Page 39 of Lost Souls

“Noreen, I would be honoured,” Arnie Garth had said.I should live so long, Arnie Garth had thought.

Fortunately, at this point, Noreen had spotted the clothes shop that had her name on it. Well, not literally ‘Noreen Millburn’ – who in their right mind would call a fashion outlet Noreen Millburn? I doubt even Noreen Millburn would do that – but it was called It’s So You, and right then Noreen was as ‘so you’ as you can get.

So now Arnie and her – or ‘you’ – are strolling out of the shop, he with his cheap ‘I’ve stayed and played in Vegas’ Stetson pulled down low, she with all her old, shapeless cardigans scrunched into a large plastic bag and a brand-new, sparkly, diamanté-studded, shapeless cardigan buttoned up around her sturdy Cumbrian frame.

“You really think it suits me, Arnie?” asks Noreen coyly, as they hit the Strip.

“Suits you?”says Arnie vaguely, as his head jerks around like a coked-up meerkat, seeking people and even posters to avoid. “Honey, you were born to wear that… thing.”

He suddenly notices one of his DVDs on prominent display in a window – ‘Arnie Garth presentsBreakfast on Tiffany’s’ – and swiftly steers her away.

“Well, thank you, Arnie Garth,” continues an oblivious Noreen, patently intoxicated by the new sensations of theday and possibly the first compliment of her life. Even Arnie, with his much-practised lack of perception, can detect that the usual, wind-battered ruddiness in her cosmetically unenhanced Cumbrian cheeks has been supplanted by a new and different glow, one that appears to generate from within rather than being purely elemental.

“And now,” she announces, with a hugely satisfied smile, “I have got a surprise foryou!”

“You bought the matching panties?”

“You!”she says matily, punching his shoulder so hard that his hat slips to a jauntier angle and he develops a bruise that could last beyond death. “No, silly man,” explains an excited Noreen, “I asked the lovely kind American lady in the shop for the very best restaurant round here. I know you like your food – that’s why you’re such a podge.”

“I’m not such—”

“You’re a little porker, Arnie. Anyway,guess what?Tonight, I am going to takeyouto dinner! With my – what do you call them? – winnings. Just as friends, mind. No funny stuff.”

Arnie stares at her in total panic. “No way!” he cries. Then adds swiftly, “I mean, no way to dinner, Noreen. As for the funny stuff…”

“Now, Arnie, I am not taking ‘no way’ for an answer. It’s the veryleastI can do after you rescued me from that awfully cruel lot back home and dragged me halfway across the world for reasons I still can’t quite fathom.”

“I just have this irresistible urge to help people in need.” He smiles, because you have to grab these moments as they fall. “Hey, I surely don’t have to tell you what that’s like, cuz… Saint Noreen.”

“No indeed, Arnie. I just never thought that anyone else felt the same way as I do.”

“Very few people do. Hardly anyone. So, you and me, meeting up like this, is what you call a magical coincidence. Yeah? And you know what Einstein said about coincidence.”

“I don’t even know about Einstein.”

“Who does? Well, anyway, he said that coincidence is ‘God’s way of staying anonymous’. Isn’t that beautiful, Noreen? That God himself is the guy putting us together. Reminds me of one of my movies. In fact,allof them. Did you know Faith Baste was one of my leading ladies?”

“Really? Then you must tell me all about her. At that restaurant.”

“Aww, Noreen,” says Arnie, “can’t we just eat in our nice, cosy room? And stare at our lovely… wall. Y’know, just you and me. Together. The two of us. I… don’t feel like being around people right now. Especially the sorta people in this town.”

Noreen looks shocked. “Eat in the room!And let this lovely new cardie go to waste? No wonder you never married, Mr Stick-In-The-Mud. I want to eat out.” She digs her hand deep into her bag and pulls out a tiny, white ferret. “And so does Stanley.”

***

“Ambrose!”

Arnie Garth’s worst nightmare seems about to come true. He can almost feel his treacherous heart caving in and whatever it is that causes strokes sneaking straightback to give him another one. This time for keeps.

“Ambrose!” he cries again but isn’t certain whether he is actually crying it out loud.

“Ambrose indeed!”endorses Noreen, thinking that it must be a word Americans use to express awe and delight, which – to no one’s surprise more than her own – is a little like what she is feeling right now. (And who knows, perhaps one day the word ‘Ambrose’ might mean just that! Stranger things have happened. A few of them could be about to happen this very evening.)

The couple, who are of course nowhere near a couple, are standing outside one of Las Vegas’s most magnificent and luxurious hotels, the shimmering lights bathing the marble columns and their persons in a warm neon glow.

All along their slow and wondrous journey here they’ve passed billboards and illuminated signs announcing that tonight is NECA night, that magical occasion when glittering and somewhat indecent prizes are presented to the lucky and talented winners of the National Erotic Cinema Awards. The goody bags – or, as they are termed here, the Woody Bags – handed out to the invited guests are themselves worthy of prizes. That Arnie Garth, founder and CEO of Bulge Entertainment, should be here in town amongst the illustrious throng – thetiteratti, as the press have dubbed them – is a given. That this is the last place Arnie Garth would wish to be seen right now, with so wildly innocent a companion, a human being light years from indecent, is a given ten times over.

“Thisis where she recommended we go eat?” says Arnie, staring at the faultlessly awesome hotel with dissembled incredulity.