Page 11 of Lost Souls

“You just have to get her to fall in love with you. Bodyandsoul would be good.”

This is when he really starts to stare at me. And the cabbie really starts to stare in his mirror at the space where I would be, if he could only see me.

“Get her to fall in love…?” repeats Arnie, looking stunned.

“You got it. By George!”

“Hey, I’ve always been pretty good getting women in the sack.”

“That’s nice,” says the driver. “I’m a married man myself.”

“Fall inlove, Arnie, not bed,” I explain. And, as if this isn’t shock enough, quite casually I add the clincher. What this guy I’m (invisibly) with might call the deal-breaker. “Oh – and Arnie,you have got to fall in love with her, too.”

Now he is frozen. Now I’ve caught his full attention.

“I fall in love,” says Arnie, robotically.

“Lots of visitors fall in love with England,” chirps the cabbie, with a friendly Cockney smile and a sudden yearning for normality. “But they usually wait till we get out of the airport.”

“And it has to be true love, my friend. Accept nosubstitutes. You get me? True loveon both sides. Or – well, it just won’t take.”

“True love,” repeats Arnie, like it’s an expression he’s never heard before. “What? Like sharing feelings? Sacrificing my needs for hers? Bargaining when she says no to kinky stuff?”

“See? You got two out of three, so I know you can do this.”

“Look,” he says, raising his voice, “you just keep your part of the deal.Capisce?I don’t die.”

“Listen, guv,” says the cabbie, “I’ve been driving twenty-five years. Ain’t lost a passenger yet.”

“Was I talking to you?”

“Then who…? My luck – another fruitcake!” The driver turns his attention back to the road. It’s going to be a long journey.

Knowing that at least one of us can’t be heard, I continue the mission statement and wonder whimsically if I will self-destruct after delivery. “And you both gottameanit, Arnie. No faking it, this time, you hear what I’m saying? You have both to utter those three little words for real and out loud.”

“For… real?” whispers Arnie.

“Uh huh. Out loud.”

“I – LOVE – YOU?”

The cabbie reaches an arm out behind him and deftly slides closed the glass divider. He is aware that Yanks can be a lot freer with their emotions than the buttoned-up natives of this island, but not on his watch, thank you very much.

“See, once you feel it and say it for real – say it likeyoumeanit, Arnie – you’re, like the expression goes, ‘as one’.Two souls, one housing. You see? Sorta like Siamese soulmates. And you all live happily ever after. Music. Roll credits. Aaahhh.”

To my surprise, at this point Arnie Garth actually smiles. His first for a while.

“That’s it? So basically, it’s what I just said; I gotta score with some babe. No one says nix to the Arnster. Bring it on, Soul Man.”

My day just got a lot more difficult.

“No, Arnie,” I say gently, as if talking to a three-year old. Not that I get to chat to too many of those, thank the Lord. “You have to make her love you. L-O-V-E, as the late Nat King Cole used to sing – and still does; try and stop him – but that’s another story.”

Oh, okay, thinks Arnie, his brows making those ridges like deep thinking is something pretty new to him, which I very much suspect it is.

“Well, once she knows that if she doesn’t start lovin’ me pretty damn quick, she’ll be sending me to an early death and straight down to hell, she’d have to be a seriously mean broad not to go the extra mile.”

“Oh.”