Page 41 of Lost Souls

(Japanese Proverb)

Arnie is chowingdown on a huge plate of steaming hot fettuccine when he senses Noreen staring up at him from her overabundant salad.

“What?” he says, meeting her kindly gaze. “I got some on my nose?”

“No. Well, yes.” Noreen smiles. “And your chin. And your… But, it’s just nice to see you enjoying yourself.”

Arnie looks around the busy Italian restaurant in case anyone might be listening. The massive room is designed like a trattoria built to feed half of Naples and packed with lively and universally enormous, homegrown tourists, most of whom could be mistaken for participants in the final stages of a national pasta-eating contest. But fortunately, they don’t resemble anyone he knows in his chosen field (except maybe that oversexed corpulent guy inBeauty and Obese).

He shakes his head and sighs. “Saint Noreen. Listen, kid,” he says, philosophically, “life is shit, and then you croak. You gotta get your jollies where you can.”

“Well… I suppose I am, aren’t I? Getting my ‘jollies’. You do talk funny, Mr Garth.” She smiles to herself. “Do you know, I feel quite jolly just being with you. Isn’t that curious?” She demolishes a huge chunk of mango then squirms at the unexpected taste. “Oh, I thought that was a stewed turnip. How odd. Not horrible though. What was I saying – yes, me, batty old Noreen Millburn, who has never been out of the Lake District in her life. Or eaten one of these size-of-a-house salads. Or met a maker of somany educational, religious films.”

He shrugs modestly.

“Of course, I was really upset with that watch shmuck earlier, but now… well, strange as it may seem, I’m almost a little bit glad I’m here.”

Arnie thinks for a moment. And finds himself so taken aback by his own thinking that the quivering mound of fettuccine on his fork is paused en route to his open mouth.

“You know something,” he says quietly, “so am I, Noreen. Almost a little bit gladyou’rehere. Sweetheart.”

Noreen suddenly looks concerned. The gentle smile fades from her face. “Hang on. How do I know you’re not just trying to get me into bed again? Like you did back in—”

“No. No, Noreen!” interrupts Arnie. He is being quite insistent. “Really. I-I don’t want to sleep with you. In fact, I’m not sexually attracted to you in any which way whatsoever. To be honest, I wouldn’t go for you poached.”

“Oh, Arnie,” she smiles gratefully, “you’re just saying that.”

“I’m not. Really, you… you gotta believe me, Noreen. In fact, you’re the first lady I ever took out to dinner since puberty and didn’t want to jump her bones. Save perhaps my mom.”

“That is so sweet, Arnie,” says Noreen, genuinely touched. “But technically, I’m takingyouto dinner.”

Arnie laughs out loud, causing others around to stare. Curiously, unlike on certain previous occasions, the diners here have been far too preoccupied with their groaning plates to pick up on the disparity between two of their more unusual fellow diners. And they’re not really over-bothered now.

“Yeah! How about that? A dame treatingmeto my food. Another first.”

To his surprise, she suddenly taps his tanned and compact hand with her own larger, far paler one.

“Oh, Arnie. You must be such a lonely man.”

Arnie doesn’t say anything for quite a while. Noreen wonders if he even heard and whether it is worth saying again.

“You must be—”

“Yeah, I heard,” says Arnie finally. And then he nods, as if this is something that has only just dawned on him. Which, in truth, it probably only just has. At least for real, not as a lecherous ploy. He leans across the table, trying to avoid her salad with his elbows. “Y’know, Noreen,” he says, with an almost resigned sigh, his eyes just starting to brim, “I really do think I am. What you said.”

Their eyes meet, hers pale blue and suffused with so much empathy, his squitty-brown and slightly moist. Even Arnie Garth would be hard-pressed to deny that this is what one could call a moment. The sort of thing you might even see in films. Not the type he makes, of course, when the script is more likely to say that their thighsmeet, but something he has definitely seen on a screen somewhere.

He hardly dares to entertain the thought, but could this really be the time – the life-saving, death-defying instant – when things might just be starting to change? He leans even closer towards her. And closer…

“ARNIE!”comes a cry from the doorway.

The moist-eyed man thus addressed freezes for an instant, mid-moment, eyes immediately drying. Very slowly, he turns around.

Noreen watches as the face of Arnie Garth, previously bathed in an unusually calm and almost peaceful glow, suddenly develops an expression she has seen only once before on a man, when as a young girl she had opened the door to her parents’ bedroom and found her rugged, hard-drinking, sheepherding father in bed with a Georgette Heyer novel. Her companion’s shock and horror, and – dare she label it –shame, is unmistakeable. Yet Noreen Millburn has absolutely no idea why.

The approaching crowd – and there must be at least a dozen of them – appear at first glance to be extremely sociable and, indeed, highly elated to catch her hitherto attentive dinner companion unawares at his table. Alright, the ladies aren’t wearing a huge amount of clothing, but it is the desert for heaven’s sake. And no one in the restaurant is exactly dressed to the nines. Or even to the fives. The group certainly does look excessively healthy, especially up top, of which, in the ladies’ case, you can see rather a lot. Actually, the men’s case too, as their silky shirts are mostly unbuttoned, revealing far less spare fat than their fellow diners. Far less chest hair too, interestingly. Andmore jewellery.

Noreen doesn’t personally warm to heavy make-up and bright mascara and long false eyelashes and piercings and tattoos and bustiers and that sort of stuff, even on women, but she likes to think that she is not one of those people who disapprove of what others do. This would hardly be charitable or in the spirit of live and let live – and, indeed, help live – to which she has always generously subscribed. And if the gentlemen want to wear a lot of gold and nipple adornments with their formal wear, then good for them. She is sure that they have worked hard for it. And they certainly appear to have the bodies.