Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [353]
Yet in the next two months, before any of that happened, Elvis would attempt to keep Alicia on the string. He planned to ask her to go on the August tour if Ginger backed out.
In the meantime, another young bank teller, Debbie Watts, took Alicia’s place. But Debbie, who also learned bad habits from Elvis—she would later go to prison for dealing methamphetamine—was merely a passing fancy. It was still Ginger Elvis wanted. At a stage when he could no longer summon beautiful young actresses, she was as close as he could get, and her refusal to cater to his whims only deepened his anxiety about aging.
When he went out on tour the third week of April, Ginger accompanied him, but it was obvious she tired of the schedule and that she wanted to go home. On April 29, when he played Duluth, Minnesota, he flew in her mother and sister, Rosemary, to help keep her happy.
His frustrations mounted, and everywhere he looked, someone he loved had his hand out.
At the end of April, Elvis issued Priscilla a deed of trust to Graceland for $494,024.49, the amount still owed to her in the divorce settlement. In May, Dr. Nick, Joe Esposito, and an entrepreneur named Mike McMahon sued him over his failure to fund a racquetball franchise (Presley Center Courts), to which he believed he was only lending his name. Though the matter would soon be resolved, it threw him into deeper despair. That same month, he shot out his bedroom window at Graceland, and spent most of two and a half weeks sequestered upstairs. Meanwhile, his health continued to plummet.
On May 20, when he went back out on tour, his fourth of the year, he was so bloated he had to wear the same jumpsuit—another white one with a gold Aztec calendar design—for thirteen days straight. Backstage in Knoxville on the first night, a doctor reported “he was pale, swollen—he had no stamina.”
His mood was dark and despondent. Around this time, he told Jerry Schilling that he felt so bad and was so beleaguered with health problems that “I can’t wait for 1977 to be over.”
Larry Geller wondered why nobody at the top was trying to help him. “You could look at Elvis and see that there was a problem. I used to go to my room and literally cry. I couldn’t handle it.” Priscilla has said that after the divorce, she was so busy with Lisa Marie and building their new life that she didn’t realize what dreadful shape Elvis was in. Maybe nobody wanted to face what was really happening, she admits. But certainly the Colonel had to see it every night. Why hadn’t he done anything? On May 21, in Louisville, Larry gleaned a better understanding.
At the hotel, Elvis was barely able to sit up in bed that afternoon, and Larry noticed it took him more and more time to get ready for the show each night. About four o’clock, as Dr. Nick administered the drugs that would transform him from a sick and addled man to an energized performer, Larry watched television in the anteroom of the suite. Suddenly, there was a loud knock at the door. Larry jumped—it startled him—and then answered it to find the Colonel, his face twisted in anger, his wobbly body leaning on his cane. Larry was astonished. He’d never known the Colonel to come to Elvis’s room on tour.
“Where is he?” Parker thundered.
Larry said he would let Elvis know he was there. “No,” the Colonel said curtly, brushing Geller as he passed. “I’m going in.”
Parker opened the door to a devastating sight—Elvis, “in a collapsed state, comatose, not even truly conscious,” and moaning. Dr. Nick worked frantically to revive him, kneeling at his bedside, ducking the singer’s head into a champagne bucket filled with ice water.
Parker slammed the door behind him. For a moment, Larry’s heart raced. Then he felt relieved. Finally, the Colonel had seen Elvis at his worst. Surely now he would pull him off the road, take steps to get him help. Yet ninety seconds later, the manager roared out, “You listen to me!” Parker shouted at Larry, slicing the