Fame Isn't Everything [Elvis]

Chapter 9 - Independence Day: Tale as Old as Time

"Okay, here goes nothin'," I said as people passed my parked car, and they were pointing at it, and girls were getting excited and standing around. I even noticed a couple of reporters probably there to write about the parade.

I got out of the car, and the people decked out in 4th of July attire stared at me for a couple of seconds. I almost expected all of them to go nuts, but... some of the people left, disappointed. I heard one person say, "Oh, I guess it's not him. The car looks like his."

I wanted to fall over from shock. No way! It worked! No one was reacting to me in the usual way!

"It's not him, but he sure is handsome," said one pretty blonde girl around twenty years old, and she winked at me. Her mother told her not to flirt and pulled her arm away. The other girls around looked disappointed and left.

"Holy mother of God, I can't believe it," I enthused. "They really don't know who I am."

I rounded my car. I was right next to the building I needed to be at, but I wanted to test this. I checked my watch and saw that I had eight minutes. At exactly 7:58 I had to be up at Ignis's door. Until then...

I started walking down the street, saying "Happy 4th" to people and "Good mornin'" and things like that, while politely smiling at them. They were all cordial and greeted me in the like, and I got several stares by women and girls.

"Wow, who was that guy, Alice?" one girl said to another as they both looked back at me as I walked by. "He looks like a movie star."

This was insane! I loved it! Well, I liked being recognized and making people's day by them seeing me, but this... it was relieving like nothing I had ever experienced since becoming famous. I was actually walking down a busy street, and no one shouted, "It's Elvis!"

I checked my watch. "Oh, boy. I gotta go."

I turned around and walked briskly down the street and came to the building. My body was starting to buzz, and I started running. Why did she have to live on the top floor? This building had no elevator.

Wheezing when I came to the fifth floor, I found room 55. Huh. That was the year I shot into fame. I knocked, and the door instantly opened. My arm was taken, and I was pulled into what I now knew to be an apartment.

"Oh my, that was close," Ignis gasped as she was in her usual black, outdated get-up. I was so used to seeing her like this that it didn't faze me one bit while others would think it very outlandish. It was her, regardless if she looked stunning in her other form. "One more second, and people would've recognized you."

"No one was in the hallway, though."

"Still. So? How was it?'

I grinned. "Man... I..." I stared at her big brown eyes that were surrounded by black liner, and very long, thick lashes that looked rather amazing on her. I found myself hugging her, and I instantly took in a scent of ginger and some kind of flower. It was pleasant, like the spicy aroma of her home. "Thank you so much for that, Ignis. I really needed to just walk down a street and not be recognized. It was so amazin', and... it doesn't seem possible. People had no idea who I was."

She was frigid in my arms, as well as dainty. Wow, she was quite pleasantly curvy. "Well, that was the point. And I'm glad it worked."

"It sure did. Thank you. Like I said, I needed that, after bein' famous for ten years."

"Again, I'm glad it worked. Um..."

I was still holding onto her. I let her go, and that was when I saw the rest of her apartment. "Oh, wow-wee!"

She had the usual sofa, armchair, TV and kitchen with a table, but it all matched her perfectly with the deep reds and black, and there were shelves of odd things in jars, mostly plants, and on the kitchen table was a large clear bowl that looked like a fishbowl but was tinted black. That was a cauldron!