Chapter Three #2
What our ailing Mr Garth actually notices, somewhat to his surprise, is a pale, rather gaunt fellow, in his late middle-age and, if I’m being brutally honest, maybe a tad on the nondescript side.
Yet, even though I say it myself, this is at the very least an extremely clean and reasonably well-turned-out gentleman, in a decent lightweight business suit, with attractively greying hair on some, if not all, of his head and a neat, well-trimmed, salt ’n’ pepper moustache.
Needless to say, the patient isn’t thrilled to see me. They seldom are.
“Who the hell are you? Where d’you come from? How did you get in?”
That sort of thing.
“So many questions. Sheesh. Glad I’m sitting down, Mr Garth. My name is Ambrose.”
“And?”
“Just Ambrose. Means ‘immortal’, but hey, what’s in a name? Oh, and I’m here to collect your soul.”
So, there you have it. The secret, as they say, is out of the bag. And what a secret! What a bag!
“Nurse! SECURITY!”
For a man in his parlous condition, Arnie Garth can scream pretty damn loud. Loud enough to draw that same admittedly intrigued nurse right back in.
“What is it, Mr Garth? Why you yelling?”
“Why you think?” he says, nodding his shiny head and all his drips in my direction. “Who let this guy in? Get rid of him!”
“What guy?”
“Are you blind, lady? This guy!”
Now he’s pointing straight at me. But, of course, the nurse doesn’t see a thing. Except for an empty chair. Hey, it’s not her soul I’m after. Yet.
“You’re seeing guys?” she says, shaking her head. “This is a new one. I’m fetching the doctor. He will love it.”
And she’s off again, muttering to herself, leaving a somewhat bewildered Arnie Garth. And, of course, me.
“Over here,” I say, when he looks to the chair again and for one blissful moment doesn’t see anything.
Swivelling his head, he finds me right across the private room, on a second, empty bed, playing with an oxygen mask. Whose Life Is It Anyway? – now that’s my kind of movie. Although a few songs wouldn’t have hurt.
“‘Pull back to reveal Ambrose, a commanding man in a smart yet not ostentatious suit. Handsome, with just a hint of masculine cruelty.’”
Not even a smile. Ah well.
“Nurse couldn’t see me, Arnie,” I explain, moving back to the chair with a certain fleetness of foot that that would not have left my idol Gene Kelly unimpressed. That man could dance on a cloud.
I’d have thought the selective-seeing bit would be pretty evident by now. It’s the other stuff that could require a more detailed explanation.
“To all intents and purposes,” I say, “I’m a special effect.”
“Cut the crap!” protests Arnie. “I’m a very sick man.”
“Oh that, my dear Arnold, is an understatement. You are in a worse shape than honey-bunch John Wayne at the end of The Alamo. Can I be honest with you? And please don’t nod, not in your condition.
You are inches away from a brain aneurism that will lock you into your body for as long as you live.
You’ll see, hear, and feel everything. But you won’t communicate, not even with a ‘blink yes or no’ code.
You’ll go slowly insane, and no one will know it. Excepting me, of course.”
“I really, really hope you’re not a doctor.”
“Better than,” I tell him. And now I cough a little, which isn’t my usual MO, you should understand, but truthfully, I’m just a little embarrassed this time round. “Actually, by rights, Mr Garth, you should be dead already, but there was – well, I’ll be honest with you, there was a glitch.”
“A glitch! I’m still alive because of a glitch?” says Arnie, getting quite chatty now for someone on the brink of virtual extinction. “Well, thank God for glitches, is what I always—”
“Wait – not so much,” I say, holding up a hand not as well manicured as my friend’s here, but passable. “The glitch is…”
Okay, so now I’m going to have to admit something here, although it pains and troubles me.
As I said, I’m feeling just a tad uncomfortable right at this juncture.
I won’t keep you in the dark too long and I hope you’ll forgive my uncharacteristic reticence, but I can feel a huge sigh sinking me into the hospital chair, which is pretty unusual in itself, as I have absolutely no body mass and am basically an apparition.
“See, Mr Garth,” I say, a bit sheepishly, “every child that comes into this world, they’re given what we call a soul. Bless ’em.”
Here’s where I pause for dramatic effect, old ham that I am, but also because, I won’t lie to you, this is the really tricky bit.
“Well, every child except one. Guess who?” And I point to Arnie Garth, with a friendly little wink. Just to lighten the mood.
“What!” Arnie gasps, looking not as lightened as I might have hoped. “Why didn’t I get a friggin’ soul? Who screwed up? I demand a manual recount!”
“Arnie,” I explain, with a sympathetic sigh, “I don’t give ’em out, fella, I just take ’em back. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about demarcation. I mean, you wouldn’t ask your make-up artist to fix a camera that goes on the fritz.”
He has to nod at this – the man may be almost irredeemably gross and seriously repellent, but an idiot he is not.
“So, I really don’t know why they didn’t give you a soul.
Could be a lot of reasons. There was a baby boom, the guys upstairs were overworked, they got distracted some, they plain forgot.
It’s like they say in the Bible, shit happens.
So, imagine my surprise when you have the fatal stroke and lethal heart attacks, triple whammy, I come down for your soul and – whoops – hello? ”
“But what’s it friggin’ matter?” demands Arnie Garth. “Who needs a soul, for God’s sake?”
“Ever wonder why you’re such an irredeemable bastard?”
The man in the bed looks outraged. “Me? Arnie Garth? Come on – people love me!”
I’m sorry, call me unprofessional, but I shake my head so hard at this, I nearly fall off my chair.
“Trust me, pal, you’re a shit. A total shit. A shit from Shitland. Everyone hates you. Even people who haven’t met you hate you already, ’cos it saves time. And you know why you’re such a shit? I’ll tell you why. You are such a shit because you don’t have a soul.”
Arnie ponders on this for little more than a beat. A beat in which several thousand people around the world may have died, such is life, but just a beat nonetheless.
“I can live with that,” decides Arnie, not offended in the least. “Who needs a soul?”
“Let’s see,” I ponder. I do a good ponder. “You wanna go somewhere hot and excruciatingly, skin-meltingly painful for all eternity and beyond when you die? And I am not talking Palm Springs.”
“Er, no. Not really.”
“Then you need one, you schmuck. By the end of the week would be nice.”
“End of the week!” He pauses for a second as a thought strikes him, like something he only noticed in the edit. “Hold on, did I hear you say fatal stroke?”
“And lethal heart attacks. Bubeleh, you don’t look this way from a head cold. Actually, you shoulda died today. But hey, fair is fair, this is our mistake. An embarrassing one, I admit. Nostra culpa.” I wink at Arnie. People like a wink. “So, I know some people. I pulled a few strings.”
“What people? What strings?”
“Such impatience. Tsk tsk. To continue – I bent a few rules. At, I might just add, some heavy personal and professional risk. And I got you… wait for it… da daa! An extension.”
“Wh-what kind of an extension?” Arnie is staring dumbly at me. Right now, he looks so pathetic my heart almost melts. Almost.
“Okay. Here goes,” I commence. “If you retrieve your soul by midnight Sunday, we’ll overlook the stroke and the heart attacks – which are on hold for now – and possibly even your godawful personality.
(Did I mention you’re a shit?) So, you get to live out the rest of your natural life.
Which actually mightn’t be that long; I’ve seen the inside of your arteries. ”
“Sunday? Six days? Just six friggin’ days?”
“Arnie – heaven can’t wait.”
The man in the bed looks suddenly chilled. “And… if I don’t get it back? This soul thing.”
“You’ll die and go straight to hell. Okay, that’s you. So, you wanna hear my Humphrey Bogart impression? It’s a killer.”
“Screw your impressions! Tell me what you people did with my fuckin’ soul!”
“Now this I know!”
But I don’t tell him straightaway. I give a sort of a pause, like I’m weighing up the best way to break it. This is what you call dramatic tension. Okay, pause over, here we go.
“We gave it to the little girl who was right behind you in the line.”
Arnie just stares at me. This I was expecting.
“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?”