Arthur Hillbrook continued, "That scene is the only one I thought I'd warn you about since..." His gaze trailed toward Loretta's trailer.
"Then maybe Loretta is who you should talk to," Elvis managed, "And she said it was fine when we last talked."
"Fine? Having to run all over the place to find my lead actors isn't fine. The havoc your companions wreck on this set isn't fine. None of this is fine. We're on a tight schedule, Parker is driving me insane-"
"That's not my fault."
"And now your wife is here, on set..."
Elvis practically felt his own face pale for a small part of him had still been hoping to be able to hide this from Arthur, to ship Priscilla off to the house before they started filming and have no one be any wiser. Elvis' head whipped around when Loretta's trailer door was pushed open and she emerged, a combination of dread and surprise evident on her face.
"What is goin' on?" she asked.
"We're getting ready to do a couple of pick ups. The kissing scene..." Arthur paused, waiting for her reaction- or rather, her lack thereof. She was either very good at hiding her emotions or completely fine with this.
"Okay," Loretta said when Arthur did not continue. Her head twisted to the side, where Elvis still stood, when Lisa began to wiggle in his arms. The little girl had been quiet up until now, but her very limited patience was running out.
"I'll just take her to the trailer with her mom," Elvis said, addressing Loretta more so than Arthur. Loretta gave a curt nod while Arthur groaned.
When he walked into the trailer, Elvis found Priscilla in the same position she had been in when he left, a frown on her face. Lisa twisted herself out of Elvis' arms. The moment her feet hit the floor she was off, exploring the trailer as though it was unlike anything she had ever seen.
"I like it Daddy," Lisa chimed. "I like your twailer."
Elvis managed a small smile. "Glad you do. Now-"
"We're not going to the house now, Elvis," Priscilla cut in, causing Elvis to spin around to face her, his smile vanishing in a matter of seconds. For a moment their stubborn gazes refused to falter, neither daring to so much as blink. Lisa continued to prance around the trailer, hopefully as oblivious as she appeared to be.
"We're gonna stay here," Priscilla said firmly.
"And do what?"
"Well, what does the Mafia do? They're here all day, aren't they?"
Elvis snorted. "You don't even like the Mafia."
"Which has nothing to do with this. Lisa and I haven't seen you in-"
"You're not gonna see much of me when I gotta work," Elvis hissed. "You're never gonna understand, are you?"
"Yeah, I missed you too. Thank you for asking."
"Don't you even try-"
"Daddy!" Lisa's little voice rang.
Elvis twisted his head around. "Yes, honey?"
"I have this?" She held up an unappetizing cracker.
"No!" Priscilla exclaimed before Elvis could open his mouth. She strode over and pried the crumbling cracker out of Lisa's fist. "You don't eat things like that, Lisa Marie. That's just nasty."
"Callin' your baby nasty now?" Elvis said, unable to hold his tongue.
"No. You're the one who is being nasty, leaving things like that laying around."
"Well, I'm sorry. I didn't exactly know that you were gonna be here."
"That-" Priscilla held up the remainders of the cracker. "- is just disgusting."
"One of the kids probably left it there," Elvis said. Priscilla missed a beat, allowing Elvis a moment of thought long enough to realize what she was trying to do. "Not the point. I don't want Lisa to be bored here all day long."
"Because she wouldn't be bored at the house."
"You could swim."
"Yeah," Lisa exclaimed, having caught the latter part of the conversation. "We go and swim?"
For a moment Priscilla simply stared at Elvis with a blank expression and he felt a twinge of optimism race through him. Then she said, "We're gonna stay here with you until you're ready to come home."
"It's gonna be a long day," Elvis hissed, pausing after each word as if that would help to make them sink in for Priscilla.
"I wanna swim," Lisa piped up, "Pwease?"
"Don't you wanna stay here with Daddy?" Priscilla asked.
Elvis' blood was boiling. "Just take her to the house. I can't play with Lisa, I can't sit and talk with you. I have to-"
"Did you ever stop to think that maybe we - I- just want to be around you even if you don't have time for us? We haven't seen you in so long. Did she just go and not see her children for that entire time?"
Elvis clamped his mouth shut, shooting her a warning gaze all the while. Priscilla didn't get the hint. "Well, what kind of mother is she? You wouldn't tolerate that from me, would you? What if I went off for weeks or months and left you all alone with Lisa? But it's just fine when she does it, isn't it? It's also kind of funny how you keep talking about how I embarrass you when she keeps embarrassing her husband with the songs she writes about him. What would you do if I told the whole world what an awful man you are?"
"Am I married to you or to her?" Elvis spat. "I'm not talkin' to you about other people and their problems."
"Who's she?" Lisa asked while bouncing on the couch.
"No one," Elvis said. "Do you wanna check what's on the TV?"
"Yeah," Lisa squealed. Her feet hit the ground and she hurried over to where the television set was. "I turn it on."
"Go ahead," Elvis told her. "Daddy's gotta go work now."
Lisa twisted her head around from where she stood by the TV on her tip toes. "No watch wif me?"
"Tomorrow Daddy's gonna watch TV with you and swim with you and-"
"Pway dollies?"
"And play dollies," Elvis confirmed though that particular game bored him half to death. He walked toward the door, blowing a kiss at Lisa on his way out. He avoided Priscilla's gaze, even ignored the disapproving snort that escaped her.
~*~
Somehow, quite inexplicably, Lisa Marie fell asleep on the couch in Elvis' trailer in spite of or maybe because of the excitement. Elvis had made Billy sit with her just in case she woke up, since Priscilla refused. There was precious little he could do short of having her removed by security, but he couldn't bring himself to do anything of that sort to his little Lisa.
They wouldn't start with the kiss. There was still hope that Priscilla would observe several pick ups she could not object to no matter how much she tried and eventually exit the scene peacefully after all.
Make up artists and production crew clamored around him as his eyes scanned the area, connecting first with the figure of Priscilla, seated in his chair, before shifting to the approaching figure of Loretta.
Priscilla stood up, putting down the magazine she had been pretending to read the last few minutes.
Priscilla merely stared until the other woman said, "Hi, I'm Loretta Lynn" while offering her hand to shake.
Priscilla looked at Loretta's hand as if it was repulsive. "I know exactly who you are."
"Priscilla," Elvis hissed, hoping that his words carried far enough for her to hear. The look he shot Loretta was apologetic. Priscilla sunk back onto his chair and buried her face in her magazine. She lowered said magazine when Clayton and Maybelle came tearing past her.
"Are you a new assistant?" Clayton asked.
Priscilla raised a brow as she scrutinized the two children whose curiosity had been ignited like gas flowing across a spark plug. "How come that she gets to have her children here?"
"They're not my children actually, they're only my on screen children," Loretta said.
Priscilla's gaze snapped toward her. "I was talking to my husband, Mrs. Lynn."
Loretta proceeded to usher the children away from Priscilla. "Come on, let's go over there. Come on, darlin'."
Arthur stood off to the side, looking ready to intervene but though the unfortunate tension remained, Priscilla went back to her magazine.
"I don't wanna do it," Clayton complained while dragging his feet over.
"Just for a little while," Loretta told him.
"If you'll all squeeze together real quick we'll take a candid for the record," one of the countless assistants said. "Mrs. Lynn, can we get the little girl on your knee?"
Loretta held an arm out toward Maybelle. The little girl went to her willingly, allowing Loretta to grasp her under her armpits and lift her onto her lap.
Elvis couldn't stop himself from laughing. "Things sure changed, huh?" He grabbed Clayton, who proceeded to initiate a play fight until Elvis held both his hands captive to stop him. "Let's calm down, buddy."
Elvis tried to ignore Priscilla's constant heavy gaze upon him.
The children felt the tension, perhaps not on a conscious level but something other than unwillingness and their short attention spans inhibited their performance. Elvis did wonder if maybe they were paying the prize for all the sugar he'd allowed the children to consume before lunch time. Luckily there wasn't much for them to do- merely forty minutes eclipsed before they were whisked away.
The dread sitting in Elvis' stomach like a rock mingled with a strange sense of relief when a break was called. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his overalls as he meandered over to Priscilla.
"You know this is gonna be just more of the same damn thing."
Priscilla's eyebrows rose, but she didn't speak. Once the silence grew too uncomfortable, Elvis spoke up. "Just go on back to the house with Lisa?"
Her expression remained unchanged. "You just really want me to go, don't you? I wonder why."
"Well, yeah, cause it irritates me."
"Oh, my mere presence does?"
"It is when you get that way and you know-"
Priscilla cut him off, "How do you think it feels to sit here and watch you joke around with her and those children? To hear you talking about things I have no idea about because I wasn't here and you don't tell me anything?"
Elvis scoffed. "What do you want me to do instead? Be real nasty to Loretta and the kids and make it harder for everyone to do what we gotta do? You act like it's all just fun and games."
"You let Lisa loose in your trailer and told her to watch TV and then you go on to hug and praise and tickle those children, while your daughter-"
"If we don't engage with them nothin' is gonna get done. You don't want this to take longer than it already is, do you?" Priscilla's mouth hung ajar but before she could utter a single word, Elvis raged on, "Let me tell you something about those children. Those children gotta work harder than you ever did in your life. They come here early in the morning and don't leave till it's dark out, bein' in front of the camera eight hours a day in between rehearsal and their school work. And then they go to a hotel with a governess who don't give a crap about them to go to bed. They're terrified of the Colonel and there's people yelling at them every day when things don't go the way they want them to right away."
"And what do you want me to say now? Do you want me to cry about that? It's not like their parents didn't have a choice."
"The only thing I want you to do is I want you to go to the house..." Elvis trailed off when Loretta approached them. "Hey."
"Hey honey."
Priscilla's narrowed eyes snapped toward the other woman. "Excuse me? What did you just call my husband?"
"Oh, I call everyone honey."
"I'm sure that you do but I would really appreciate if you wouldn't call my husband that. I'd think that you would understand, being married to a cheater and all."
"Priscilla," Elvis forced out, "Just go home."
"Or what?" Priscilla shot back. "Do you want me to leave so the two of you can sit and talk about me, is that it? Or are they gonna make you kiss her?"
Elvis couldn't stop his expression from shifting. He tried to realign his features into a mask of neutrality, but it was too late- Priscilla had caught it already.
"Oh, that's it."
"Is this the first time I kissed a girl in a movie?" Elvis snapped.
"Remember when I asked you on the phone if you had to kiss her? And you said "I wouldn't call it kissing."
He didn't, though it was entirely possible that such an exchange had taken place.
Priscilla turned toward Loretta. "Now how does your husband feel about that?"
"Same way you do," Loretta said. "But I've been married for a long time and I've always been true."
"Yeah, sure. You can drop the innocent act. You're in your thirties and you're a grandmother, what does that tell you?"
"Come on," Elvis said to Loretta, not trusting himself to address Priscilla at this point. He grasped Loretta by the forearm to tug her away.
Loretta however wrenched her arm out of his grasp. "Don't you ever -ever- talk about my children."
"Oh, I'm sorry that you misunderstood. I wasn't talking about your children. I was talking about you. Your children are just following your lead. That's what happens when children don't have a mother at home."
"How dare you?" Loretta screamed, stepping closer to Priscilla.
Priscilla propelled to her feet, the chair nearly tipping over in the process. "How dare I tell the truth? It's all the truth, isn't it?"
"You don't know the first thing about me or my family."
"You!" Arthur Hillbrook's voice bellowed, causing all three of their heads to whip around. Arthur's shoulders were squared and his head was bright red; he pointed a beefy finger at Priscilla. "You need to leave."
"What?!" Priscilla gasped, turning toward Elvis. She waited for him to come to her defense, but he remained silent. "Elvis-"
Elvis threw his hands up in the air and stormed off the set in a whirlwind of anger.
~*~
This update as been WAY overdue. I saw a lot of new votes on this one just over the last two days and finally kicked my ass into gear and got to updating. Because obviously people are reading. I hope that it was worth the wait. And I apologize to any Priscilla fans out there who are reading.