Page 40 of Lost Souls

“I think so. Yes. This is the place. What’s wrong with it, Arnie?”

“What’s wrong with it? What’s… er…wrongwith it? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, Noreen… sweetheart.”

He can see that she is waiting as she admires the knee-trembling splendour, the classic design, as she watches smart cars arrive and even smarter men in their multicoloured tuxedos alight and escort staggeringly well-proportioned young ladies in their elegant fake-furs and very little else. Not your everyday Vegas clientele, as I’ve pointed out. But this is a special night. And this place Noreen happens to have chosen – or to which she has kindly been signposted – just happens to be the venue for those aforementioned, highly prestigious and much-trumpeted dirty movie awards.

Who knew?

“It’s adive, Noreen!” announces Arnie Garth, his voice a tad too high. “A hellhole! That cardigan –that cardigan– deserves somewhere far better. I know this little Italian place. You’ll love it. I really got into those guys’ food when… I was in Rome… shooting the musical biopic of Pope John Paul. The seventh.” He grabs a solid, diamanté arm and yanks her away from the unbearableshoddiness of it all.

A confused Noreen finds herself being almost dragged halfway back along the Strip. Well, noalmostabout it. If Arnie Garth has even the remotest chance of ‘seducing’ this strange and saintly creature into loving him unconditionally, he really needs to steer them both as far away from the notorious NECA as possible. Even though it is usually one of the pinnacles of his sleazy but stellar career and none more so than tonight, when he and his cast are up for several of the major awards. Some of them almost prosecutable.

This dragging, however, is not quite as simple as he might have thought. For a start, Arnie is smaller than Noreen and nowhere near as strong. The effort is also compounded to a huge degree by Noreen being rooted to the spot in her serious work boots – or, in fact, to several spots – in utter and repeated mesmerisation at what this miraculous place has to offer.

“Oh, Arnie, the lights are so beautiful! Can this really be a place of sin?”

“Only the seven deadly ones. Plus, a couple or three more. Boy, I’m so hungry. You know what they say in Nevada – hasta la pasta!”

“I never heard that.”

Before they can reach the only safe refuge of true squalor, a voice stops them. “Pssst! Hey!”

They turn to find a slightly seedy-looking man in a fraying brown suit and two-tone shoes stepping out of the bushes lining Caesar’s Palace. He is shaking his head in a distinctly nervous fashion, like he is having some sort of argument with himself, and looks practically on the vergeof tears. As if he has an empathy detector built in, the man immediately focuses his full attention on the lady in the twinkling schmatter.

“Can you help me please, ma’am? I-I’ve been – well, I’ve been such a fool! See, I’ve gambled away everything I’ve got.Everything!Including my kid’s college money and my sweet wife’s liver transplant fund. The only thing I have left is… is this watch my dear late mother gave me.” He pulls up his sleeve. It is indeed a fine-looking piece of jewellery.

Noreen’s stare lands on it for a brief, admiring moment but is soon firmly back on the man again.

“It’s a Cartier, see?” he points out. “Cartier. From France. And I-I’d besograteful if you’d give me just fifty bucks for it, so I-I could afford my bus fare home to face the music.” At this, he blinks back the tears of sorrow and guilt, staring earnestly into Noreen’s already moist eyes.

“Oh, you poor man! Of course!” She fishes in her bag, bringing out a tiny ferret, which throws the man a little, but then some bills. “Here’s – let me see – it says one hundred dollars on it, will that—”

Before the man in the brown suit can snatch it, Arnie is right there, grabbing his skinny arm with a firm, unyielding hand. Noreen gasps in shock.

“Arnie!”

With his other hand, Arnie pulls up the stunned man’s sleeve. There are at least half a dozen identical timepieces running up his arm. Noreen is open-mouthed and gawping.

“And just for future reference, shmuck, ‘Cartier’doesn’tbegin with a ‘K’.”

“Fuck you!” responds the man. “With a ‘C’anda‘K’!” With this snappy exit line, he runs off down the street.

“Shame on you!” calls Arnie. “Does your mom know what you do for a living?”

“Or your poor sweet wife and kid,” adds Noreen, then realises how she might have got that bit wrong. Arnie looks at her and notices that she appears quite upset. “Arnie… he was so… I truly thought he…”

Arnie puts an arm round her, squeezing the diamanté and feeling a shoulder like toughened granite. “I know, baby,” he comforts her. “But hey, not all Americans are scuzzballs.”

“I know you aren’t a scuzzball, Arnie. Whatever they are. What was that film you told me you were raising the money to make?”

“Moses – the Wilderness Years.”

When she smiles this time and Arnie stares into that disconcertingly innocent, make-up-free face and those oh-so-trusting pale-blue eyes, he senses a curious and completely unfamiliar sensation starting to wash over him. He wonders for a moment if it is fear or IBS or even imminent heart failure, then realises – with a total shock of the new to his system – that it might very well be guilt. He shakes his head briskly, as if ridding himself of a wasp.

“C’mon, kiddo, let’s eat.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Cold tea and cold rice are bearable, cold looksand cold words are not.