Page 65 of Lost Souls

“So… have you?” asks Lyle hopefully. Such a softie.

Noreen and Arnie just gaze at each other. In silence. In wonder.

“Jesus Christ, who do you have to screw to get a hit on this fucking ship?”

They all turn to see Melisande. She is soaking wet and pointing a little gun. She fires without waiting for an answer, as it was a rhetorical question.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Justice begins at home.

(Portuguese proverb)

All that Arniecan see, when he finally opens his eyes, is a bright, unearthly white. The walls are white; the sheets are white. Even Noreen is white. And as for Lyle and myself, we are back in our working clothes. Which are – you’ve guessed it – a rather soothing yet distinguished ivory colour. Okay, white.

Noreen is smiling down on him, staring concernedlyat the bandage around his head.

“So, this is heaven,” says Arnie, blinking in the almost dazzling light. “Hello, everyone.”

“Don’t be a twit, Arnie,” says Noreen. “Melisande missed you by a mile.”

“The boat was swaying so much, the bullet just hit theEXITsign,” explains Lyle, in that delicious voice. “Well, theEXODUSsign. Which, unfortunately, fell right on your follically challenged head.”

“But you’re still alive, pardner!” I give him my best John Wayne.

“What about Cleo?”

“We found her in the trunk of Big Louie’s car,” says Lyle.

Arnie gasps in horror.

“Alive and unharmed. But I’ve a feeling she doesn’t want to see you for a while.”

“The police say Melisande’s going to go down for a good long time,” says Noreen.

“It’s what made her a star,” says Arnie, which Noreen doesn’t understand, but it makes we guys chuckle. We may be heavenly, but we’re no angels.

Arnie Garth looks around the hospital room, but I like to believe he’s talking to Noreen. “So – where do we go from here?”

I look at Lyle and he looks back at me, and we both decide to just fade away.

“Well,” says Noreen, “I don’t know about you, Arnie, but I think it’s high time that I went back home.”

Eighteen Months Later – Give or Take

Chapter Forty

In the long run, even a dog will compromise with the cat.

(Hungarian proverb)

As evening lapsover the solitary little cottage, like a breeze rippling on her favourite lake, Noreen sits beside the crackling fire with her precious white ferret on her lap, knitting a garment that is clearly only suitable for an animal or a small, four-legged child. The dramas of Las Vegas and Los Angeles appear like the flames in her hearth, flickering yet still dangerously potent. Occasionally, she wonders how events can in certain ways seem so distant whilst remaining quite firmly etched in her mind.

She hears the familiar sound of sheep being herded and so she sits and waits. Eventually the door opens, and a man enters in a heavy, windproof coat and thick boots, coated and clagged with fragments of wool and fine Cumbrian mud.

“Did you put Ambrose, Lyle and Cleo where they belong?” asks Noreen.

“Yeah,” says the man, “they’re with the other guys in the pen.”