Page 23 of Lost Souls

Sadly, the same can’t be said of his guest for the evening, who appears simply to have altered the layering of her cardigans, so that a former under-cardy is now promoted to top dog. But she has at least added a flower to her bobbly hat, even though it looks more like a fern.

A smart diner in a tuxedo is emerging from the building as they arrive. Arnie hands him the car keys.

“This is costing me a bundle to rent,” he tells the perplexed man. “So park it close. And no monkeying around with the radio.”

Arnie, her attentive escort for the evening, guides Noreen gently towards the hotel doorway, where she stops. Rigid. Frozen. Unable to move. Arnie practically has to drag her into the lobby. He can feel the poor woman shaking, or at least wobbling, under all her layers.

“I have never been anywhere like this before, Arnie,” says a wide-eyed and more than somewhat intimidated Noreen Millburn.

“Get outta here!” marvels her host, in well-faked surprise. “Well, Lady Noreen of Rough Fell, eat your heart out! And the evening has only just begun.”

Winking suggestively to the intrigued and only slightly repelled receptionist, the not-very-quiet American accompanies his guest for the evening into the sparkling, triple-rosetted, country-house hotel restaurant.

“Prepare for the night of your life!”

***

Arnie Garth is quite accustomed to people staring when he enters a classy joint. But he knows that in LA this is because they stare at everyone who comes in, just in case it is someone they know, ought to know or would very much like to know. He rarely fits into any of these categories, as he is in a particular and rather more circumspect niche, albeit a highly lucrative one. Wannabe stars are hardly likely to rush up to him in public or ask to join him at a table in order to demonstrate what they are capable of, as there are laws against such things at mealtimes. Even in LA.

The staring this evening is of a different order.What on earth is he doing with her?orWhat in God’s name is she doing with him?is a game played with unremitting joy and blissful meanness all over the globe. It appears to have reached its apogee this drizzly evening. It is not that Arnie is a catch so magnificent that one could expect only a goddess to match his aura; it is simply that the component parts of this intriguing couple would appear to inhabit two totally different worlds. One tackily foreign, the other vaguely subterranean.

Yet Arnie is far less focused on the manner in which other bemused diners are looking at him than he ispreoccupied with how intensely his wide-eyed guest is gazing back at them. And not just atthem. A bedazzled Noreen is taking in everything from the velvety drapes to the gleaming silverware to the glittering chandeliers. And, of course, the sneering yet unctuously subservient waiting staff.

Finally, she turns to Arnie and says, in the same voice she uses for calling her sheep back home and scaring away the foxes from her chicken-pens, “Wouldn’t this place make afantasticshelter for the homeless?”

Arnie sighs. He really has no answer to this. Nor, apparently, has the remainder of the restaurant’s clientele, who are looking at each other with a mixture of furrowed brows and shaking heads.

“Hey, why don’t I order some wine? Red or white? How about three of each?”

“I don’t drink, Arnie.”

“Of course you don’t,” her host sighs resignedly, “crystal meth?” Naturally his native wit leaves this particular dazed native simply confused.

A smartly dressed young waiter has been observing them in some disbelief. As if he has drawn the shortest straw, he makes his tentative way to the table and hands each of them a menu. He then sidles swiftly away, fearing they might be infectious, and escapes back into the kitchen, a succession of dramatic sighs left to hover in the air.

“Okay, let’s order,” says Arnie swiftly, starting to read. He smiles at his guest in what he has been led to believe is his most irresistible manner. And nothing to do with it usually being aimed at young women who aspireto a career in erotic cinema.

Noreen, however, appears to be ducking rather nimbly out of range of this particular megawatt beam, immersed as she is in the tall, leather-bound object she has just been handed.

“I don’t understand, Arnie,” she says, shaking her head. She is almost in tears. “This menu…”

Arnie checks it out. “It’s in French, sweetheart. They do that in fancy places, so everything sounds expensive. Looks like they don’t even translate it here, lazy stiffs.”

He looks around and snaps his fingers at a waiter with fake insouciance, which causes all the diners around them to pretend even harder not to stare at the couple.

“I’ll get penguin-boy.”

After a fair amount of judicially ignored snapping, and close to the point at which the unseasonally attired guest is starting to resemble a coked-up Flamenco dancer, another bored waiter strolls languidly over.

“ Hi,” says Arnie, swiftly shoving a bill into the waiter’s top pocket and winking at him. “This is kind of a special occasion. Know what I’m saying?”

The waiter nods, although he can’t for a moment deduce what sort of special occasion this could be and would rather not employ his imagination in the exercise. Arnie understands that it probably won’t aid the situation to tell him that if Cupid doesn’t get his friggin’ arrow through all those cardigans by Sunday, this guest from across the pond will have had his Last (criminally overpriced and French) Supper.

“What’s good today?” he asks, then smiles at Noreen. “Or should I say,bon?”

“No, you shouldn’t. And it’s all good, sir,” says the waiter, a bit sniffily, in Arnie’s opinion, but hey, this is England. “May I recommend thebrochette d’agneau?”

“Oh yeah. You most certainly may. I love a good – broshet. And the lady will have the same. But see that you make ’em biggies. None of yournouvelleBS. And no skimpin’ on the fries.”