THE RICH AND FAMOUS : Your Office Party Should Be Like This

Imagine this: It’s the annual Christmas bash at Graceland and everybody is there except Elvis. The Beatles are having a pillow fight and Brooke Astor, the New York society doyenne, is recalling those innocent times when she thought a kiss, even one under the mistletoe, could get a girl pregnant. Miles Davis is over in a corner, his back to the room as he blows “Winter Wonderland” on his trumpet. But if you think he’s odd, check out the J.F.K. assassination conspiracy theorists whispering that the CIA was behind every death on today’s obituary page.

Eclectic doesn’t begin to describe this menagerie, and yet there is something missing until the bleat of a bus horn interrupts the festivities. Davis doesn’t miss a note of his solo, doesn’t even look around, but the rest of the guests race to the front door. The 90-year-old Astor gets there first to throw it open and gaze upon the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll himself.

Elvis Aron Presley is behind the wheel of his tour bus, leaning on the horn and shouting out the window: “Where’s my Cilla?” And pretty soon, here she comes, Priscilla Presley, who was in the ninth grade when Elvis began their courtship by letting her watch him eat five bacon sandwiches slathered in mustard. (That’s a fact, incidentally.) Priscilla is bearing a gift for the great man. It’s blue, it’s rectangular, it weighs 4 pounds, 6 ounces. . . .

“It’s a book,” Elvis says, bewildered.

Off to the side, John Lennon whispers, “Hey, Ringo, what are you up to?”

“Page 56,” the deadpan drummer says.

As the Beatles giggle madly, a conspiracy wonk named Robert J. Groden frowns and writes in a small, ominous notebook.

Meanwhile, Priscilla is doing her best to reassure Elvis that the book she is offering him isn’t such a terrible thing. “Why, here’s your picture right on the dust jacket,” she says. “And see what the title is? It’s ‘Graceland.’ ” With every page he scans, Elvis feels better about Graceland the book. It’s short on writing and long on photos of his sunburst clock and his indoor waterfall and his pink Cadillac Fleetwood and the Wall of Graffiti where everybody scrawls how much they love him.

Before he can ask any questions, Astor is on him like one of those god-awful rhinestone-studded jumpsuits he wears in Vegas. “I have a new book of my own, you know,” Astor says, handing him a copy of “Patchwork Child,” which was actually first published in 1961. But nobody, least of all a Southern gentleman, is going to belabor her for dressing up old material with recently rediscovered treasures from her globe-trotting childhood--photos, drawings, poems, plays. There is, however, some doubt that Elvis will be able to relate to the reminiscences of a dreamy, precocious little girl whose mother accused her of reverse snobbery when she played with “dreary, inferior children” in Peking. Maybe he figures as much when he hears Astor pronounce “mama” with the accent on the second syllable. (Fact.)

“Yeah, well, you ready to eat?” he asks.

“Watercress sandwiches?” she says hopefully.

“No, ma’am. Biscuits and cream gravy.”

The mere mention of what’s on the menu sends Elvis rumbling toward his manse with the neoclassical facade and Davis inside playing “We Three Kings.” Astor is stunned by Elvis’ sudden departure and the Beatles are still laughing about Page 56, so Groden, the conspiracy nerd, seizes the moment. He thrusts a copy of his “The Killing of a President” into Elvis’ hands and launches into a spiel about how the CIA, the FBI, the Mob and anti-Castro Cubans joined forces to assassinate John F. Kennedy. “You hold the truth in your hands, Mr. Presley,” he says.

All Elvis can see is a succession of diagrams and grainy photographs and home-movie stills, complemented by some grisly reminders of J.F.K.’s head wound. Elvis is so worried about losing his appetite that he never thinks to ask why someone hasn’t blabbed if so many people were in on the killing. But he does notice that one of the amateur cameramen on hand that day in Dallas was named Charles Bronson. (Fact.)

“Love his movies,” Elvis says.

“ This Charles Bronson isn’t an actor,” Groden harrumphs.

“Neither is the other one,” someone behind them says.

When Groden turns to see who the wise guy is, Lennon smiles sweetly. “You’re hopeless, both of you,” Groden says, and storms away.

The Beatles quickly take his place and tell Elvis that they’re hustling their own book, “In the Beginning.” Of course they are, Elvis thinks. The book is made up of pictures taken on their first tour, in 1964--before “the world-weariness had set in,” photographer Harry Benson writes. Elvis nods numbly as the images flip by: Lennon and Paul McCartney composing with George Harrison in the background, Ringo with the girls who always seemed to surround him, Ed Sullivan wearing a Beatles wig, Muhammad Ali standing over the four supine mop-tops as if he had just decked them with a single punch. “That man,” Lennon says of Ali, “made a fool of us.”

“What about that man?” Elvis says, nodding at Davis, his back still to the room as he moves on to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” “He in the fool-making business?”

Before Lennon can answer, Davis stops playing and turns to stare at them with eyes that have seen too much. “Read my book and decide for yourself,” he says in a raspy whisper.

He nudges a copy of “The Man in the Green Shirt” toward Elvis and Lennon with his foot. They snatch it up and are soon mesmerized by the pictorial chronicle of a jazz man who, says writer Richard Williams, transcended his chosen world the same way Ali and Picasso transcended theirs. “He looks so young,” Elvis says, examining a picture of Davis playing alongside Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane. “He looks so burned out,” Lennon says, examining a picture of Davis aged beyond his years by heroin and booze, racism and a multitude of women. And Davis smiles mysteriously and waits for them to stumble upon the wisdom he offers at the front of the book: “If you understood everything I said, you’d be me.”

Imagine that.

PATCHWORK CHILD, by Brooke Astor (Random House: $35; 264 pp.)

THE BEATLES: In the Beginning, Photos , text by Harry Benson (Universe: $24.95; 128 pp.)

GRACELAND: The Living Legacy of Elvis Presley, Text by Chet Flippo , photos by Gil Michael (Collins Publishers: $45; 256 pp.)

THE KILLING OF A PRESIDENT, by Robert J. Groden (Viking: $30; 223 pp.)

MILES DAVIS: The Man in the Green Suit, by Richard Williams (Henry Holt: $40; 192 pp.)