities that I was in.

"I'll keep my eye out," I said. "Thanks, pal. See ya."

I shook his shoulder and left to my dressing room. As I changed into my uniform, a black prison uniform with the number 6240 on the left breast, I thought about that girl Adam told me about. A year-and-a-half passed since the last time I saw Meara. It most likely wasn't her. Maybe just another fan who got onto the set. The girl Adam spoke of, her hair was up. If he said her hair was down and curly, I would know it was her. Yeah, she was probably just a fan or some gal working on the set.