Chapter Twenty-Seven
You don’t go searching for bones in a lion’s den.
(Somali proverb)
You’re probably wondering, with all this going on, what about Arnie?
If you’re not, I sure as hell am. I know the situation.
I know the rules. The man has only a couple of days to retrieve his misplaced soul and save his own rotten life.
And, of course, as the old song goes, to fall in love and be loved in return, etc.
, etc. So okay, I’ll admit, I have my concerns.
Unsurprisingly, Arnie Garth is pretty worried too. If Noreen isn’t exactly his meal ticket (especially after the meal Melisande just made of his finances), she is most certainly his lifejacket. And he is starting to feel that he is totally drowning without her.
One would think that it shouldn’t be so onerous a task to find a dumpy English shepherdess without a hint of make-up, wearing a woolly red bobble-hat, a new but still appalling cardigan and ancient mud-stained hiking boots in Vegas.
She wouldn’t exactly blend in with the crowd.
(Unless, of course, there’s an English shepherdess convention in town.
Stranger things…) The only person, however, even vaguely resembling Noreen Millburn of Rough Fell, at least in the glittery cardigan department, turned out to be an octogenarian from Nebraska who had believed all her birthdays just arrived at once when Arnie grabbed her excitedly and spun her round.
In his cascading desperation, Arnie even storms into a pretty little twenty-four-hour wedding chapel, where a young Korean couple dressed identically as WALL-E are being married by Elvis Presley (if the King was ever an anorexic Polynesian in her sixties).
The cries of ‘mazeltov’ are appreciated, but Noreen Millburn is nowhere to be seen.
His hopes are raised momentarily, as he steams out of the ceremony, when he feels fingers of considerable power grip him around the arm.
“Noreen?” he says, spinning round in some relief. He discovers a large man in his forties beaming down at him.
“Noreen?” says the confused man. “Hey, Arnie, don’t you remember me?” Arnie shakes his head, so the man makes a thrusting gesture with his hips, rolls his eyes back into his head and puckers his lips. “Ooooooooooooooooohhhh!” he goes.
“Midas Welby Spring!” cries Arnie, greeting the legendary porn star. “Didn’t recognise you with your clothes on. How you doing?”
“Great! Just waitin’ on the missus. We’re renewin’ our vows tonight. Twenty years!”
“Well, isn’t that just fine, in this day and age.”
“Thanks, pal!” says the man. “Hey, make sure you send all my lovin’ to Melisande. I used to have such a ball humpin’ your wife.”
“She’ll appreciate that.”
Arnie really doesn’t need to be reminded about Melisande right now. And what other breeds of malice she might currently have aforethought of. Well, at least she doesn’t know where I am, he tells himself in some relief. And thankfully she hasn’t a clue about Noreen.
Otherwise, heaven only knows what she might do.
***
From her window on the fourteenth floor of Caesar’s Palace, Melisande Garth is staring down on the plebeians milling around below.
If they only knew I was here, she thinks, all too aware that she has given special and regular pleasure to so many of them in the privacy of their own homes.
She sometimes wonders exactly how many of these people, when actually being with a real woman rather than a thermoplastic equivalent or their own ever-loving selves, actually whisper her name under their hot, rancid breath.
And how large a percentage pronounce it wrong.
The knock on her door is sharp and insistent.
“About time!”
She strides smartly across the luxurious room, her high Louboutin heels only just supporting those famously long, enviably flexible legs and statuesque, tribute-to-science body.
Throwing open the door, she looks straight ahead down an endless and seemingly empty corridor. And offers it a puzzled frown.
Suddenly, she feels something tugging at the hem of her Balmain micro skirt. Looking down, she sees a male person no more than four feet high, dressed almost entirely in the supplest leather, with a head completely shaven save for a greying pigtail in a solid silver band.
“Who in the name of God are you?” asks Melisande.
“I’m Big Louie,” says the man, striding confidently into the room.