Fifteen minutes later, we were checked into our room. We all applied fresh lipstick, and we were ready to roll.

“Look out, Vegas, here I come,” Lula said, closing the door behind us.

“I’m wearing my lucky shoes,” Connie said, leading the way down the hall. “I can’t lose in my lucky shoes.”

It was the first time I’d ever walked any distance behind Connie and I was knocked over by the sight in front of me. Connie was a small Italian version of Mae West. Her hips were big and round and her boobs were big and round. And when Connie walked everything was in motion. Connie swung her ass down the hall. Connie was a broad. Connie belonged in a gangster movie set in Chicago during Prohibition.

We got to the elevator and the three of us stood waiting for the doors to open, cackling and preening in front of the hall mirror. We stepped into the elevator, went down one floor, and two guys got on. One was about five foot ten, had a big beer belly, and looked to be in his sixties. The other was average build, early forties, and was short enough that his eyes were even with my breasts. They were both dressed in tight white jumpsuits with bell-bottoms and big stand-up collars. The jumpsuits were decorated with sequins and glittered under the elevator lights. They had huge rings on their fingers and shoe-polish-black pompadour hairdos with long sideburns. They were wearing name tags. The big guy was named Gus and the little guy was named Wayne.

“We’re Elvis impersonators,” the little guy said.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Lula said.

“We’re part of a convention. There are fourteen hundred Elvis impersonators here at the hotel.”

“We just got here,” Lula said. “We’re going down to play some slots.”

“We’re going to the show,” Gus said. “We hear Tom Jones is singing in the lounge.”

Lula’s eyes got the size of duck eggs and popped out of her eye sockets. “Tom Jones! Are you shitting me? I love Tom Jones.”

“You should come with us,” Wayne said. “We wouldn’t mind having a couple chicks tagging along, right, Gus?”

Lula looked down at little Wayne. “Listen up, Shorty,” she said. “I don’t do that patronizing, sexist chick shit.”

“We gotta say things like that,” Wayne told her. “We’re Elvis impersonators. We’re Vegas, baby.”

“Oh yeah, I guess I could see that. Sorry,” Lula said.

The elevator hit the casino floor and we all got out and hustled across the casino to the lounge. Me, Connie, Lula, and two over-the-hill Elvis impersonators. We reached the lounge and were stopped by a crush of people waiting to get in.

“Oh man,” Lula said. “Look at this crowd. We’re not gonna get in.”

“They always let Elvis in,” the big guy said, and he started bumping people out of the way with his belly. “Uh, s’cuze me. The King’s comin’ through,” he’d say. And then he’d sort of snarl and curl his lip the way Elvis used to.