Louise Rennison_Georgia Nicolson 06 (9 page)

I have never been smiled at by a waitress in my life until I got here.

Creepy.

I said to Jas, “What is it these people want?”

11:30 a.m.

We all climbed into the loonmobile to go and explore Memphis.

Uncle Eddie and Vati are wearing baseball hats backward with their false Elvis quiffs sticking out of the front. There is no need for it. I said to Dad, “Dad, we are representing Her Maj the Queen and quite frankly you two are doing a really crap job.”

Uncle Eddie, once again at the “controls,” accelerated away so suddenly that we were forced back in our seats, like that G-force thing. Only in our case it was the Uncle Baldy force.

As we careered along there were signs all over
saying, “Elvis the King dared to rock!” and so on.

Every time they saw one, Dad and Uncle Eddie would start singing another Elvis song and moving their shoulders about and saying “Uh-huh.”

I must find a phone box and set off to Manhattan as soon as I can.

 

Out of the loonmobile and amazingly still alive.

Memphis is blindingly hot and sort of groovy in a really loony groovy way. Everywhere you go there are Elvis songs blasting out of cafés and bars and shops and people dressed up as him. I never thought the day would come when I would say this, but Dad and Uncle Eddie were almost sane-looking in comparison to some. Is it normal for old ladies who are 800 pounds to dress in rhinestone jumpsuits and false black sidies? “No,” I think, is the answer you are searching for.

The grown-ups were all keen on going to look at Robinmobile headquarters on the outskirts of town. I said to Mum, “Please, please don't make me and Jas go. Please, we're only young, we have our whole lives ahead of us. Please, please.”

Eventually they agreed that we could have a look round town and they would go “check the
scene,” as Dad pathetically put it, wiggling his dark glasses. Dear God.

As they went off he said, “Be back here, outside Elvis's Rock Emporium, in two hours or say good-bye to ever going out by yourselves again.”

Cheers.

But at least we were free!!!

As they went off and got back into the car we waved and looked full of maturiosity. Then, when Uncle Eddie had careered round the corner in the Thunderbird thing, we did thumbsie upsies and a swift disco inferno.

I yelled, “Yes and three times yes!!! Good-bye, porky ones! We are off on the Luuurve train! Or Luuurve Greyhound!!!”

Jas said, “I am not getting on a bus to Manhattan with you. And that is final.”

I put my arm around her.

“Come on, my bestest little pally, one for all and all for one and all for me.”

“No.”

“Jas—”

“No.”

I resisted the temptation to kick her stupid legs and decided to use my famous charmosity.

“Jas, let us just go and find a phone box. I can phone Masimo and say ‘
Ciao,
Masimo, your dreamboat has landed' and you could phone Hunky and ask him how many boring…er, I mean how many fascinating bits of wombat poo he has found in Kiwi-a-gogo and so on.”

Jas perked up then.

“Oh, yeah, I could, unless you think it's sort of, well, you know, keen…but I am keen, aren't I? And I have got his phone number—well, at least I've got the number of the farm he is staying on.”

Good Lord. She is sooo, you know, pathetico.

And I say that with deep loveosity.

We had to wait to cross the road with the other Memphis-type people. One enormously friendly person, who clearly had eaten all the pies, said there was a phone box in the “drugstore.” Can you imagine it being called that in Shakespeare-a-gogo land? Anyway, as we waited at the lights they changed and instead of the “Beep beep beep” thing it had a woman talking in a Memphis accent! Honestly! She said, “Now you all are safe to cross the road.”

A shop next to the drugstore had a notice on
its door that said
NO DRINKING, EATING OR FIREARMS IN THE SHOP
.

Wow!

in the drugstore

We asked the drugstore man how to use his telephone thing. He gave us loads of quarters or something. I couldn't quite make out what he was saying, as he was eating a hamburger at the time. I did hear him say, “Are you going to phone Her Majesty at Buckingham Palace?”

What is he talking about?

telephone box

The telephone is a bit low. Are there a lot of tiny people in Memphis? I was a bit phased about asking the operator for numbers in Manhattan as my first go at the phone thing, so I thought I would try phoning Rosie.

Jas was looning about being an unhelp. I said, “Are they five hours ahead?”

And she said, “Well, if it's yesterday tomorrow in Kiwi-a-gogo, well, that makes it…er…”

As she was rambling on I picked up the receiver and it made a really funny dialing noise
and then I had to shove in tons of quarters. Then it made a funny ringing type noise. It was almost like I was in a foreign country.

Perhaps no one was in.

Then Rosie answered the phone.

Yesssssss and three times yesssss!!! Contact!!!

England! England! A person who spoke my own language at last!

Rose said,
“Bonsoir.”

“Ro Ro, it's me and Jas!!!”

Jas was trying to get the receiver off me and yelling, “Let me say hello. Let me.”

Vair annoying.

I let her have a go, though, because I wanted her to do stuff for me. She was ludicrously excited, like we had been away for years in the Antarctic and had just found a phone on an ice floe.

“Rosie, it's me, Jas, in Hamburger-a-gogo!”

She rambled on for ages, saying stuff like, “What is the weather like there? Oh, is it? Raining? Is it that light rain that soaks you right through? Yeah? Right. Not really raining, more like spitting? It still wets you right through, though, doesn't it? It's boiling here. The money is different.” Really really boring stuff. For ages.

I said, “Give me a go, Jas, before the money runs out.”

She handed the phone over to me. I said, “Ro Ro, guess how many people over here have said they love me?”

And Rosie said, “None?”

Happy days. Back to normality.

I luuurve my friends. Rosie is growing dreadlocks and Sven has had his thumb pierced.

After we had said good-bye to Rosie, Jas went off into another booth to speak to Hunky.

I took a deep breath, got my coins ready and got through to the operator.

fifteen minutes later

Do you know how many Scarlottis there are in Manhattan?

A million.

I could spend the rest of my life phoning them.

Jas came out of her tiny-person's booth to get more change, and I said, “It's bloody hopeless. There are about a billion people called Scarlotti in Manhattan.”

She said, “Why don't you use sort of psychic
luuurve bonding and just telepathically think of where he will be and choose that number?”

fifteen minutes later

I have made many many new Hamburgese friends, all called Scarlotti. One of them seemed a bit on the Chinese side and I think I may have ordered egg fried rice to go, but that is life. Oh, I have laughed, I have cried with my new mates, I have talked about central heating and so on, but I have not spoken to anyone who knows Masimo. And I have spent almost all my money.

Jas was still on the phone, nodding like a nodding thing.

Huh, she was probably doing pretend snogging on the phone to Hunky.

I was exhausted.

I went up to the counter and ordered myself a milk shake.

The young chap wanted to talk. Oh dear.

He said, “Now, where are you all from?”

I said, “England.”

He said, “Oh, wow…awesome.”

He was just looking at me drinking my milk shake.

Then he said, “Do you know Prince Charles?”

Oh dear God.

I said, “Yes, I play table tennis with him.”

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending how you look at it, Jas came and sat down beside me.

I said, “I have spoken to loads of people, pretty much all of them mad, and spent all my money and I have no idea where Masimo is. What about you? How was Hunky?”

“I don't know, I've just been told off for about a million years.”

It turns out that when Jas got through to the farm, it was one
A.M
. in the morning timewise and the Kiwi-a-gogo farmer who eventually answered wasn't pleased. Jas said, “When he answered the phone he said, ‘Are you there?' You know, with that funny accent that goes up at the end.”

“Why did he say, ‘Are you there?' when you had just phoned him?”

“I don't know, it is the Kiwi-a-gogo way.”

“Then what happened?”

“I said, ‘Yes, I am here, are you there?' and he lost his rag for no reason and said ‘Don't go playing the bloody smartarse with me' and started giving me a lecture about how hard they worked on
the farm and what time they all had to be up. I said, ‘Er, I am in Memphis.' And he said, ‘I don't care if you're in the bloody body of a whale, don't phone up in the middle of the bloody night.'

And he put the phone down on her.

Crikey.

I never intended to go to Kiwi-a-gogo and now I know I made the right decision. Do you know why? Because they are all mad.

And they think that just gone midnight is late.

I rest my case.

 

Jas was all miffed, but she agreed to just have a look at the bus station. We shuffled off to find it. Hot as billio. I think I am getting a bit brown though. Everyone is soooo friendly, its vair vair tiring. And all the men wear either Elvis costumes or dungarees.

I said to Jas to cheer her up, “I have never seen grown men wear dungarees.”

She said, “They are not called dungarees in Hamburger-a-gogo land. They are called overalls.”

I looked at her.

“How come you know so much about it? Have you got some?”

She went a bit Jas-ish. “Well, yes, I, er…use them for, you know, er, gardening and so on. They have many useful pockets.”

Yes, I bet.

I had a sudden image of her and Tom cavorting around in her bedroom in their dungarees….

bus station

Do you know when buses go to Manhattan? Never, that's when. Also, if they did go, it would take five weeks to get there and back.

Sacré bleu.

Jas said, “Look, be reasonable. We are not going to track him down, let's just try and enjoy ourselves through our love pain.”

tuesday may 24th
poolside
1:00 p.m.

The olds are all in their swimming cozzies drinking cocktails. Libby has made our Lord Sandra a sarong. She seems to have forgotten about the cat plane fandango because she is so spoiled by everyone she meets. If she eats any more, I fear an explosion in the knicker department.

 

Vati is still being ridiculous about my gun.

When I asked him to get me one, like in
Thelma and Louise
, he said “What part of ‘not a hope in hell' don't you understand, Georgia?”

“I only want a small one, just for the comedy value of it falling out my handbag in a café or something. It could even be one of those cigarette lighter things.”

But oh, no, he is just too busy chatting bollocks to Uncle Eddie about clown cars and beards. Apparently there are more clown cars at the convention than anywhere else in the world.

Vati said, “What a sight: Robin Reliants for as far as the eye could see.”

I said, “Hurrah,” in an ironic way, but he didn't get it.

Uncle Eddie is allowed to wear his comedy-arrow-through-the-head hat when we go out to dinner.

It is soooo unfair.

evening

When we were in the Live to Rock diner this huge bloke came over also wearing a comedy arrow
through the head. I thought he was one of Uncle Eddie's sad clown-car mates but he turned out to be the waiter.

I said, “Could I have a glass of Coca-Cola, please?”

He said, “Coming right up, ma'am.”

I said to Jas, “I could get used to this ma'am business; it makes me feel like Her Maj.”

As we were leaving the diner the same bloke brought me this mag called
Dallas Monthly
.

He said, “I thought you would like it because of the cover, ma'am.”

And the cover was of some heavily bearded bloke dressed as Her Maj smoking a cigar.

I just said, “Thank you. What a lovely gift.”

wednesday may 25th
midday

I tried one more time in the phone booth of love, but after speaking to a petrol pump attendant and the mother of twins called Apple and Spaceboy, I decided enough is enough.

On the plus side, we did have a hoot and a half at Graceland, where Elvis the Pelvis lived (and died, as it turns out—he died of a hamburger overdose).

We saw his bedroom and everything and even his grave. Bought some marvy gifts in the gift emporium for the chums. A lovely Elvis mug, which I am sure some fool (Grandad) will cherish, hilarious wigs, and just to show that we can all live in peace and harmony, I bought the Prat Poodles two Elvis dog outfits. One was a little Lurex all-in-one suit from Elvis's Las Vegas days—it even had a doggy-size quiff. The other suit was based on this film called
Jailhouse Rock
and was a doggy prisoner outfit with a striped hat. I would have bought Angus and Gordy one each too, but they would have eaten them in minutes. Oh, and I also bought a very elderly man's CD. That was a bit of a mistake, actually. This old bloke was sitting in the shop dressed entirely in blue Lurex and humming. I thought he was another elderly Elvis impersonator, but then his “assistant” informed me he was a blues legend.

Jas thought the man said “blue,” not “blues.”

“Why is he a blue legend—does he always wear blue?”