Ned, my imaginary friend, saw him first.

He was standing there with a chubby handful of Zagnut candy bars and raspberry fruit roll-ups.

We—Ned and I—were wading our way through the throngs of hell-bent shoppers who were making a dash for a blue-light special on eyelash curlers when Ned caught a glimpse of The King’s belt buckle.

“Aaarrrgh!” Ned winced, poking a hapless shopper walking behind him with one of his meaty elbows. “What the #@$#@% was that?” he spat out between gritted teeth while absent-mindedly stomping a heavy hiking boot squarely onto the unfortunate shopper’s back.

After helping the dazed little old lady back to her feet and retrieving her dentures from under a shelf stacked high with laxatives, I looked up long enough to see the intense glare coming from The King’s belt buckle – which incidentally, was roughly the size of an early 70s-model Buick.

The sequins dazzled in the light as they shimmied from side to side in a rhythmic manner. I was mesmerized. A heavy, rope-like stream of saliva swayed dangerously from my chin. Ned was rubbing his eyes and gibbering something about purple and green spots floating in front of him wherever he looked when I spied the rhinestones and bell-bottomed, white jumpsuit bedazzled with sequins. The heels on his leather, side-zippered boots were taller than my dog.

“It’s him…Eh, Eh, Elvis…and we found him right here in Kokomo, hitting the blue-light specials,” I mumbled, dropping an arm-load of volatile hair chemicals onto the floor. “And look, there’s fried peanut butter and banana sandwich smears on his lapels.”

Squinting through one beady eye, Ned watched The King, sashaying his way through the crowd, softly singing something about hunks of burning love and being someone’s personal teddy bear. As he rounded the corner of aisle nine with a grind of his hips, we heard the thud of a sweat-soaked fan as she dropped to the floor with a shriek.

Rounding the corner, close on his heels, we saw The King wipe his sideburn-tangled face with a long silk scarf and drop it on the unconscious young lady who lay lightly twitching on the floor.

“Here you go, Honey,” he said with a thick, Mississippi drawl. “Elvis loves you, HOO-AAH!”

Ned, still half-blinded, stepped on the woman who was just beginning to regain consciousness. Neither of us noticed her muffled cry as we closed in on fate, on destiny, on The King. I did, however, quickly abscond with the scarf.

“Elvis!” I shouted, trotting up behind the sequined slab with my loathsome friend in tow. He stopped—walking, that is—his undulating hips never missed a beat.

“Whatcha y’all needin’ there,” he said with a snarl that made a woman picking out cat litter in aisle eleven slump over her shopping cart.

“Ya, you, you’re alive,” I stammered, trailing a hand along his studded arm, across his shoulder and through the thick mat of sweaty hair atop his head. Ned had to snatch me by the belt loops as I swooned and nearly joined the women in aisles nine and eleven who were still drooling on the cool floor tiling.

“Easy on the ‘do, son,” he said while swatting away my quivering hand and re-cocking his hips. “The name’s Wilbur and I don’t know where you’ve been since The King checked into the afterlife while sitting on his throne, but whatever you boys been smokin’…”

He trailed off, staring quizzically at the dumbfounded zombie in front of him, who was still being held upright by his belt loops. “I’m an impersonator, son,” he mumbled close to my ear.

“You’d better take this blithering idiot friend of yours home,” he said to Ned who was now tossing me over his shoulder. “I think some a’that hair crapola he’s wearing seeped through his scalp and is eating what’s left of his brain,” he said gesturing toward my still unscathed hair helmet. “The name’s Wilbur and I’m a shoe salesman. I just impersonate Elvis on the weekends.”

I watched from my upside-down position over Ned’s shoulder as The King paid for his Zagnuts and fruit roll-ups and made his way through the parking lot, oozing a sweaty funk that toppled nearly every shopper he passed. Once in the parking lot, he climbed inside a beat-up AMC Pacer and disappeared in a cloud of oil-blue exhaust.

After The King made his grand exit, Ned rifled through my wallet, paid for my hair arsenal, then prodded me out of the store with a series of sharp, fast finger jabs into my low back. All the while, he was muttering something about never shopping with me again.

I’ve recovered now, and through some intense shock treatment, counseling and few well-timed slaps from Ned, I now know it wasn’t Elvis I saw on that fateful day in aisle nine. It was just Wilbur the shoe salesman.

Perhaps even someday, I’ll stop wearing that sweat-stained silk scarf under my shirt.

Or not.