Elvis & Chlôe: Part two of the European Love Affair Trilogy

By Ulf Skei

The continued adventures of our heroes Elvis and Chlôe. Part two in the trilogy. The mad as two hatters South African gangsters return. The endless existence in eternal corridors stretching from edge to edge of this old universe continues. Existentialism is ever present, at times our heroes stumble across Jean Saul and Simone in this or that cafe. And what about the gigantic library? Yes, it contains all known and less known knowledge. It is heaven. Or is it? What is, and what is not real? Do we really exist?
It is a comedy, but there are certain passages of a slightly intimately oriented nature. Violence is also known to appear. At random. Any and all readers have hereby been advised.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Jul 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9789176991855

Ulf Skei

En konstnär och jazzmusiker som spenderar sina dagar på cafeer i Stockholm, Milan, HongKong, Antibes eller London. En boulevardier. En drömmare. Författare med hjärtat i Italien.

Book preview

Elvis & Chlôe

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Copyright

Chapter 1

They tried to be discrete about it. Their families would never accept them like this, kind folks though they were. Their lips met once more aboard that airport transfer. He could feel her heart through the stillness of the vehicle.

One more hour. He hardly recognised his own voice.

I know. She reached for his hand. Come here. Two spirits went walking in some imaginary garden. Souls adrift on a sea unknown, if you will. In that garden there was a sky of azure.

È azzurro Her voice was warm like a velvet sun. Her eyes the depth of the universe. They walked silently, except for the soft sound of feet on the smooth, soft path through that garden. It really was only a reflection of love projected across the private corner of the world conquered.

Ti amo…

Ti amo…

The magic was broken by a voice in a speaker telling that in a few minutes the transfer would arrive at Gatwick International.

They would never forget the utter pain, emptiness, terror, of that last hour together.

We are one.

Si, one, sempre come uno.

At a distance they saw the silhouette of Gatwick airport. Just some boxes of concrete put together outside of London. A silent reminder of human ingenuity. With planes not silent at all. Arriving and departing in a stream unbroken. Around the clock. To them it felt like an execution. Chlôe ’s eyes whispered a song of sadness and loss. Oh, how he loved her then and there. Still does, of course, but the mumble of the mixture of languages and all those unfamiliar faces made it seem so acute.

The espresso at the cafe was nice, as was the pastry, but minutes ticking away and the tears blurring the view made it difficult to appreciate.

Better go to your gate. His throat felt dry and the words struggled to pass his lips. She looked straight into his eyes.

right, better go.

The walk through the airport to the departures section was awful, and the embraces and kisses could not take away the pain.

Love really does hurt. He whispered.

It does. He had never seen anything as beautiful and sad as her then and there. Slowly backing out from the gate as she disappeared onboard that plane for Malpensa was the worst thing he had ever been through. The dream was abruptly cut all too short. Reality, our nasty little friend, had once more come between two souls supposed to never be apart.

The sky looked at a sad cormoran crossing a bay outside Juan les Pins. There were mailboxes and a trolley by a silent roadside. A tune could be heard in the warm breeze. They were there. They sat at a lonely cafè feeling like lovers do. Like lovers should always feel."

Chapter 2

Leonard Carlton, for all intents and purposes a very good private investigator, sat silently glancing through the typed out sheets of paper he had found all over the floor in a tiny one room apartment on Camberwell Church Street in south London. From a distance could be heard ‘Almost True’ by Chet Lake. The tiny window to the right of the cupboard was still open to the relative stillness outside. The bed unmade, an empty bottle of courage next to the full ashtray. Carlton looked out the window. Across the street the curtains of a second floor window moved slightly, somebody wanting to see but not be seen moved like a shadow of something evil behind those drapes of cloth.

   Aah, playing games, are we! Carlton suddenly felt an urge to walk across the floor, scream out the window and perhaps throw a waste paper basket towards that window. On second thought, though, he figured he would never be able to throw the thing across the street, and even if he could manage that, he probably would just hit the wrong window. Being a man of the world Carlton decided not to throw things at his would be adversary. There were only a few items in the room. A wobbly old table, scratched and worn. A chair of the same quality, and a typewriter of the old mechanic kind. An Underwood. The manuscript had been spread out on the floor. About 73 pages of writing.

   Elvis & Chlôe , a European Love Affair by E. P. Karlfeldt. Carlton scratched his balding head. So, my dear Elvis, playing hard to catch, eh? His voice had a timbre of      disgust as he pointed dramatically at the old typewriter. Well, we shall see who gets to compose the epilogue to this sad story, shall we not?

Carlton had been a member of the local theatre company in Lambeth during his school years. His dream had been to do Macbeth, to be ‘discovered’. The closest he got was an extra for a newspaper salesman in the production of Coffee and Cigarettes. He figured this might be his moment, his bounce back. He was wrong, of course. Leonard Carlton was often wrong. Destiny, our little friend, giggled and danced the Polka. It did this now and then, mostly when plotting something amusing. Presently it did just that. Plotted some funny twists in Carlton’s bewildered near future. Carlton glanced through the papers once more and reached for the phone. He dialled the number to his present employer, a Mr Conrad Betelgeuze Karlfeldt, and listened to the signals going to wherever phone signals go to call. He was in a peculiar mood.

   Odd he thought aloud to himself.

   Yes. The voice of the old man was dry like paper.

   Carlton here. Just thought you’d want to be briefed as to the current situation. Leonard Carlton knocked at the desk with his Ball point pen. The sound was very annoying, and could be heard through the phone line by his current employer. Conrad Betelgeuze Karlfeldt hated people who behaved annoyingly.

   Stop that.

   What?

   Well, whatever it is that you are presently doing that is producing a clicking sound, or I will send somebody to handle you and your annoying activities.

Leonard Carlton, P.I. looked at his pen and realised how disturbing that sound might be to somebody not producing it.

   Right. Not to worry. Already stopped. Just a bad habit. Well, I found the hotel room, or I guess it could be called apartment, in South London. It was very sparsely decorated, not much to go on. I did, however, find some kind of manuscript for a love story. It appears to be autobiographical. The plot seems to be dealing with your son and his lady, a certain Chlôe Lavigne. Does it ring a bell? Leonard cought himself in the act of tapping that pen again, and stopped it instantaneously.

   Mm…I recognise that name. Lavigne. Her family is in coffee I believe. Sicilian. Connected to the Costas. The old man had to stop and catch his breath for a while. Leonard looked out a window. Down in the street a blue sedan stopped by a pharmacy. A man in marine pinstripe suit got out of the vehicle. He leaned himself at a light post and stared at a man wearing very dark ray bans. The Sunglass Man nodded slightly and threw a folder of papers in the gutter. He started dancing a very odd dance.

   There will be blood. The pinstripe man took a bow, howled momentarily at a puddle of water and pointed his crooked finger at the window of my agency, even though I doubt he could see me, due to it being very sunny and you know, what with reflections and physics and such. I decided it was time to disappear for the time being.

   I shall have to make myself scarce for some time, Mr Karlfeldt, so if you need to contact me I advice you not to use this number.

   Well, how, then, am I to get in touch with you?

   Go by a Westminster P.O. Box under the name Willard P. Jennings.

   Ok. A dopo, Mr Jennings.

   Later, Mr Karlfeldt.

As the phone clicked a last fare thee well, something sinister passed through the streets of Lambeth. A shadow in a dark blue Bentley whispered directions for a driver. The vehicle moved across one of the many bridges crossing that old river Thames.

Chapter 3

A sad butterfly whispered its velvety tones across a stretch of lawn presently occupied by a local cricket team. A strange little character and a pinstripe man sat on a park bench enjoying the sport. The pinstripe man lit a cigarette and spat at a oddly familiar stray dog approaching the couple from a shrubbery by a tiny kiosk like structure leaning towards reality in what might for all intents and purposes be likened to a drunkard being held upright by a police officer during transport through the walkways of a minor county jail. Well, or something of that particular order.

At the same time, or slightly before, say 12 minutes before, a person with the ability to be at two places simultaneously might have noted that a small house was in the process of being built on the outskirts of a village on a tiny planetoid called Cardigan m2. So while seeing a discussion regarding luncheon and a mullygrubber this person would also be seeing a tiny door being fit to its frameworks and if watching from the correct angle the onlooker would also be stunned by noticing a group of men from a local phone operator walking towards a pub for a pint after work. So you see time is very relative, while at one specific point being 12ish, in another reality we would be faced with 5 strikes of a bell. Or shots of a gun or whichever means of denoting the passing of time the local dwellers made use of. Hitting one crab with a lobster, or with another crab. Or hitting said crab with a tiny dog. Which would be not only impractical, but also cruel. Well, relative anyway. Relative not only to itself but also to location. A person could be seen in a far distance. The person appeared to be looking for something. From some diffuse location could be heard the crying horn of Chet Lake. 'You can't go home again'. Sadness was more than a state of mind and above all it had a distinctly disharmonic feel to it. Jazz. Somebody started running down a green hill. He had strapped himself to a kite of sorts. Not the professional kind one might encounter in some kite contest. Rather a homebuilt one made out of thin rods and a huge piece of cloth of some synthetic material. The little group of bystanders cheered him or her on vividly. Hooray, There ya go, and Wowsie could be heard. It all ended when the man ran on down holding his gigantic kite. He struggled to keep its nose in the correct angle. Suddenly his eyes opened widely and he started shouting. 'Aaaarrrrggghh'. That was the mad vocal concoction flowing out between his lips as he left ground. Rupert Gargamel Bendix had left the little planetoid. A sigh was heard from the group of people. Their civilisation had entered aviation. Rupert, however, would not be among the persons celebrating this fact that night. Rupert Gargamel Bendix lived exactly 23,4 seconds after leaving ground. His homemade kite started behaving oddly, a strap holding it together started loosening. Suddenly a squeak could be heard, followed by a mad howl from Rupert. Everything was falling to pieces. Rupert grabbed his control rod, it did nothing to rectify the situation which was indeed going from bad to worse. Rupert fell down towards the flat, black tarmac of the central city parking. I don't actually know; nobody does, but I suppose it would not be totally wrong to suspect Rupert's last word was 'Aaaaarrrggghhh'. Or something similar. Now Rupert is no more, but his death made a lot of people think about kites, and flying, and of course stupidity. As we will learn in a few pages, one of those people who started thinking about kites and such, Erroll Corderoy Barnes, would become famous in his own right for actually discovering jet propulsion.

Oh dear.

The sun shone brightly over a deep greenish sea. A seagull flew across what had once represented a local fish seller. It was what remained of a bleak building. A meagre construction of boards as thin as cardboard, painted cream white. A sign telling of times gone by, about cod at 30 cents an ounce. A little fish trapped in a puddle after the tide withdrew tried and tried but failed to get away from the beak of a gull searching for food. There, nature for you. There is nothing fair or unfair in eat or be eaten, it's just nature’s way. And while a little fish was eaten by a seagull, on a whole different note there was a little dog walking serenely beside its master, then suddenly it started yelping away, trying but failing to get away from the bookshelf it saw descending from the window on third floor on Bergsgatan in Stockholm from which it was thrown by a South African gangster.

Those who read book one in this mad story know it was from Elvis’ apartment the bookshelf was thrown. Be that as it may. On Cardigan m2 people were a tad sad about Rupert Gargamel Bendix’ early demise. Many inhabitants walked about with tiny paper hats balancing on top of their cone shaped heads. It was a peculiar tradition on the little planetoid. Sadness and sorrow was displayed by the wearing of paper hats. Some of the local book stores made quite a nice little profit on the side selling said paper hats. Yellow. Or turquoise. Well, those were the most popular colours. Moreover; it was considered bad taste to look at a person one met on a sidewalk if the person being met wore a sad hat. Therefore people always carried a blank sheet of ordinary A4 printer paper to be held in a fashion hiding the sad hatter. This was clever indeed, though it brought with it some inconveniences, such as for example the fact that some of the ‘carriers’ failed to note obstacles in their path and stumbled and fell over after passing the hatter. In this connection it might be noted that the dwellers of Cardigan m2 had paper thin skull bone. Their cranium was thin as a birch leaf. Needless to say this resulted in many many casualties. For this reason the department of street scrapers had been installed by local authorities. Street scrapers were recognised by the green overalls they wore, and their rubber scrapes used to push remnants of dwellers having crashed and smashed their paper skulls. Scrapers were considered the lowliest of people. They had no friends. They lived in a society on the outskirts of town. People said