Page 48 of Lost Souls

“Noreen!”says Lyle, ignoring the podgy, balding guy in the tacky shirt newly arrived beside her. “Your winnings, my English rose.” Handing his newly transformed companion a huge roll of twenty-dollar bills, he announces, “Time to paint the town a deep, deep red. My favourite color!”

“Who the hell are you?” asks Arnie, unsurprisingly.

Lyle doesn’t lose a single millimetre of smile. In fact, it broadens, as his rich chestnut eyes sparkle even more noticeably.

“And you must be Arnie. I’ve heard so much about you, you rascal. How could you have let this incredible creature escape?”

For a moment, Arnie can say nothing, although he has to admit, if only to himself, that Noreen does indeed look like a different woman. Not your routinely, all-American gorgeous, yet somehow… how come he never noticed, he for whom the surface is everything?

He realises that he has to stand his ground.

“Huh?” he says.

Arnie would admit to some difficulty in looking away from this clearly beautiful man. He even wonders for a moment if the guy would ever consider a starring role in one of his—No! Focus!

“Noreen!” he chides. “I am shocked!”

“Shocked?” she responds, raising her voice. “ArnieGarth, you make sex films!”

“Only to pay my way through medical school!”

“Let’s go, Lyle,” says Noreen, throwing Arnie a last sorrowful, withering look. She snatches up her trusty handbag and a bulging carrier containing her discarded walking boots and cardigans old and new. Pausing only to hand the barman, whose family pictures are on a shelf behind him, some serious money for his partially deaf daughter’s further education, she slips a lacy arm through that of the taller, infinitely more handsome man, and they glide gracefully out of the bar.

Lyle turns at the door to offer Arnie a comradely farewell wave.

“Noreen!” cries Arnie, watching his spiritual meal ticket – well, his Last Supper ticket – stroll obliviously away. “Don’t leave lonely, orphaned, friendless me here on my own. Flying solo. Kindly Saint Noreen!What about the curse?”

“Hey, fella,” admonishes the barman, “this is a family town!”

Arnie sighs. The jig would appear to be very much up. Before any serious jigging has even been attempted. How can he, Arnie Garth from lowly downtown Pittsburgh, compete with –that? Urbane, sophisticated, tall. And drop-dead gorgeous; you should pardon the expression.

As he nurses his bourbon, Arnie mulls on where he might have gone wrong in his life. Looking at the whole situation, clinically and totally dispassionately, he reckons that the objective answer is ‘every-fucking-where’.

He downs his bourbon in one.

Every man has a defining moment in his life. This isthe moment Arnie Garth decides that he can’t just sit here on his own in the swish Tequila Bar at Bally’s, staring hopelessly and morosely into an empty glass, his one hope of avoiding extinction newly departed on fetchingly high heels into the neon mist. He didn’t get anywhere in this life staring into an empty glass. Not Arnie Garth. No sirree.

He signals the barman for a refill.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

After a landslide, one more can be expected.

(Faroese proverb)

Arnie is actuallypretty good at holding his drink. He has held enough for a lot of people by the time he finds himself in the Crazy Girls showroom at the Planet Hollywood resort, watching a line of topless chorus girls kicking their leggy way to the front of the stage. Old habits die hard, and in one sense he finds it quite comforting to gaze at attractive young women wearing precious little clothing in what now look pretty certain to be his final hours here on his own personal, far less glamorous planet. Okay, the whole show is relatively tasteful and restrained, but beggars can’t be choosers.

So, he is quite surprised when his bleary eyes are finally able to focus on what’s actually going on up there.

“Holy shit!”he says, managing to offend an oversized, middle-aged couple sitting squashily beside him whodon’t want that kind of talk when they are watching decent, respectable adult entertainment.

Yet I can’t totally blame the guy for his language. Not this time. Because what – or more accurately,who– he has just seen up there, on that glitzy stage,c’est moi!I’m in my nice business suit – of course I am; it’s a working day – but I have pulled my best Brooks Brothers shirt right up to my neck and am doing identical choreography to the lovely young ladies to my left and right. Naturally, they can’t see me, and neither can anyone else. Excepting, of course, you-know-who. Which is a bit of a shame because, even though I say it myself, I am quite the mover.

But I have a job to do.

So, as soon as Arnie realises that his piggy little eyes aren’t deceiving him, I direct him with a nod to sidle over to the side of the stage. Which is easier said than done, as Middle America doesn’t exactly come with much legroom.

“What the…?” is what he predictably starts mouthing, even before he reaches me.