Page 28 of Lost Souls
In addition to the overpriced homemade cakes and warm scones (cream and jam extra) and the rich assortment of teas no one really wants, her customers appear to appreciate the luxury of being able to listen in to all the other conversations circulating around them, whilst maintaining the acceptable illusion that they are inhabiting their own little islands, interested in no one bar their immediate table companions. Nowhere in my experience do prurient curiosity and Anglo-Saxon aloofness meld so effortlessly as in the cosy rural café.
The only compensation for feeling so out of his depth is that Rosie has finally relented and agreed to impart to him all that he needs to know in the sphere of romancing an Englishwoman. Or Noreen.Although, God knows why he would want to, she muses, unless it’s a kink even she hasn’t heard of.
For his part, Arnie Garth has never witnessed so delicate a mouth accommodating so massive a slice of Black Forest Gateau. The young woman could be a natural, but this isn’t why he is here.
“Wmuh lick tuful yu instit dem,” she explains.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t you understand English?” she says, wiping her chocolatey lips. “Women like to feel you’re interested in them.”
Arnie shakes his head and almost laughs. “But Iaminterested in them, Rosie. Will she be a moaner or ascreamer? Will she have a G-spot? Will she dress up as a nun…?”
Now it’s Rosie’s turn at the head shaking, which she does with such vehemence that a flight of errant cherry crumbs splatters him in the face .
“That you want to hear what they’ve got to say!That you really want to know. You’ve got tolistento them, Arnie.”
She starts to pour her tea into a delicate china cup through a metal strainer. It is one of the weirdest things the man has ever seen. He tears himself reluctantly away in order to process the equal weirdness he has just heard.
“Listen…?Really…? Yeah?” He supposes that this Rosie, as a woman, must know whereof she speaks, but it all sounds pretty suspect to him. “Well, okay – hey, I can do that. Sure. I’m a great listener. Gimme something to listen to. C’mon, Rosie kid, I’m all ears.”
The café proprietor chooses this moment to give his face a tooth-rattling butt-smack on her way to another table with a laden tray. He grabs her apron, jerking her back.
“Sweetheart, where’s my tall skinny decaff soya macchiato?”
“I told you five times now – this is a soddingtea room!Are you bloody deaf or something? Sir.”
***
Arnie Garth isn’t exactly brimming with confidence as he and his sceptical tutor make their cake-heavy way back to the Wordsworth Arms. It doesn’t aid his mood that Rosiehas insisted on practising her dance routines all the way along the busy high street. Especially as she has managed to interpolate her own cuts and edits into the performance, endowing the whole number with a disconcertingly jerky quality that is starting to hurt Arnie’s head in a way that even the malevolent Tudor beams weren’t quite able to achieve.
She suddenly stops, right outside the village post office. Turning to Arnie, she gives him some of her best and most energetic tap, whilst simultaneously talking in a puffed rhythm that indicates her breathing might need more work. A few locals pause to watch, then, realising it’s only Rosie, they simply nod, smile and move on.
“Arnie, if you and nutty Noreen have to be together – God knows why, but it’s sort of romantic, in a seriously sad and gross way – then you will.”
“Y-you think?” he responds, in some surprise.
“I don’t just think. Iknow!Get out there and make it happen! You’re okay; she’s okay. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Men are from Mars, women… aren’t.” She suddenly begins to sing, “Tomorrow…”
Despite her voice being of the type that could make a walrus miscarry, Arnie feels strangely elated.
“Yeah! I’m gonna do it, Rosie! Gonna do it today. And all I have to do is listen, right? Yeah. Listen.”
He goes very quiet and cocks his ear to show Rosie and the world, in a visual way – after all, this a man for whom, in life and work, actions are the loudest speakers – what a real good listener he is. Which is exactly when he hears a familiar sound. A distinctive purr that he knows so well from LA and was hearing again only yesterday inthis godforsaken place. A car engine – that of a particular and rather exclusive vehicle, especially in these parts – being started up.
Arnie runs round the corner with a speed that only fear and mounting panic can induce. He discovers a young man in a leather jacket sitting in the newly rented Ferrari. Not merely sitting in it but, with some visible pleasure, starting it up.
“Hey! That’s my Ferrari!” protests Arnie.
“Not anymore it isn’t,” responds the younger man, with a polite but no-nonsense smile. “The company wants it back. Your credit card’s been cancelled.”
For a moment, Arnie can’t process the words, although this time it is not simply the bizarre accent impeding their journey to his befuddled brain.
“Say WHAT?”
Whilst the person in the driver’s seat is debating whether this is an order or merely an odd exclamation, Arnie compounds the confusion with another arcane muttering.
“Melisande!”
