“We just got here,” Lula said. “We're going down to play some slots.”
“We're going to the show,” Gus said. “We hear Tom Jones is singing in the lounge.”
Lula's eyes got the size of duck eggs and popped out of her eye sockets. “Tom Jones! Are you shitting me? I love Tom Jones.”
“You should come with us,” Wayne said. “We wouldn't mind having a couple chicks tagging along, right, Gus?”
Lula looked down at little Wayne. “Listen up, Shorty,” she said. “I don't do that patronizing, sexist chick shit.”
“We gotta say things like that,” Wayne told her. “We're Elvis impersonators. We're Vegas, baby.”
“Oh yeah, I guess I could see that. Sorry,” Lula said.
The elevator hit the casino floor and we all got out and hustled across the casino to the lounge. Me, Connie, Lula, and two over-?the-?hill Elvis impersonators. We reached the lounge and were stopped by a crush of people waiting to get in.
“Oh man,” Lula said. “Look at this crowd. We're not gonna get in.”
“They always let Elvis in,” the big guy said, and he started bumping people out of the way with his belly. “Uh, s'cuze me. The King's comin' through,” he'd say. And then he'd sort of snarl and curl his lip the way Elvis used to.
We were packed up behind him, moving in his wake. All of us getting excited about seeing Tom Jones, willing to step on a few toes to do it. Gus got us a position close to the stage, off to the side. The room lights were dim and the stage was washed in red light. A band was playing. We ordered drinks and Tom Jones was introduced.
The minute Jones came onstage Lula went ape-?shit. Lula didn't care about anything but Tom Jones. “Hey, Tom, honey, look over here,” she yelled out. “Look at Lula!”
All around us women were throwing room keys and panties onto the stage. And then from the corner of my eye I caught sight of Lula pitching a giant hot-?pink satin thong at Tom Jones. It was the biggest thong I'd ever seen. It was a King Kong thong. It hit Tom Jones square in the face. Wap!
“Holy crap,” Connie said.
Tom Jones staggered back a step, snagged the thong from off his face, looked at it, and forgot the words to the song he was singing. The band was playing, but Tom Jones was just standing there staring at the thong.
“Maybe I should throw my bra, too,” Lula said.
“No!” Connie and I said, worried Tom Jones would go into cardiac arrest at the sight. “Not a good idea. Overkill.”
Tom Jones snapped out of his coma, stuffed the thong into his tux pocket, and went back to singing.
“I don't think Tom Jones looks all that good,” Connie said to me. “He looks different somehow. Like he's had a face-?lift that went wrong.”
“And he's sort of fat,” I said. “And he can't sing anymore.”
“That's blasphemous to say about Tom Jones,” Lula said. “You can't go dissin' Tom Jones.”
Wayne leaned across Lula. “It's not Tom Jones. I thought you knew that. It's a Tom Jones impersonator. They're having a convention here, too.”
“What?” Lula yelled. “I gave my underpants to an impostor?”
“He's pretty good, though,” Gus said. “He's got a lot of the moves down pretty good.”
“I want my underpants back,” Lula shouted to the stage. “I don't go giving away perfectly good underpants to impostors. You got my underpants under false pretenses. And you can't even sing! I bet these two Elvis impersonators could sing better than you.”
The guy on the stage stopped singing, shaded his eyes against the lights with his hand, and squinted over at us. “Elvis impersonators? I've got some goddamn Elvis impersonators at my show?”
“Uh oh,” Wayne said. “Elvis impersonators and Tom Jones impersonators don't get along.”
A low rumble went through the crowd. Elvis impersonators, they were grumbling. The nerve!
“Get them,” someone shouted. “Get the dirty lousy Elvis impersonators.”
Someone reached for little Wayne, and Lula stepped in. “Hold on here,” she said. “We came with these guys. They're good guys. They got us in here.”