Officer Elvis by Gary Gusick Read Free Book Online Page A

Security card, and Capital One Visa.
    The bathroom in the furnished apartment he’d rented had a medicine cabinet with a three-way mirror. It was just the kind Bill needed—part of the reason he’d rented this particular apartment. He studied his face carefully, turning from left to right, and then back the other way, adjusting each section of the mirror so he could see his face from every possible angle. He had a handheld mirror, too, and used that to check out the back of his head. Finally, he used one of those close-up mirrors that women use when they’re putting on their makeup or trying to pluck their eyebrows. He couldn’t afford to miss anything.
    This was his routine. He went through it the exact same way four times a day. The first time was when he’d just woken up, even before he washed his face. Then, after he’d washed, shaved, and dressed, he checked the mirrors again. And again when he came home at night, just as he’d done the other times. And then, one last time before he went to bed. He couldn’t get enough of that face.
    Before he checked himself out, each time he worried that the other times had been part of a dream. He was terrified that his transformed face would be gone, and in its place would be the old one—the face of the wannabe.
    He looked again. Just like all the other times, the face staring back at him in the mirror was the right face. It was the same face he’d seen in the photos he’d collected since he was a kid. He had memorized every part of every feature in every photo: the curve of the lips, the length of nose, the degree of roundness of each nostril, the geometry of the forehead, the length of the jaw, the size and shape of the chin. When he closed his eyes he could picture it in minuscule detail in his mind. And now it was his face.
    He’d taken a trip to Switzerland to get the surgery done, just to be on the safe side. He’d brought a box filled with old photos for the doctor to study. “How close can you come to this?” he asked.
    If the doctor recognized the face in the photos, he didn’t let on. The doctor looked back and forth between the various photos and his face, feeling his jawline, the thickness of his nose. After which the doctor also photographed his face, from every which angle. The doctor examined everything. “Come back tomorrow,” the doctor said, in a Germanic accent. “The receptionist will take your payment on the way out.”
    The next day the doctor showed him a 3-D image. “This will be you,” the doctor said, inviting him to take a seat in front of the computer monitor.
    First he saw the old face, the dull one that wasn’t the real him, the wannabe, the one he desperately wanted to be rid of. The doctor leaned in behind him and moved the computer mouse, so that the old him became the real him right there before his eyes while the 3-D image was rotating around on the screen. It was just like the movies.
    “You can do this?” he asked. “To real flesh?”
    In response he got that smug look doctors always use when they’re trying to tell you, without saying so, that they’re way ahead of you. “It’s not a question of the doctor’s skill. What you wish can be achieved, but it will require multiple operations.” What he was getting at, of course, was what about the fee.
    No problem. He had the dough. Thanks to years of penny-pinching. Riding around in an old beat-the-hell-up car, and living in a cramped studio apartment in the white-trash part of town, his wardrobe bought at Target. And when he traveled, it was always on the cheap. Saving, saving, saving. Then his mother passed, and there was the house and some life insurance. So when the doctor laid the actual price on him, he didn’t balk. “I can do it. I’ll give you cash. Greenbacks,” he said, and saw the doctor’s eyes light up.
    “Cash,” the doctor repeated. He suspected the doctor saw where he was going.
    “But the deal is, I was never here,” he said. “None of this