Chapter Twenty-Three
Cold tea and cold rice are bearable, cold looks and cold words are not.
(Japanese Proverb)
Arnie is chowing down on a huge plate of steaming hot fettuccine when he senses Noreen staring up at him from her overabundant salad.
“What?” he says, meeting her kindly gaze. “I got some on my nose?”
“No. Well, yes.” Noreen smiles. “And your chin. And your… But, it’s just nice to see you enjoying yourself.”
Arnie looks around the busy Italian restaurant in case anyone might be listening.
The massive room is designed like a trattoria built to feed half of Naples and packed with lively and universally enormous, homegrown tourists, most of whom could be mistaken for participants in the final stages of a national pasta-eating contest. But fortunately, they don’t resemble anyone he knows in his chosen field (except maybe that oversexed corpulent guy in Beauty and Obese).
He shakes his head and sighs. “Saint Noreen. Listen, kid,” he says, philosophically, “life is shit, and then you croak. You gotta get your jollies where you can.”
“Well… I suppose I am, aren’t I? Getting my ‘jollies’.
You do talk funny, Mr Garth.” She smiles to herself.
“Do you know, I feel quite jolly just being with you. Isn’t that curious?
” She demolishes a huge chunk of mango then squirms at the unexpected taste.
“Oh, I thought that was a stewed turnip. How odd. Not horrible though. What was I saying – yes, me, batty old Noreen Millburn, who has never been out of the Lake District in her life. Or eaten one of these size-of-a-house salads. Or met a maker of so many educational, religious films.”
He shrugs modestly.
“Of course, I was really upset with that watch shmuck earlier, but now… well, strange as it may seem, I’m almost a little bit glad I’m here.”
Arnie thinks for a moment. And finds himself so taken aback by his own thinking that the quivering mound of fettuccine on his fork is paused en route to his open mouth.
“You know something,” he says quietly, “so am I, Noreen. Almost a little bit glad you’re here. Sweetheart.”
Noreen suddenly looks concerned. The gentle smile fades from her face. “Hang on. How do I know you’re not just trying to get me into bed again? Like you did back in—”
“No. No, Noreen!” interrupts Arnie. He is being quite insistent. “Really. I-I don’t want to sleep with you. In fact, I’m not sexually attracted to you in any which way whatsoever. To be honest, I wouldn’t go for you poached.”
“Oh, Arnie,” she smiles gratefully, “you’re just saying that.”
“I’m not. Really, you… you gotta believe me, Noreen. In fact, you’re the first lady I ever took out to dinner since puberty and didn’t want to jump her bones. Save perhaps my mom.”
“That is so sweet, Arnie,” says Noreen, genuinely touched. “But technically, I’m taking you to dinner.”
Arnie laughs out loud, causing others around to stare. Curiously, unlike on certain previous occasions, the diners here have been far too preoccupied with their groaning plates to pick up on the disparity between two of their more unusual fellow diners. And they’re not really over-bothered now.
“Yeah! How about that? A dame treating me to my food. Another first.”
To his surprise, she suddenly taps his tanned and compact hand with her own larger, far paler one.
“Oh, Arnie. You must be such a lonely man.”
Arnie doesn’t say anything for quite a while. Noreen wonders if he even heard and whether it is worth saying again.
“You must be—”
“Yeah, I heard,” says Arnie finally. And then he nods, as if this is something that has only just dawned on him.
Which, in truth, it probably only just has.
At least for real, not as a lecherous ploy.
He leans across the table, trying to avoid her salad with his elbows.
“Y’know, Noreen,” he says, with an almost resigned sigh, his eyes just starting to brim, “I really do think I am. What you said.”
Their eyes meet, hers pale blue and suffused with so much empathy, his squitty-brown and slightly moist. Even Arnie Garth would be hard-pressed to deny that this is what one could call a moment.
The sort of thing you might even see in films. Not the type he makes, of course, when the script is more likely to say that their thighs meet, but something he has definitely seen on a screen somewhere.
He hardly dares to entertain the thought, but could this really be the time – the life-saving, death-defying instant – when things might just be starting to change? He leans even closer towards her. And closer…
“ARNIE!” comes a cry from the doorway.
The moist-eyed man thus addressed freezes for an instant, mid-moment, eyes immediately drying. Very slowly, he turns around.
Noreen watches as the face of Arnie Garth, previously bathed in an unusually calm and almost peaceful glow, suddenly develops an expression she has seen only once before on a man, when as a young girl she had opened the door to her parents’ bedroom and found her rugged, hard-drinking, sheepherding father in bed with a Georgette Heyer novel.
Her companion’s shock and horror, and – dare she label it – shame, is unmistakeable.
Yet Noreen Millburn has absolutely no idea why.
The approaching crowd – and there must be at least a dozen of them – appear at first glance to be extremely sociable and, indeed, highly elated to catch her hitherto attentive dinner companion unawares at his table.
Alright, the ladies aren’t wearing a huge amount of clothing, but it is the desert for heaven’s sake.
And no one in the restaurant is exactly dressed to the nines.
Or even to the fives. The group certainly does look excessively healthy, especially up top, of which, in the ladies’ case, you can see rather a lot.
Actually, the men’s case too, as their silky shirts are mostly unbuttoned, revealing far less spare fat than their fellow diners.
Far less chest hair too, interestingly. And more jewellery.
Noreen doesn’t personally warm to heavy make-up and bright mascara and long false eyelashes and piercings and tattoos and bustiers and that sort of stuff, even on women, but she likes to think that she is not one of those people who disapprove of what others do.
This would hardly be charitable or in the spirit of live and let live – and, indeed, help live – to which she has always generously subscribed.
And if the gentlemen want to wear a lot of gold and nipple adornments with their formal wear, then good for them.
She is sure that they have worked hard for it.
And they certainly appear to have the bodies.
What she does find a little more difficult to compute, or at least align comfortably in her mind, is how these clearly very jolly and extremely glamorous people might fit into her current benefactor’s world of educational and faith-based filmmaking.
She can hardly envisage any of these lovely ladies taking on the role of Saint Joan of Arc or that sweet little Mother Teresa, or indeed imagine any of the men here, despite their pigmentation, giving their Bishop Desmond Tutus, but she has heard somewhere that actors can be extremely versatile.
As she is pondering this and taking in the scene with some considerable, yet far from judgmental, interest, the newcomers are all over Arnie, slapping and kissing, hugging and fondling, all the while muttering excited comments which she clearly finds some difficulty in fully deciphering.
Arnie thanks every God for small mercies.
“Hey, guy, we didn’t see you at the awards,” says one of the back-slapping men.
“Naw, well, you know,” Arnie explains comprehensively, checking in all the time with Noreen, who is thankfully still struggling. “Hey, well, it’s been so great catchin’ up with you…”
“Haven’t seen you since the wrap party for Malcolm Triple-X,” says one of the young women, throwing her arms and everything else around him, until all Noreen can see is a shiny globe of sweaty nakedness glistening under the lights, which could belong to any of them.
She hopes Arnie isn’t going to suffocate, as she really doesn’t relish the thought of giving him mouth-to-mouth.
Anyway, she has only ever done it on sheep, so it might not be the same.
A tall Latino man, who Noreen has to admit is rather good-looking, is inspecting her with unmasked curiosity.
“This your date?” he asks Arnie. Before Arnie can even half shrug, the guy continues sotto voce into Arnie’s ear. “She’s gotta do something very special.”
Noreen does, in fact, hear this and is rather flattered that the attractive man can tell just by glancing at her that she is one for performing unsung good works back home.
Before Arnie can respond, not that he possibly could, another of the actresses bends down and French kisses him, her long and versatile tongue venturing so far inside his mouth and with such bulging freneticism that it looks like she is transferring food for him to store in his cheeks through the winter.
Noreen feels that she has to pose the question, because surely even in America a gentleman would introduce a dinner guest to his friends, as this gushing, exuberant throng would clearly appear to be.
“Who are these people, Arnie?”
“I never seen them before in my life,” says Arnie, to which everyone laughs, even Noreen. Such a witty guy.
A strapping young man in a white sleeveless tuxedo and explicit arm tattoos smiles at Noreen. “He gonna put you into one of his movies?” he asks with what looks like a genuine interest.
“I-I can’t act,” stammers Noreen.
“Neither can I, hon,” a very pretty young woman laughs, “but I just won three Woodys!”
On this, she commences to draw out from a large bag a clutch of the distinctive golden awards we first met in Arnie’s office, which has to seem like an age ago but really wasn’t.
With remarkable speed and a burst of tepid fettuccine, Arnie is up and shielding the offending items from Noreen’s curious gaze.
He manages to push the well-won Woodys swiftly back into the surprised young lady’s bag.
Yet, even in this time of life-threatening crisis, Arnie Garth can’t help himself from wondering if these glittering prizes had in fact been awarded to productions from his own prestigious stable. Professional pride is a hard baby to tame.
Fortunately – or not – Arnie doesn’t have long to wait.
“Your Shakespeare Trilogy won the Woody Supreme!” announces another pneumatic young star.
By now, the entire restaurant appears to be staring in the direction of this exotic group. Some of the female diners, however, are taking time out from their own gawping in order to check on exactly where their husbands’ and young sons’ bulging eyes are focused.
“You don’t say,” says Arnie, really wishing that they hadn’t.
“Shakespeare, Arnie!” says Noreen. “That is so wonderful. Do you know, at school I was very partial to Shakespeare. ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…’”
The gang all nod graciously, working really hard to decipher the words through the seriously screwy accent. One of the players finally gets there.
“You would enjoy these classics, ma’am,” he says. “Brothello!”
“Isn’t that Oth—?”
“Troilism and Cressida,” recalls another, blissfully. Arnie tries to cough but possibly not loud enough.
“Troy-what?”
“And not forgetting Coriol’s Anus!” announces another tuxedoed guy, with tears in his eyes.
“Coriolanus, yeah,” corrects Arnie, pedantically, with a fearful, games-up smile.
“Arnie…?” says Noreen, as she takes an even closer, rather more critical look at the assembled, admiring bevy.
“Ye-es, sweetheart?” he responds, fearfully.
“What kind of films do you make?”
“What kind…? Well, they’re kind of… y’know, as I said, educational. For people who find life hard. No, scrap the hard. Difficult. Lonely. Lonely guys. Y’know, like me! They’re sorta public service movies! Yeah.”
“You shoulda been at the awards!” coos one of the pretty public servants. “There was like this major retrospective of Arnie’s oeuvre. You remember The Best Rears of our Wives? It was so classy.”
Very slowly, Noreen Millburn rises from the table, wrapping her new American cardigan tightly around her sturdy but shaking Cumbrian frame, as if for protection.
“You lied to me, Mr Garth,” she says, in quiet but angry sadness. “You are no longer my friend. Or my cousin!”
Attempting, with some considerable difficulty, to hold back the tears, the desolate woman squeezes a frantic path through the glitzy gang around the table. With a muttered ‘excuse me’, Noreen stumbles brokenly off towards the exit and the great unknown.
“Noreen! Wait!” cries Arnie. “You’re killing me here!”
He scrambles through the confused yet strangely fascinated group and rushes out after his fleeing lifeline in utter desperation.
The colleagues from his industry appear quite perturbed. They look at each other in genuine concern. Finally, one of the actresses voices what they are all secretly thinking.
“Homely is the next big thing. You heard it here first.”