Chapter Twenty-Four
If you are ready to believe, you are easy to deceive.
(Darkovan proverb)
Arnie Garth doesn’t notice the gleaming-white stretch limousine that has just pulled up outside Caesar’s Palace Hotel. Why should he? The city is full of stretch limos. A visiting alien would get scared off because they’d assume earthlings round here all had massive legs.
The benighted man is far too busy chasing after his very soul, any sight of which – let alone hope – he appears to have lost in the bustling, jostling, excitable, night-time crowd. The passenger alighting from this particular white limo does, however, see Arnie.
It is the voice that stops her first. A voice screaming into the air yet almost lost in the hubbub around it.
But when you have lived with a voice for so many irritating years, you tend to be able to pick it out from the crowd, like a mother in a busy maternity ward lactating at the sound of her newborn’s cries (although this particular person has never lactated for anyone, on or off camera).
“NOREEN!” yelps the voice, in clear and plaintive desperation.
“Come back! I need you so bad – my life will be hell without you. And that ain’t hyperbole.
Noreen! I’ll give you anything! Bigger cans – for charity that is, not, y’know…
a gigantic farm in the ass-end of nowhere.
A prosthetic leg for your sheep. Anything! ”
Let’s be honest, Las Vegas was truly a bit of a no-brainer.
It is the very first place Mrs Melisande Garth might have expected her devious rat of a still-breathing husband to make for, especially on awards night.
He has never been known to miss an opportunity to be recognised and lauded by his peers.
When, however, her investigators had first informed her that Arnie Garth had bolted directly from his LA hospital bed to somewhere in a bleak godforsaken north-western corner of England – England, for Chrissakes! – she had been totally mystified.
Yet, at the same time, she had found herself feeling curiously ecstatic and, on this occasion, no faking was involved.
Ecstatic because the evidence presented to her, at great personal expense, was clearly a major indicator of mental derangement.
She wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that ‘flight to Cumbria’ is actually on the accepted dementia checklist for doctors and psychiatrists, along with being unable to recall the current year or the name of the sitting president.
Stopping her errant husband’s credit cards had been a serious weapon in her arsenal, but by no means the only one.
She had intended simply to use it as a tool to restrict his spending before his clearly imminent death – and hopefully even to hasten it.
Yet this serendipitous sighting of the swine-in-question, as he cries out the name of another woman in the very thoroughfare on which Melisande is alighting, in words that suggest this is not merely another of his mid-life flings with a none-too-choosy porn starlet, is a potential game changer.
It is an accepted fact in the adult entertainment industry that no porn starlet is ever called Noreen or owns a sheep farm. That is one perversion too far.
A new and desperate sense of urgency has just been brought to the proceedings.
Mrs Garth is now obliged to regroup and ponder swiftly on what deeply Machiavellian change of strategy this fortunate glimpsing might entail.
The ageing icon tells herself that what has just been revealed to her was no accident.
It must have been a sign from God. (And perhaps, in this, she is not wholly mistaken.)
“Oh, my shit! It’s Melisande!”
The Botoxed face, formerly like thunder, immediately converts to one of total disdain as she confronts the sorry huddle of fans who have recognised her. They are uniformly male, balding, chubby, wearing heavy metal T-shirts and clutching DVD covers and magazines.
Instinctively, she starts to unbutton. They all get their cameras out. Sometimes she really does wish that she was still plain Doris Armstretter from Bowling Green, Kentucky.
***
The Penthouse Suite at the Dime After Dime is empty when Arnie steams back in. He can’t imagine where else Noreen might have gone. To the best of his knowledge, there aren’t any sheep in Las Vegas.
The night reception guy isn’t particularly helpful.
“I’m looking for a big homely British chick,” says Arnie, in some considerable panic. “Wearing a diamanté cardigan.”
Without even looking up from the register, the clerk reaches down under his desk and pulls up a thick, spiral-bound volume. He slides it over to Arnie.
“Pages forty-nine to sixty-two.”
Arnie glares at him and rushes back out into the cruel and sultry night.
***
Meantime, Melisande Garth, newly disembarked at her infinitely smarter and more tastefully excessive hotel, clicks briskly down the plush corridor to her room.
She is accompanied by an assistant organiser of the side events that always garland the major erotica awards ceremonies.
This younger and clearly very efficient Asian woman is scrolling a spreadsheet on her laptop whilst lugging Melisande’s bulging suitcase.
“And at midnight, Ms Melisande, you are performing… girl on girl. On girl. At the Crazy Horse.”
“Screw the Crazy Horse!”
“That’s on Tuesday.”
The great star suddenly stops mid-corridor and turns to face the young woman.
“Honey, I am having a crisis here, okay? Capisce? I’m crisising.
My mentally challenged lummox of a husband is about to give my inheritance away to what I’m guessing is some dentally retarded, Limey moneygrabber he picked up on his batshit crazy little jaunt across the pond.
So, the only way I’d honor any of those stupid commitments of yours with any enthusiasm is if he kindly keeled over and died without having the chance to change his friggin’ will…
” She trails off, struck by a sudden and absolutely brilliant notion.
She can’t understand why she hasn’t thought of it already.
But it’s never too late – except, of course, for cheating bastard husbands.
Melisande Garth, known only to her legion of fans by her first name, whistles jauntily to herself as she waves her key card at room 805, whipping her cell phone from the bag in one swift, practised move and grabbing her case with the other.
All she hears before she slams the door on the helpless young woman is, “But what about the Crazy…”
This is probably the moment when the young woman decides that this internship isn’t exactly what she had been led to believe, but Melisande is far too busy to care.
“Hi. Irving?” she whispers throatily into the phone, aiming her still impressive body towards the minibar.
“It’s Melisande! Mel – yeah, Doris… I’m good…
They’re healing. Say, you remember that little ‘difference of opinion’ you had with Stormy Petrel’s agent?
Her late agent, yeah. Who was that guy you…
? Why would anyone be bugging my phone? Irv, I may be dirty, but I’m clean.
… yeah? Big Louie? Sounds about right. You got his number? ”
Melisande Garth can feel herself smiling. Something she had never believed that, emotionally or structurally, she might ever be able to do again.