TWENTY-EIGHT

WHEN WE GOT OUT OF THE MUSTANG, THE FAMILIAR alleyway dwindled north and south into deeper gloom than I recalled from other nights, little-revealed by moonlight, obscured by moon-shadows.

Above the back entrance to the restaurant kitchen, a security lamp glowed. Yet the darkness seemed to press toward it rather than to shrink away.

Uncovered stairs led to a second-floor landing and the door to Terri Stambaugh's apartment. Light shone behind the curtains.

At the top of the steps, Stormy pointed at the northern sky. "Cassiopeia."

Star by star, I identified the points of the constellation.

In classic mythology, Cassiopeia was the mother of Andromeda. Andromeda was saved from a sea monster by the hero Perseus, who also slew the Gorgon Medusa.

No less than the fabled Andromeda, Stormy Llewellyn, daughter of another Cassiopeia, is stellar enough to deserve a constellation named for her. I have slain no Gorgons, however, and I am no Perseus.

Terri answered the door when I knocked, accepted the car keys, and insisted that we come in for coffee or a nightcap.

Light from two candles throbbed pleasantly over the kitchen walls as cool drafts of conditioned air teased the flames. Terri had been sitting at the table when I knocked. A small glass of peach brandy stood on the red-and-white-checkered oilcloth.

As always, the background music of her life was Elvis: this time, "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck."

We had known that she would expect us to visit for a while, which is why Stormy hadn't waited at the bottom of the stairs.

Terri sometimes suffers from insomnia. Even if sleep slips upon her with ease, the nights are long.

When the closed sign is hung on the front door of the Grille at nine o'clock and after the last customer leaves between nine and ten, whether Terri is drinking decaf coffee or something stronger, she opens as well a bottle of loneliness.

Her husband, Kelsey, her high-school sweetheart, has been dead for nine years. His cancer had been relentless, but being a fighter of uncommon determination, he had taken three years to die.

When his malignancy was diagnosed, he swore that he would not leave Terri alone. He possessed the will but not the power to keep that oath.

In his final years, because of the unfailing good humor and the quiet courage with which Kelsey waged his long mortal battle, Terri's love and respect for him, always deep, had grown profound.

In a way, Kelsey had kept his promise never to leave her. His ghost does not linger around the Grille or anywhere else in Pico Mundo. He lives vividly in her recollections, however, and his memory is etched on her soul.

After three or four years, her grief had matured into a settled sorrow. I think she has been surprised that even after arriving at an acceptance of her loss, she has had no desire to mend the tear in her heart. The hole that Kelsey left has become more comforting to her than any patch with which she could close it.

Her fascination with Elvis, his life and music, began nine years ago, when she was thirty-two, the same year that Kelsey died.

The reasons for her intense interest in Presley are numerous. Without a doubt, however, among them is this one: As long as she has an Elvis collection-music, memorabilia, biographical facts-to build and maintain, she has no time to be attracted to a living man and can remain emotionally true to her lost husband.

Elvis is the door that she closes in the face of romance. The architecture of his life is her mountain retreat, her high redoubt, her nunnery

Stormy and I sat at the table. Terri subtly steered us away from the fourth chair, the one that Kelsey had always occupied when alive.

The subject of our impending wedding came up before we properly settled in our seats. With the peach brandy that she poured for us, Terri raised a toast to our enduring happiness.

Every autumn, she brews crocks full of peach skins into this elixir: ferments, strains, bottles it. The flavor is irresistible, and the brandy packs a punch best handled in small glasses.

Later, as Stormy and I were finishing our second servings, and as the King was singing "Love Me Tender," I told Terri about taking Elvis for a ride in her car. She was thrilled at first, but then saddened to hear that he had wept throughout our travels.

"I've seen him cry a few times before," I said. "Since his death, he seems emotionally fragile. But this was the worst he's ever been in my experience."

"Of course," Terri said, "there's no mystery why he would be a total mess today of all days."

"Well, it's a mystery to me," I assured her.

"It's August fourteenth. At three-fourteen in the morning on August 14,1958, his mama died. She was only forty-six."

"Gladys," Stormy said. "Her name was Gladys, wasn't it?"

There is movie-star fame like that enjoyed by Tom Cruise, rock-star fame like that of Mick Jagger, literary fame, political fame__But mere fame has grown into real legend when people of different generations remember your mother's name a quarter of a century after your death and nearly half a century after hers.

"Elvis was in the service," Terri recalled. 'August twelfth, he flew home to Memphis on emergency leave and went to his mother's bedside in the hospital. But the sixteenth of August is a bad day for him, too."

"Why?"

"That's when he died," Terri said.

"Elvis himself?" Stormy asked.

"Yes. August 16, 1977."

I had finished the second peach brandy.

Terri offered the bottle.

I wanted more but didn't need it. I covered my empty glass with my hand and said, "Elvis seemed concerned about me."

"How do you mean?" Terri asked.

"He patted me on the arm. Like he felt sympathy for me. He had this… this melancholy look, as if he was taking pity on me for some reason."

This revelation alarmed Stormy. "You didn't tell me this. Why didn't you tell me?"

I shrugged. "It doesn't mean anything. It was just Elvis."

"So if it doesn't mean anything," Terri asked, "why did you mention it?"

"It means something to me," Stormy declared. "Gladys died on the fourteenth. Elvis died on the sixteenth. The fifteenth, smack between them-that's when this Robertson sonofabitch is going to go gunning for people. Tomorrow."

Terri frowned at me. "Robertson?"

"Fungus Man. The guy I borrowed your car to find."

"Did you find him?"

"Yeah. He lives in Camp's End."

"And?"

"The chief and I… we're on it."

"This Robertson is a toxic-waste mutant out of some psycho movie," Stormy told Terri. "He came after us at St. Bart's, and when we gave him the slip, he trashed some of the church."

Terri offered Stormy more peach brandy. "He's going to go gunning for people, you said?"

Stormy doesn't drink heavily, but she accepted another round. "Your fry cook's recurring dream is finally coming true."

Now Terri looked alarmed. "The dead bowling-alley employees?"

"Plus maybe a lot of people in a movie theater," Stormy said, and then she tossed back her peach brandy in one swallow.

"Does this also have something to do with Viola's dream?" Terri asked me.

"It's too long a story for now," I told her. "It's late. I'm whipped."

"It has everything to do with her dream," Stormy told Terri.

"I need some sleep," I pleaded. "I'll tell you tomorrow, Terri, after it's all over."

When I pushed my chair back, intending to get up, Stormy seized my arm and held me at the table. "And now I find out Elvis Presley himself has warned Oddie that he's going to die tomorrow."

I objected. "He did no such thing. He just patted me on the arm and then later, before he got out of the car, he squeezed my hand."

"Squeezed your hand?" Stormy asked in a tone implying that such a gesture could be interpreted only as an expression of the darkest foreboding.