51. many things are better than a sharp stick in the eye

As Emma Lee’s picture indicates, Elvis need to buck up a bit. He’s been a little long in mouth, probably because he’s stressed out about work and learning GRE vocabulary and misses the Purple Princess. Emma Lee and Elvis put together their piggy banks, and they are offering a reward for anyone who finds the fuschia-colored Specialized Crossroads with metallic purple cranks and eight-ball bell on the handlebars. Odds are the perp still has the wrench he or she used to unscrew the post to which it was attached; if so, Elvis requests that the finder of bike whack the sticky-fingered jerk the knees.

Things’ll be better soon. Tonight, they are going to see the Mingus Big Band, because Mingus is great and one of the trumpeters is a kid that Elvis played with in the 1990s. Emma Lee is steeling her self for a bittersweet evening of music: sitting with the king of rock and roll on one side, a successful baby saxophonist on the other, and listening to a now-famous boy she kissed at Disneyland, (age 14), is bound to get her jonesing for victory pie.

A double-shot of contemporary love would also work, to cut the nostalgia of the magic kingdom