Page 47 of Lost Souls

“Great! Just waitin’ on the missus. We’re renewin’ our vows tonight. Twenty years!”

“Well, isn’t that just fine, in this day and age.”

“Thanks, pal!” says the man. “Hey, make sure you send all my lovin’ to Melisande. I used to have such a ball humpin’ your wife.”

“She’ll appreciate that.”

Arnie really doesn’t need to be reminded about Melisande right now. And what other breeds of malice she might currently have aforethought of.Well, at least she doesn’t know where I am, he tells himself in some relief. And thankfully she hasn’t a clue about Noreen.

Otherwise, heaven only knows what she might do.

***

From her window on the fourteenth floor of Caesar’s Palace, Melisande Garth is staring down on the plebeians milling around below.

If they only knew I was here, she thinks, all too aware that she has given special and regular pleasure to so many of them in the privacy of their own homes. She sometimes wonders exactly how many of these people, when actually being with a real woman rather than a thermoplastic equivalent or their own ever-loving selves, actually whisper her name under their hot, rancid breath. And how large a percentage pronounce it wrong.

The knock on her door is sharp and insistent.

“About time!”

She strides smartly across the luxurious room, her high Louboutin heels only just supporting those famously long, enviably flexible legs and statuesque, tribute-to-science body. Throwing open the door, she looks straight ahead down an endless and seemingly empty corridor. And offers it a puzzled frown.

Suddenly, she feels something tugging at the hem of her Balmain micro skirt. Looking down, she sees a male person no more than four feet high, dressed almost entirely in the supplest leather, with a head completely shaven save for a greying pigtail in a solid silver band.

“Who in the name of God are you?” asks Melisande.

“I’m Big Louie,” says the man, striding confidently into the room.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

In the face of love and death, courage is useless.

(Spanish proverb)

The convivial TequilaBar at Bally’s Hotel is the twenty-eighth bar in Las Vegas that Arnie Garth has visited in the past few hours, in an increasingly fruitless search for his errant soulmate. He has precious little idea why he should be looking for Noreen Millburn in hotel bars at all. There has been no prior evidence of predilection for alcohol, and it is hardly likely that Vegas hostelries have suddenly opened a franchise for dandelion tea (although he wouldn’t actually put it past them).

He can only think that a tiny hint was dropped when he passed one of those cleverly changing advertising sites on the strip and thought that he might just have caught a glimpse of my good self beaming out at him with a rather delicious cocktail in my hand. He might have done, he might not – who knows in this city built on sand and illusion?

By the time he pushes his way through the rabble to the busy Bally barman (excuse the alliteration – blame Bally’s for boasting a busy bar), all he really knows for certain is that he desperately deserves a drink. But he supposes that he has to persist in making the same hapless enquiry.

“Bourbon, rocks. Biggie. Hey, don’t s’pose you’ve seen a weird-looking English broad with lousy fashion sense and built like a truck?”

The woman sitting next to him at the bar slowly turns towards Arnie. He knows that it will be just one of those irritating persons with all her PC, ultra-liberal, feminist bullshit, although he is surprised to sense that, for once, even he is offended by the words that just flew out of his ignorant, chauvinist, filter-free mouth. Go figure. Well, whatever; he’s not going to give this particular sweetheart the pleasure of taking righteous umbrage right into his face. So, he turns the other way.

“That isveryrude!” comes the inevitable reply. Yet not in the expected accent.

This time, it is Arnie’s turn to revolve slowly towards his neighbour. What he sees inspires in him a sudden and pretty urgent need to sit. He pushes the little guy on his other side off his barstool onto the floor and manages to plonk himself down before his legs completely give way.

“N-Noreen?”

The woman says nothing. Probably because she feels that a full Vegas makeover, big hairstyling, brand new, clingy designer frock and strappy Jimmy Choos speak with infinitely more eloquence than words. Especially when that fresh frock reveals attributes hitherto buried beneath several different and possibly even historic layers of Cumbrian wool.

“Where’d you get those – I mean that? I mean, all of it?”

“Well, Arnie,” begins Noreen, unable to stop a smile from pulling those newly ‘Autumn-Plum’ed’ and actually rather lush lips apart. Even what’s behind them looks better, but surely she can’t have had dentistry since they last met? Or added more teeth. “You’ll never believethis—”

Arnie doesn’t get the opportunity to put his credulity to the test, as he is halted by what even he would consider to be the most attractive male voice he has ever heard in his life.