Page 51 of Lost Souls

“He’s going toseduceher, Arnie!” I tell him, in some frustration. “He’s got moves you’d kill for. And hey, once she’s given her body to the Devil, you think her soul – correction, hersouls– will be far behind?”

Now Arnie turns to me. And I have to admit that for once even I am moved. Mind you, considering that most of the clientele I deal with are seconds short of rigor mortis, this has to be a bit more involving.

“Listen, Ambrose,” he sighs, shaking his little baldinghead (I think he lost that stupid hat of his at the seventeenth bar), “it’s over.Capisce?Noreen’s never gonna fall in love with me.Never ever!Maybe there was a teensy bit of a chance once. Perhaps over that Italian supper, who knows? But now, with what she’s found out about me and with the new demon on the block, say hello to hopeless.”

“Maybe so,” I am sadly obliged to agree. “But, Arnie Garth, do you really wanna consign that poor, sweet lady to the fires of eternal damnation? Perpetual pain and torment.Macarenaplaying on an eternal loop. You think she deserves that?Doyou?”

Arnie starts to writhe around on the plush nautical upholstery. The man seems totally torn.

“ I – look, it’s none of my business.I can’t help Noreen!I can’t even help myself, for Chrissakes! I’m nothing! I’m nobody. Comparatively speaking. Anyway, I… I don’t know where he’s taken her.”

“The Bellagio.”

“You had to tell me!”

“And it won’t be the maid’s room. Have a nice night.”

There. I’ve said all I can say. So, with a farewell nod of my head, I step nimbly out of the elegant boat onto the water. And walk away unsplashily in my Florsheims right down the centre of the mini Grand Canal. An oldie, but a goodie.

“Siegfried and Roy, eat your heart out,” I say to deaf ears.

Arnie remains alone in the gondola, conflicting emotions and impulses playing over his tormented face like he’s doing a screen test forDr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Until finally, he makes a decision.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” he cries into the tastefully painted and masterfully lit fake Venetian skies. Thrusting both hands into the water, he starts paddling towards the jetty. It isn’t a tactic you see many passengers going for, but it does speed up the whole process, and on disembarkation the gondolier has to admit he is quite glad to see the back of him.

Chapter Thirty-One

It is easy to tempt a frog to the river.

(Serbian proverb)

The suite islike nothing Noreen Millburn has ever seen. Considering that until very recently she had seen nothing much outside of a ramshackle old hovel in northern England, a few hills of the rugged kind and a cobbled Lakeland village, this is perhaps not saying a great deal. But even the full tally of what has she has witnessed in Las Vegas itself over these past few surreal hours seriously pales against her surroundings right this minute.

It is not that a single suite of rooms, however presidential, can be even more lavish than a string of dancing fountains, breathtaking floorshows, vast Italianate lobbies or palatial casinos – logic would clearly dictate otherwise. What has nailed Noreen to the spot, with her eyes and mouth doing almost cartoon-like things, is that practically everything in the expansive set of rooms issomething that she has encountered before – a sofa, a table, a bed, a bathroom… okay, that weird thing she can glimpse in the bathroom that is something between a toilet and a tub confuses her – yet of a grandeur, design and elegance that makes her suspect they are of a totally different species. And that she has been silently transported to an alien planet, perhaps one inhabited solely by giants blessed with impeccable taste and enviable hygiene.

Noreen has to sit down. She does so with some force, plonking herself onto a comfy-looking leather chair that immediately reclines and almost sends her flying over the top.

“Whee!” she cries, like a child on a rollercoaster.

Lyle smiles with pleasure. “Horizontal works for you. Excuse me a moment, Noreen, my dear.”

Her charming host steps into the bedroom. In what can’t have been more than two seconds max, Lyle returns wearing the same adorable smile but a completely different outfit.

Noreen has never before seen a man in a red, velvet dressing gown and Turkish slippers, holding a long cigarette holder. This is not the outfit her father slipped into when he came home from a long day on the fells with his livestock – taking his cap off did it for him – and no other man has ever changed his attire in her presence.

“Ahhhh, that’s better,” says Lyle. “What was it dear Dorothy Parker once said, something about getting ‘out of that wet coat and into a dry martini’?”

Noreen is about to say that she doesn’t know Miss or Mrs Parker (or a martini) but is rendered quite speechless by the fact that Lyle’s cigarette appears to be happilylighting itself on just a commanding gaze from its owner.

When she has recovered from what must have surely been a trick of the light, or indeed her lightheadedness after so long awake (not that she could sleep with all this going on – and anyway, she is accustomed to often staying up all night for her needy badgers), Noreen finds a large remote control. As she has never felt the need for a television or indeed for anything electronic, she has not come across such an object, so she can be forgiven for pressing a button or two. Suddenly, the drapes open with a soft purring sound to reveal a private terrace and compact, blue-tiled swimming pool, the whole set-up lit with multicoloured fairy lights.

“Oh my God!” says Noreen, throwing caution to the wind. She stands up and almost twirls. “This is incredible, Lyle. It’s like the best sort of dream. Even without the livestock.”

In less than a second, Lyle is across the vast room and beside her. His hand, now alighting on her exposed shoulder, sends a rush of heat around her body that she hasn’t experienced since she rescued a poor squirrel that had fallen down the open chimney and into her crackling winter fireplace (Jeremy still comes to visit).

“If this is a dream,” says Lyle, mellifluously, “I just pray that I never wake up, is all. I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman quite as beautiful as you, Noreen.”

“Oh you!” she says, smacking him hard on his shoulder, a blow which sends even Lyle reeling. “I’m not beaut—look at me!No one could call me beautiful, and no one ever has. Sheep-face is about as near—”