Page 52 of Lost Souls

Lyle immediately interrupts, shaking his exquisitelysculpted head. “Because no one’s ever seen right into your souls –soul!”

He beckons for the enraptured woman to sit back on the leather chair, which is still resolutely on the recline, and settles himself right next to her. The hem of his dressing gown has slid away to reveal the first ebony leg Noreen has ever seen. She can’t seem to steer her admiring eyes away from it. She almost feels that she would like to get out the Pledge and polish it, like the finest antique furniture, which is in itself unusual, as she has never been an assiduous polisher in the past.

Without moving a finger, Lyle reclines the chair a little further and glides a fraction closer. More than a fraction, if we are measuring, although it feels as if he has hardly moved. Their faces are now inches apart.

“Most women, Noreen,” he whispers, yet still with that profound resonance, “most women in this town, they’re no more than glossy billboards for some Silicon Valley surgeons. The kind of ladies your sleazy friend Arnie is so drawn to. But you, you just let Mother Nature take its inexorable course.”

“I try my best,” she says, not entirely certain what he’s talking about.

Lyle reaches out with slim, strong fingers and cups her newly plucked chin.

“W-what are you doing?” she asks, never having had her chin or anything else cupped, so far as she can recall.

Lyle shakes his head and withdraws his hand, slightly. “I apologise, Noreen, for my appearing too forward. I’m just being swept along on a torrent of emotions that I’m utterly powerless to stem. They’re rattling my spirit and my very frame in a way that has never happened to me before. Tell me to stop, and I’ll go somewhere cold and desolate and never bother you again.”

Noreen says nothing, but she is clearly giving the option some thought. Although not a great deal. This isn’t like some of her really big decisions, such as should she donate one of her kidneys for transplant. (In fact, she had at one time offered up both kidneys but was rejected just in case being bonkers was cellular.) Lyle’s face moves closer to hers. Noreen instinctively closes her eyes. So she doesn’t notice, as her paramour licks his perfect lips, that his tongue is just a tiny bit forked.

Suddenly they hear a violent, cracking sound and turn in shock. Someone is hammering at or possibly even kicking in the door to their luxury suite. Arnie, now clearly in the most excruciating pain, barrels one-footedly into the room. He looks both determined and terrified. But mostly terrified.

“Shit! That is one heavy door. Noreen –stop!You’re about to shtup Satan!”

Noreen just glares at the intruder, miffed that a mood she was rather enjoying has been so impolitely crapped upon.

“Arnie!”she berates.“Have you been drinking? On an empty stomach?”

Before he can respond, not that he feels that this is the dominant question requiring an answer, Lyle is beside him, a warm yet somehow irredeemably evil smile on his face.

“Hello, Arnie,” he says in that wonderful voice Arnie is just beginning to loathe, “you look like you’re about to self-combust. Or would you like some help?”

Arnie, who knows that the Devil gets all the best lines, decides there is no point in competing. So his response is terse and to the point. “C’mon, Noreen! We’re getting out of here!”

He moves to grab her wrist, but Noreen smacks him away, adding a pain in his arm to the one in his foot and an even larger one where his soul should be.

“We are not goinganywhere!” insists Noreen. “I’m a big girl, Arnie. I can take care of myself… or Lyle can.”

“But he’s the Devil!”

“No, Arnie. He’s in real estate. He told me in the lift coming up here.”

“Same difference. C’mon!”

Arnie, who is himself all fired-up by now, makes a sudden lunge for Noreen, causing her massive old handbag, which was still wrapped around a newly exposed arm, to go flying onto the floor. Its contents – knitting, spare bobbly hat, peppermints, et al. – spill out.

Then the fallen bag begins to move.

The threesome watch in some fascination as the well-worn relic, which Lyle had been unable to persuade her to replace, shuffles of its own accord across the plush,grade-A carpet. Eventually, Stanley the ferret pops his little head out and scurries away.

Taking advantage of the furry distraction, Arnie commences to drag Noreen, who is now scouring the room in some desperation for her favourite rodent (whilst plaintively calling out his name). They shuffle towards the battered door. Arnie grabs the door handle then immediately pulls back his hand as it begins to sizzle.

“Owwww! Ooohh!Hot!”

He glares through the steam at a smiling Lyle as Noreen slips away from her ineffectual would-be rescuer and returns to the safe harbour of the other male’s warm, welcoming arms. This slimmer and infinitely better-looking gentleman adopts a conciliatory tone, whilst throwing Arnie a look of comradely disdain.

“Arnie, sport. Accept it like a mensch. You lost.”

“Oh,” says Arnie weakly, following it up with a muttered, “go to hell!”

“But it’s my day off.” The taller man laughs.