Chapter Twenty-Five
Luck is like having a rice dumpling fly into your mouth.
(Japanese proverb)
Many Americans believe that once you’ve seen the wondrous Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, with its meticulous recreation of the grandeur and beauty of the City of Water, there is absolutely no need to sort out your passport and shlep to the other side of the planet to see its historic and slowly crumbling inspiration.
After all, this far more accessible version has no disgorging cruise ships, no unsavoury smells, no confusing currency, less garlic and far fewer Italians.
What’s more, aside from all the ‘locals’ speaking relatively intelligible English, it has people-mover sidewalks, a branch of Madame Tussaud’s and giant Buddha statues. Suck on that, Venezia.
The Venetian does, of course, also have a casino.
In fact, more than one. Why wouldn’t it – this is surely its raison d’être (or should I say, ragion d’essere)?
The clientele of this sumptuous Italianate gambling den, on such a balmy summer evening, whilst perhaps not so greatly surpassing the innate sophistication and glamour of their For Luck’s Sake counterparts, are distinctly better-off and looking considerably more pleased with themselves in these stunning and impressively lavish surroundings.
To be fair, some of the visitors have gussied and spruced up for the occasion, taking their lead perhaps from Hollywood movies rather than any enforceable, ultra-strict dress code.
One person, however, doesn’t appear to have received the bulletin and is still looking more like a refugee from Ryan’s Daughter or How Green Was My Valley, albeit with a touch of diamanté thrown in.
She is also losing control of her newly acquired booty big time.
That poor kids’ hospital back in Ullswater, UK looks like it might just have to go begging elsewhere for its new hydrotherapy wing.
“Twenty-nine red,” announces the unsmiling croupier matter-of-factly, as if lives and futures and children’s educations don’t depend on it.
Noreen Millburn sighs, watching the lion’s share of her chips being scooped away from her. She really has no idea why she has fled here of all places nor why she has suddenly developed a seemingly uncontrollable urge to plunge headlong into her first deadly or at least quite precarious sin.
The moment she fled that awful restaurant – well, it was really rather a lovely restaurant, and she had been so enjoying her obscenely large salad – she had absolutely no idea where her clumpy Lakeland walking boots would lead her.
It was almost as if she had been helplessly propelled along that apparently world-famous, bustling, neon-drenched strip by pure, adrenaline-saturated shock.
Shock at the wicked betrayal by a man she had been very slightly just beginning not wholly to dislike.
Even greater shock at herself for being so naive as to believe that a manifestly disreputable little slug like this Mr Garth would have devoted his life and energies to making educational films about the saintly and the good, while quite patently he was a sleazy but clearly prime-moving purveyor of the most soulless and saddest exploitative content known to man.
And possibly woman; she wasn’t that clued-up on porn-audience demographics.
Even when she had plunged into the vast hotel lobby – stunned almost to immobility by its exquisite domed ceiling, with all that gilt and those hand-painted frescoes – she had no idea that her feet would lead her almost inexorably down the unimaginatively named Restaurant Row towards the Venetian Casino.
And, once there, you could have knocked her down with a feather, as her old mum used to say, to find herself sitting with all these exotic people, some with bottoms the sizes of which she had never encountered before, at least not on anything that wasn’t reared for its milk.
She has no idea what has gotten into her and, perhaps more disconcertingly, even less idea how to get it out.
“Can I bring you anything, ma’am?”
The waitress is smiling down at her and seems very kind. Noreen checks her dad’s old wristwatch, which she wears constantly. It is still on Cumbrian time, so she is really quite clueless.
“Horlicks, please,” she tells the girl. Always a safe bet. “Four sugars.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know that one.”
“Really?” says a surprised Noreen, who thought the whole world would be endeared to her favourite milky bedtime drink. “Ovaltine?” she hazards but is met with a polite shake of the head and a delicate retreat.
Noreen simply sighs and surveys the meagre remnants of her once-healthy stash. She is so wrapped up in her thoughts and her sadness that she doesn’t immediately register the inordinately smooth, deep and rather delicious voice almost in her left ear.
“Bet on black thirteen.”
The last thing Noreen Millburn needs right now is advice from a stranger or, indeed, a conversation with anyone.
So, she chooses not to look at the adjacent person proffering it.
Even if the speaker really does have a voice that goes down to his boots and is having rather the same effect on her anatomy.
But she was brought up not to be impolite.
Intensely annoying, perhaps, but never rude.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she says, without taking her eye off the currently immobile roulette wheel. “I’m really in no mood for…”
Yet as she tries to utter these words of dismissal, she feels a curious power so much stronger than even her own fierce determination, a primal force compelling her to crane her still-bobbled head around and upwards towards the sound.
And now she sees him.
A tall, unbelievably handsome, tastefully dressed gentleman, with skin of a rich blackness that she, with her admittedly circumscribed experience, can only compare to that of her beloved Herdwick sheep, when they are newly born.
But, of course, this gentleman is most probably much the same age as her and, not being a Herdwick, unlikely to lighten with time, save perhaps for some distinguished grey in later life.
The man is wearing the most immaculately tailored suit of cream linen, without, so far as she can ascertain, a single crease or wrinkle.
It is as if it has been laminated over what she can only imagine is an equally exquisite body, with that rich skin colour going all the way down.
He makes everyone else in this incredible room, even the smartest, look as if they have crawled in from their own particular slum in their workaday rags.
Noreen observes, as an unexpected flush surges through her quivering frame like a crashing wave (a phenomenon of which, she is certain, he must be all too aware), that this man is smiling at her.
Not just with his mouth and all those splendidly regular and dazzling teeth, but also with his cavernously deep brown eyes.
Everything about him appears to sparkle, as if someone gave him a spritz of premium fairy dust just before he came in.
“My name’s Lyle,” he says, in that same profoundly musical voice.
But of course, she thinks, what other voice would he use?
“I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“N-no. No, you did-n’t,” stutters Noreen, thinking that she has never heard the name Lyle before, except on a Golden Syrup tin. “H-h-h-h-hello. I’m Noreen. Noreen Millburn. Miss.”
“Well, Noreen Millburn, Miss – go on. Please. Place your bet.”
With this, he glides his impeccably (but in no way prissily) manicured hand over hers and uses it to push all of her remaining chips firmly onto black thirteen. She shudders, pleasurably, at the unexpected warmth of his touch. What in heaven’s name is going on here? she thinks to herself.
The wheel is spun. Noreen’s head moves up and down and around, the bobble on her hat bouncing wildly as if to some native rhythm from a country she’s never heard of, as it follows the movement of the tiny but mesmerising white ball.
Round and round it goes, making that distinctive sound that really is like no other, except perhaps for the curious death rattle I once heard on an old Guatemalan fisherman when I arrived just a moment too early.
Whoa! I’m back again, and hark at me interfering in the narrative, at what I truly believe has to be one of the most – if not the most – crucial points in this entire sorry saga.
Unforgivable of me, I know. And quite unprofessional.
The real scribes upstairs would be plotzing.
But okay, now that I’m here, I have to tell you that unlike certain other occurrences hitherto, this particular development isn’t exactly what I had in mind.
No sirree. Not by a long shot. Not my MO, as they say.
And where it’s going to take us, God only knows.
Possibly.
You can almost see the ears on gamblers all around the table twitching in unison to the ominous sound of that mischievous demon ball as it smacks the sides more and more portentously.
While the huge and beautiful wheel slows inexorably down.
Slower and slower. Until finally the unpredictable little guy settles firmly into the cosy number twelve slot.
Noreen stares at it, looking really upset.
Bugger! she thinks, then swiftly berates herself for her unspoken language.
But suddenly, to her consternation, the tiny ball leaps straight up again from its resting place. Right into the air. As everyone gawps, it simply hovers up there for maybe a second, then slowly moves right across the entire wheel and drops smartly back down again directly into number thirteen.
“Thirteen black!” announces the croupier, looking slightly more engaged than anyone has seen him hitherto.
Noreen is considerably more engaged. She is, in fact, beside herself with engagement, whilst everyone else around the table is turning to everyone else who isn’t them and saying, “Did you see that?” Or, “Did you fucking see that!”
“Yes! Yes!” she screams. Without thinking, Noreen turns to a beaming Lyle and gives him a huge hug. She instantly realises what she has done, and not just because Lyle is ceasing to breathe. “Oh. Excuse me. Sir. I got carried away. But – thank you. Thank you so much!”
Lyle is appealingly modest. “Noreen, it was surely my pleasure.” He smiles to himself for a moment and those sensational eyes close, as if he is deep in thought. “Noreen… Noreen – such a wondrous name. It conjures up so many magical images.”
She nods. “Does it?”
“Uh huh. Let’s see now… hmmm… it is, how shall I put it, redolent. Yes, redolent – of rolling green fields… of friendly, rough-haired sheep… mmhmm… and of mountains. Yes! Big, beautiful, imposing mountains. Whoa! Hey – a lake! In fact, a whole district of lakes!”
Noreen’s mouth opens wide enough to suck in a roulette wheel. “That is amazing! I live in the Lake District! And I keep sheep. And… my absolute favourite is my black-faced sheep! That’s Geoffrey.”
“No!” cries Lyle, clapping his long, slim fingers together. “I would so love to hear more about Geoffrey. And, of course, any other sheep or livestock you may have in your social circle, should you feel so inclined.” His voice lowers. “Noreen, Ms Millburn, might I be so bold as to whisk you away?”
Noreen doesn’t answer. She can’t answer; she has no words.
Never having been whisked, she simply stares into this extraordinary man’s utterly beautiful face, unblinking, unthinking.
His eyes appear to be reading her very soul.
Or possibly souls. Were this person Lyle to tell her that she was a helicopter right now, the bobble on her hat would immediately whirl around and around and she would soar happily up to the ceiling.
But he doesn’t. He simply – and very gently – takes her hand.