Extraits

On Tuesday I was in a band with Elvis. Lucky for me, he wasn’t the overweight Elvis from the 1970s, eating a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich and wearing a sequined jumpsuit, the version most impersonators go for. In that case, Ms. Lottie, the wardrobe lady, would have decked me out in a Las Vegas costume with a huge headpiece, a sheer body stocking, and sequined pasties over my nipples. Everybody in the band was supposed to match, more or less. So if the lead singer had been drugged-out Elvis on death’s door in Vegas, his fiddle player would have been a bare-breasted showgirl.

And to think: my sweet granddad had gotten me this afternoon job. If I’d had to wear an outfit like that, it would have served the rest of my family right.