Page 10 of Lost Souls

“Say what?” he utters, finally. “You gave it to a little girl…?”

“Who was behind you in line. Yup. Little new-born baby female. Popped it in there right alongside her own. Two souls, eh? Quite a first for us.”

“Fine,” says Arnie, some of the colour, I’m glad to say, coming back into his miserable face. “Okay. Let’s look at this rationally, whatever your name is.”

“Ambrose.”Is it really so hard to remember?

“Other guys get a Gabriel. I get an Ambrose. Figures! So, lemme get this straight, Ambrose, I grab my soul back from off of some broad who has two. Mine and her own. You collect it sometime. Hopefully, not too soon. And when I go, I go to heaven, not the other place.”

“I am so happy you understand. I really thought this was going to be difficult.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” screams Arnie.

Then he suddenly grabs his head in pain, falls back, dead to the world – until his ratty eyes pop open again just a few interesting seconds later.

“Oh my God;I saw the white light!And there was a sign.All are welcome…except maybe for you, Arnie Garth.”

“See? I told you. Circle of life. ‘Hakuna Matata’. So, you just find this lucky female lady with two souls and—”

“And I rip mine back out of her. With your help. Yeah?”

Here I do one of my celebrated shrugs. “Sort of. In a way. Well, no. Actually.”

Now he just stares at me. So, I try to put on my calmest, folksiest, maybe-kind-of-Mr-Rogers voice.

“Arnie. You ever been to the Lake District?”

Chapter Four

Learn a new language and get a new soul.

(Czech proverb)

We’re not quiteon location yet – but we are on our way. Get your umbrellas out!

Of course, the hospital in LA was beyond delighted to see the broad Hawaiian back of Arnie Garth departing through their electronic sliding doors into the unrelenting California sunshine, but no more so than their irascible patient was to be doing the exit vertically, on his own two well-shod feet and in an even more vivid shirt than the onein which he first so dramatically and horizontally arrived.

I can’t say for certain that the staff were amazed at his remarkable recovery – courtesy of yours truly – but the expression ‘the Devil looks after his own’ was heard on more than one occasion in corridors and cafeterias, which is hardly a medical supposition but is most certainly a human one (and almost definitely misguided; if I know anything about the downstairs people – and, unfortunately, I know a fair bit – they would have been only too delighted to claim my little turd for eternity and beyond). I almost wanted to reassure the good but beleaguered hospital folks that this could well be a temporary arrangement and that a more probable scenario would be to see the soulless little homunculus, who gave them such a hard time, well and truly expired by the following weekend, but they would think I was only trying to cheer them up.

So, I kept my own counsel and didn’t reveal myself to them, or even indeed to Arnie Garth himself, until we were in one of those iconic London taxis on our way out of Heathrow Airport after taking an exhausting red-eye from LAX (well, exhausting for him; I sleep like a dead person).

Notice the abrupt change of scene? And it cost me nothing.Bupkis. The magic of the written word. Mind you, it cost Arnie Garth a fortune. Serves the horny little snob right for only travelling first class. I really wanted to tell this seriously fraught man, whilst he was arranging his mercy-mission at breakneck speed, that the United Kingdom, on which he had never previously set Gucci moccasin, was bigger than he might have assumed in his narrow LA mind. And that Heathrow Airport to the LakeDistrict by black cab would be a major expense. But I had to concur that time was indeed of the essence and that Arnie Garth, one of the nation’s wealthiest eroticrats, was not a huge fan of public transport.

The trouble with suddenly manifesting right next to someone who has just had a major heart attack or two is that you could make their heart stop majorly all over again. But it seemed like there was nothing else for it, as I still didn’t think that Arnie had quite grasped the challenges of his particular journey. And we are not just talking jet lag.

So here I am, in the back seat of one of London’s famous black hansom cabs – a first for me, too – making sure that my ‘client’, if this is what I may prematurely call him, is up to speed.

“Okay, so I meet this Brit woman, this Lady friggin’ Two-Souls,” he says, when he has recovered from the inevitable shock and adjusted to my presence, “then what, Ambien?”

“Then you cut off her head with a mystic sword. And it’s Ambrose.”

I can see the cab driver in his mirror, a middle-aged Cockney gentleman who clearly thought Christmas and Rosh Hashanah had come all at once when a loud American in the wrong clothes for this time, or indeed any time, hired him from the taxi rank to travel the length of the country, rather than just to make another familiar traffic-laden slog to some plush hotel in the West End. He has no idea who his passenger is talking to – he can see no sign of a phone or an earpiece – and is just beginning to fret that he is going to be several hours on the road witha mad person.

“Say WHAT?” says Arnie Garth.

“I’m kidding, Arnie. That’sHighlander.”

I lower my voice now because this is the serious bit. The part of the plan that I’m not sure this Arnie guy is totally on top of. The big slug of plot I want to reduce down to a manageable size by keeping my cool.