Page 35 of Lost Souls

“Las Vegas?” He sighs. “Well, just look at it on the map, sweetheart. It’s in the middle of the desert, for fu— for Pete’s sake. Very hot and very dull. Too hot, to be honest – so best just to stay in the hotel. All the time. 24/7. And, oh, how they hate the English because of… the whole independence thing. So, if I were you, I’d not talk to a soul. Not even the staff. And if anyone mentions my name or says they know me or my… inspirational, faith-based work, they’re lying.”

“Are yousurewe’re related, Arnie?” asks Noreen Millburn, grappling with a tiny packet of vacuum-sealed cheddar.

Arnie closes his eyes and tries to imagine what might happen next.

Good luck with that, Mr Garth.

The Road to Hell

Chapter Nineteen

Choose your inn before dark, get back on the road before dawn.

(Chinese proverb)

Imagine you’ve neverbeen to Vegas. Could be you haven’t, but unless you’ve been stuck in a cave or a submarine or a run-down cottage in the drizzly north-west of England all your days, you probably have some idea of how it looks. And sounds. Even how it smells.

Now imagine you’re Noreen Millburn: first time in an airport, first time in a plane, first time in a US cab (or, indeed, any sort of cab). Come on, work with me. Suddenly, just a few heady hours after you woke up at home in your animal refuge-cum-hovel, you’re driving past the shiny black pyramid of the Luxor, the white soaring towers of the Excalibur, moving with all the other traffic past the MGM Grand and the Bellagio, with its magnificent fountains, and Paris with its mini Eiffel, which almost makes you believe you’re really there, if you’re an idiot, even though you’re nowhere near. Caesar’s Palace in all its decadent splendour, the Miragewith its erupting volcano. The Flamingo. The Venetian. The Jerusalem with its Wailing Wall (I made that one up, but trust me, there’s a lot of people in Vegas wailing).

All around town, billboards encourage you to shop, gamble, eat and enjoy stellar performances by people you never heard of in your life.

“It doesn’t look that dull, Arnie,” says Noreen perceptively, resisting all attempts by Arnie to block her views out of the cab window.

Arnie is forced to agree. “You are right, Noreen!” he says in surprise. “They musta built it up a bit. And here was I, planning a restful few days just communing with the spirits and being closer to God’s own earth.” He offers up a sigh of deep regret. “I prefer how it used to be. Mile after mile of sand and tumbleweed, clear blue skies, Mother Nature in the raw. Just a man and his maker in perfect harmony in the sweltering desert. You know, like Moses and Jesus and – and Priscilla.”

“I don’t know Saint Priscilla. But look over there; you can still see the mountains. They’re so beautiful.”

“Maybe we can see them from our hotel room.”

“Room?”

“Rooms!I meant rooms. That kinda adjoin. If…”

Arnie Garth looks around for help. For me, even. And then at his watch. There are no clocks in Vegas, supposedly so that gamblers don’t know the time and we can all stay awake 24/7. But Arnie Garth knows, even without checking, that his own clock is ticking and that his ticker is talking.

He gazes across at Our Lady of the Cardigans, whose eyes are almost popping out of her head. In that failingheart of his, Arnie is by this time pretty certain that someone like her, someone so relentlessly, helplessly, painfully good and unworldly, nice even, could never in a million decades fall for someone possibly not quite so nice, such as, for example, him. They never have and they never will. Especially not here, in this not so nice city.

And, try as he might, dear God has he tried, he is most surely not falling for this intensely decent, not unlikeable but curiously pitiful creature, which apparently is a major part of the whole deal. Not even when she turns to him, her pale but luminous blue eyes suffused with innocent wonder and her bobbly head so full and reeling that she is unable to speak, only to shake her head and sigh.

He notices that they are leaving the more lavish part of town to enter what even he might call the scuzzy section. And Arnie Garth knows from scuzzy. Strip joints, fast food outlets, sex shops. He wonders for a moment what Noreen will make of this descent and why the hell I, good old reliable Ambrose, am being such a cheapskate. Unless, of course, I’m on a budget. (Trust me, I am. I have to account for every heaven cent.)

The cab suddenly veers down an alley and parks beside a dingy entrance.

“Here we are,” says the cab driver, as if he is equally miffed to be directed way off his normal classy track. “The Dime After Dime Motel. Livin’ the dream.”

“Enough already,” says Arnie.

“Is this where we are staying, Arnie?” asks Noreen, her interest clearly piqued but not yet, at least so far as he can ascertain, utterly soured by disappointment. But it’s early days.

“Reckon so, sweetheart.” He taps her woolly-mittened hand. Probably the only such extremity in Nevada, which is itself a state of extremes. “It’s where Mother Teresa would stay whenever she was in town. And Gandhi. I thought that would mean something to you.”

“Oh yes. The minister at our church has talked about Mother Teresa. But I never knew she came here.”

“It’s where she did her best work.”

***

The first thing Arnie Garth notices when he enters the grim motel lobby – well, the first thing after the fug and the flickering light and the stench of bitter disappointment – is a large and vivid poster on the notice board. It reads,LAS VEGAS WELCOMES THE NATIONAL EROTIC CINEMA AWARDS. A bright-red banner stripped across it, covering some of the more explicit artwork, screams,TONITE!