This Year's Christmas Present

  Annie had appeared crushed when she’d followed him out. He could understand that. Farm work, in all its crude aspects, was what Annie did for a living—her identity. It had been obvious that Annie thought he was repulsed by her. But it wasn’t her, it was what she’d been doing. But Clay hadn’t dared say that. Instead, he’d lied, “My stomach has been upset all day. It must be the aftereffects of those painkillers, or something I ate.”

  She’d stared at him dubiously. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea for us to go out on a date. Things have been happening too fast. We haven’t stopped to consider our differences. It’s probably a good idea for us to slow down and count to ten—”

  Reconsider? Count to ten? No way! We’re not even counting to two. Oh, God! She’s going to dump us. He’d backpedaled then and convinced her to give him another chance. At what, he wasn’t sure. He only knew he loved her, cow breeding or no cow breeding. And he didn’t want to blow the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  Now, strolling down Memphis’s famous Beale Street, he was getting yet another view of his Annie. This one he liked a whole lot better than all the rest. So far, he’d had the Priscilla Virgin Mary, the jeans-and-flannel farm girl—he was still waiting for the Daisy Mae outfit, darn it!—and the cow breeder to the bovine stars. Now Annie wore an ankle-length floral print skirt of some crinkled gauze material over a satin lining. It was robin’s egg blue with gold flowers. On top was a long-sleeved, matching blue sweater of softest angora, which reached to her hips and was belted at the waist. The gold flowers of the skirt were picked up in embroidery around the sweater’s neckline. On her legs she wore sheer stockings and old-fashioned, lace-up ankle boots. Her lustrous brown hair was pulled off her face by gold clips and hung in disarray to her shoulders. She’d even used some makeup for the first time since the day Clay had met her—a little blush, mascara, and lip gloss, as far as he could tell. She looked smart and sexy. Sort of like Julia Roberts, but better, to his mind. No wonder he’d fallen head over heels in love with her.

  Clay couldn’t stop looking at her.

  And she couldn’t stop looking at him.

  She smiled at him.

  He smiled back.

  He was using one crutch to keep his full weight off his sprained ankle, which was almost better today. With his free hand, Clay twined Annie’s fingers in his.

  She swung their clasped hands.

  Clay couldn’t understand how he got so much pleasure from just holding hands with a woman and hobbling slowly down the street. Annie had been giving him a running commentary on the history of Memphis.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to eat yet?” she inquired. “It’s almost eight o’clock.”

  He shook his head. They’d already passed up hot tamales and greasy burgers at the Blues City Café, where Tom Cruise had filmed a scene for the movie The Firm, as well as ribs, catfish, and world-famous fried dill pickles, the specialties at B. B. King’s club.

  “How about this?” Annie had stopped in front of Lansky Brothers/Center for Southern Folklore. “This museum is dedicated to preserving the legends and folklore of the entire South, but especially Memphis. They have an excellent photography collection here.”

  “My mother was a photographer,” Clay revealed. Now, why did I mention that? I never talk about my mother.

  “Really? Did she use her maiden name or her married name?” Annie was already tugging him by the hand to enter the small museum, where a plaque informed him it was the site of the former Lansky Brothers Clothing Store where Elvis, B. B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and others had purchased their clothes. Well, that impresses the hell out of me. I’d want to buy my boxers in the same store as Elvis, for sure. Geez!

  But Clay knew he was dwelling on irrelevant garbage to avoid thinking about Annie’s question. Finally, he answered, “Her maiden name. Clare Gannett.”

  “Clare Gannett? Clare Gannett? Why, she’s famous, Clay.”

  “She is—was—not!” he said with consternation.

  “Well, not Annie Leibovitz famous, but she has a fame of sorts here in Memphis.”

  It doesn’t take much to be famous in Memphis. Just be a store that sold Elvis a pair of boxers. Or the barber who gave him a haircut. Or the playground where he scraped his shin.

  “Annie, my mother was not a famous photographer. For one thing, she died when she was only twenty-five— Whoa…wait a minute—what are you doing?” Annie paid for two tickets, and was pulling him determinedly past the exhibits into another room.

  “See,” she said, pointing to one wall where there were a series of photos of Elvis Presley. Casual shots…leaning against a car, strumming a guitar, standing in front of the Original Heartbreak Hotel. A framed document explained that Clare Gannett was one of Memphis’s premier photographers, documenting on film many of the city’s early music performers during the sixties—not just Elvis, but many rock and blues personalities who later went on to fame.

  Oh, great! My mother knew Elvis. First I find out my father owned a hokey hotel named after one of Elvis’s songs. Now I find out my mother must have known the King. What next?

  “Legend says that Elvis loved Clare Gannett—”

  Clay put his face in his hands. He didn’t want to hear this.

  “—but she fell in love with some Yankee who came to Memphis on a business trip one day. They say the Yankee bought the hotel and next-door property where her studio was located as a wedding present for her. The studio later burned down, and Clare Gannett died in the fire. The hotel owner, your father, refused to erect anything else on that site. Isn’t that romantic?”

  “Annie, that is nothing but propaganda, a silly yarn spun for gullible tourists.”

  “Maybe. But legend says Elvis was heartbroken over losing Clare Gannett. It was after that he decided to marry Priscilla. Some people even think he wrote ‘Dreams of Yesterday,’ better known as ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You,’ in her memory.”

  Clay turned angrily and stomped as fast as he could on one crutch out of the building. He was breathing heavily, in and out, trying to control his rage.

  “Clay, what’s wrong?” Annie asked softly. She came up close to him and put a hand on his sleeve.

  He waited several seconds before speaking, not wanting to take out his feelings on Annie. “Annie, my mother abandoned me and my father when I was only one year old. So your telling me she had a relationship with that hip-swiveling jerk doesn’t sit too well with me.”

  “I’m sorry, Clay. I didn’t know. But maybe you’re wrong about her. The legend never said that anything happened between them. In fact, she supposedly broke Elvis’s heart when she married your father. Maybe—”

  He leaned down to kiss her softly, the best way he could think of to halt her words. “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  She gazed at him with tears in her eyes. Tears, for God’s sake! Not for a moment did she buy his unconcern.

  “Hey, let’s go in this place,” Clay suggested cheerily, coming to a standstill in front of Forever Blue, a small jazz club. He desperately sought a change of mood. “It doesn’t seem as crowded as some of the other joints.”

  As they entered the establishment, Clay accidentally jostled a woman standing transfixed in the doorway.

  “Sorry,” they both mumbled.

  A short blonde in a formfitting blue dress and matching high heels was staring at the piano player as if she’d seen a ghost. Her face was taut with some strong emotion as she clenched and unclenched her hands at her midsection. Suddenly the piano player seemed to notice her. He faltered slightly, then stopped playing his rendition of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Before anyone in the audience could fathom his intent, he jumped off the small stage and rushed after the woman who had spun on her heel and run out the door onto busy Beale Street.

  Clay and Annie looked at each other and shrugged as the man rushed past them, obviously in pursuit of the mysterious woman.

  “That was Michael Ar
nett, the owner of this club,” Annie informed him. “He’s a famous songwriter, too. Did you ever hear ‘Only a Shadow’?”

  “The Jimmy Blue hit?” Clay wasn’t a fan of popular music, but he’d have to be dead not to be aware of that song and its phenomenal success.

  “Yes. That was one of Michael’s songs.”

  Michael? She calls him by his first name? “You know this guy?” Clay hated the wave of jealousy that knifed through him. He hated the possibility that he might have a milkman and a musician as competition. He hated the fact that the dark-haired piano man was tall, slim, and probably considered handsome by some myopic women.

  “A little. Michael and I went to the same high school, but he graduated a few years ahead of me.”

  Okay. So maybe I overreacted a little. “It looked as if something serious was going on with that woman.”

  Annie nodded. “Yeah. I hope it works out.”

  He smiled at Annie’s whimsy as he guided her in front of him into the club. At the table next to theirs, a beautiful woman with short, tousled, honey-colored hair, in a dark, conservative business suit, was talking a mile a minute to a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and baseball cap. The guy was leaning back lazily in his chair, clearly amused by her nonstop chatter. It sounded as if she was reciting the tourist directory of Memphis, and every fact and figure ever compiled.

  Suddenly, the woman began belting out the lyrics to “Only a Shadow.” Her date didn’t appear quite so amused now. In fact, his face went white with concern. With good cause, it would seem. Within seconds, the woman pitched forward, her face almost landing in her bowl of chili, but for a last-minute rescue by her male companion.

  Clay shook his head at Annie. “Nice bunch of people here in Memphis.” He flinched as the woman began to sing again.

  “They are nice,” Annie insisted. “In fact, that man is Spencer Modine, one of Memphis’s financial success stories. He made his money in California, but he returned here to start up a record company.”

  “Spencer Modine?” Clay rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Hell, are you talking about the Bill Gates of Silicon Valley? The computer whiz kid who made a killing in computer software?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you go to high school with him, too?” he grumbled.

  Annie laughed. “No, I didn’t.”

  They settled back then to order drinks and a mushroom-and-sundried-tomato pizza. A short time later, Arnett and the woman he’d pursued came back into the club. Arnett seated her near the stage, and he resumed playing. Clay moved his chair close to Annie and fiddled with the ends of her hair, nervous as a teenager on his first date.

  “Annie, love,” he whispered, kissing the curve of her neck. She smelled of some light floral fragrance…lilies of the valley, maybe. As always, there was that delicious heat ricocheting between them.

  “Hmmm?” she purred, arching her neck to give him greater access.

  “I don’t want to go back to the farm…yet.”

  “Me neither,” she said softly, turning to stare directly into his eyes.

  “Will…will you come back to my hotel room with me?”

  Annie continued to stare into his eyes, unwavering. She had to know what he was asking. Finally, she nodded, leaning closer to place her lips against his, softly. “I have to go back to the farm to night, though. There’s the four A.M. milking before we come back into Memphis for the Nativity scene.”

  He stiffened at the thought of the woman he loved demeaning herself in that ridiculous sideshow. “Annie, stay home at the farm tomorrow. Give up the Nativity scene venture. Let me help you—and your family— financially.”

  She immediately bristled. “No! The Fallon family doesn’t accept charity.”

  He should have known she’d balk. But, dammit, how was she going to reconcile accepting his money after they were married? “What ever you say, sweetheart. It was only a suggestion,” he conceded, for now.

  She softened at his halfhearted apology. “I want to be with you, Clay,” she whispered.

  “Not half as much as I want to be with you.”

  The piano player had just finished up a blues song, so fast and intricate that his talent was evident. Next, in reaction to the loud requests from two ends of the club for “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Jingle Bell Rock,” Arnett played a skillful blending of both yuletide classics. When he finished, silence reigned briefly, followed by thunderous applause.

  Clay barely noticed the piano player and his girlfriend leaving the club once again. All he could think about was Annie and the fact that they were going to be together to night. It appeared as if it would turn out all right, after all. No more celestial big toes.

  He hoped.

  Annie was nervous, but exhilarated, as they entered the foyer of the Original Heartbreak Hotel.

  It was only ten o’clock, and the hotel lobby still buzzed with activity, its guests coming in for the evening, or just going out, in some cases. As myriad as Memphis itself, the guests ranged from sedately dressed businessmen to a group of Flying Elvi. But mostly there were tourists come to view the spectacle that was Memphis, the adopted home of Elvis…like those two middle-aged women over there in neon pink ELVIS LIVES sweatshirts who were eyeing Clay as if they thought he might be someone famous.

  “They think I’m George,” Clay informed her dryly, noticing her line of vision.

  “George who?”

  Clay shrugged. “Damned if I know. Straight, or Strayed, or something like that.”

  Annie burst out in laughter. “George Strait?”

  “Yes. That’s the one.”

  Annie hugged the big dolt. “How could anyone in the modern world not know George Strait? Clay, you are too, too precious.”

  He grinned at her calling him precious, then took her hand and led her around the massive Christmas tree in the center of the lobby. It was decorated with sparkling lights and priceless country-star memorabilia left by the various musicians who’d stayed in this hotel over the years. A gold-plated guitar pick from Chet Atkins. Guitar strings tied into a bow from Hank Williams. A silver star that had once adorned the dressing room of Eddie Arnold. Pearl earrings from Tammy Wynette. “Have you ever seen such a gaudy tree in all your life?”

  “Clay, you need a major attitude adjustment.”

  “And you’re the one to give it to me, aren’t you, Annie, love?” he said, flicking her chin playfully. “Come on. I need to pick something up from the desk.”

  David and Marion Bloom, the longtime managers, nodded at Clay as he approached, and then at Annie, too. The refined couple, who resembled David Niven and Ingrid Bergman, right down to the thin mustache and the neatly coiled French twist hairdo, respectively, were probably surprised to see Annie with their boss, but they didn’t betray their reactions by so much as a lifted eyebrow.

  “Did an express mail package come for me today?” Clay asked.

  “Yes, sir,” David Bloom said, drawing a cardboard mailer out of a drawer behind the desk.

  “And I have all those tax statements you asked me to gather together when you called this afternoon,” Marion Bloom added.

  Clay took the mailer, but waved aside the stack of papers. “I’ll examine those tomorrow.”

  Annie could see that the Blooms looked rather pale, their faces pinched with worry. Heck, everyone at the hotel was alarmed, from what Annie had heard when in Memphis earlier today. The possibility of imminent unemployment once the hotel closed had them all walking on tenterhooks, especially with the holidays looming. Annie would have liked to tell them that Clay would never close the hotel now that he knew what a landmark it was to Memphis, not to mention the connection with his mother. But it wasn’t her place.

  “We’ll meet tomorrow at one with the accountant, right?” Clay asked the couple. When they nodded solemnly, he concluded, “Good night, then,” and led Annie toward the elevators.

  Once the doors swished shut, Annie leaned her head on Clay’s shoulder and sighed. But he set
her away from him and stepped to the other side of the elevator, staring at her with a rueful grimace. “If I touch you now, sweetheart, we’ll be making love on the elevator floor.”

  She smiled.

  “You little witch. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Clay observed with a chuckle.

  Soon he was inserting the key into the lock of his hotel room. Once they entered, Clay flicked on the light switch, and Annie was assaulted with a dozen different sounds, sights, and smells. A carousel—a carousel, for heaven’s sake—was turning in one corner of the massive suite, churning out calliope music. A television in another corner clicked on automatically, playing a video of that old Elvis movie Roustabout. A popcorn machine began popping, and a cotton candy machine began spinning its weblike confection. Hot dogs sizzled on a counter grill, where candy apples were laid out for a late-night snack. And the bed—holy cow!—the bed was in the form of a tunnel-of-love cart with high sides, and what looked like a vibrating mechanism on the side to simulate a water-rocking motion.

  “Clay!” She laughed.

  “Did you ever see anything so absurd in all your life?” A delightful pink stained his cheeks.

  “Actually, it’s kind of…uh, charming.”

  “Please.” He begged to differ. Then, tossing his crutches aside, he leaned back against the door and pulled her into his embrace. “At last,” he whispered against her mouth.

  When he kissed her, openmouthed and clinging, Annie could taste his need for her. What a heart-filling ego boost to know she could affect this man so!

  With clumsy haste, they pulled at each other’s clothes.

  “Slow down, honey,” Clay urged raggedly, then immediately reversed himself. “No, hurry up, sweetheart.”

  “I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I can’t wait.…” she cried.

  Soon they were naked, he with nothing but a bandage wrapped around one ankle, she with nothing but two gold barrettes, which she quickly tossed aside.