Chapter Twenty-Nine
After a landslide, one more can be expected.
(Faroese proverb)
Arnie is actually pretty good at holding his drink.
He has held enough for a lot of people by the time he finds himself in the Crazy Girls showroom at the Planet Hollywood resort, watching a line of topless chorus girls kicking their leggy way to the front of the stage.
Old habits die hard, and in one sense he finds it quite comforting to gaze at attractive young women wearing precious little clothing in what now look pretty certain to be his final hours here on his own personal, far less glamorous planet.
Okay, the whole show is relatively tasteful and restrained, but beggars can’t be choosers.
So, he is quite surprised when his bleary eyes are finally able to focus on what’s actually going on up there.
“Holy shit!” he says, managing to offend an oversized, middle-aged couple sitting squashily beside him who don’t want that kind of talk when they are watching decent, respectable adult entertainment.
Yet I can’t totally blame the guy for his language.
Not this time. Because what – or more accurately, who – he has just seen up there, on that glitzy stage, c’est moi!
I’m in my nice business suit – of course I am; it’s a working day – but I have pulled my best Brooks Brothers shirt right up to my neck and am doing identical choreography to the lovely young ladies to my left and right.
Naturally, they can’t see me, and neither can anyone else.
Excepting, of course, you-know-who. Which is a bit of a shame because, even though I say it myself, I am quite the mover.
But I have a job to do.
So, as soon as Arnie realises that his piggy little eyes aren’t deceiving him, I direct him with a nod to sidle over to the side of the stage. Which is easier said than done, as Middle America doesn’t exactly come with much legroom.
“What the…?” is what he predictably starts mouthing, even before he reaches me.
“I know I’m going against the critical consensus,” I tell him, “but I quite enjoyed Showgirls.” Industry talk – helps to break the ice. “How goes it, Arnie?”
Arnie is not so far gone he can’t figure that folks might find it strange him talking pretty animatedly to an empty space at the side of the stage, but he is certainly way past the stage of giving a damn.
“As bad as it gets, Ambrose,” he replies, although, to be honest, this is not entirely new information.
I may not be one hundred per cent omnipresent, but I’ve been around.
“Noreen knows I’m a big erotica producer – and, by the way, a major Triple-Dick award winner yet again – so now she’s been and had a gangbuster makeover and gone off with some show-offy black dude. So, it’s goodnight and good luck.”
“Hey, well, win her back.”
“It ain’t that easy, mister! This guy, he’s handsome… charismatic… magnetic. I personally think he’s kind of stunning, in a completely non-homosexual way.”
Now I’ll level with you, because if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from the Dead Poets Society – and I do mean dead – it’s that a writer has to respect his or her readers.
Another thing I know is you probably do have to be a little bit afraid of Virginia Woolf, but that’s another story.
See, since I discovered the rather large fly recently dropping unannounced into the ointment (Fly?
A scorpion!), I haven’t been entirely sure how to play this.
Because I know that now, with these new and completely unforeseen circumstances – hey, total omniscience is also above my pay grade – I have to impart a clear and present sense of urgency into my man.
Not that the whole thing isn’t pretty damn urgent anyway.
But, well, you know me and my sense of drama.
“Oh, God!” I gasp dramatically. “What was his name? Quick, Arnie – what was his name?”
“How the hell would— Miles or Niles or…”
“Say it isn’t Lyle.”
“That’s it! Lyle!”
“Jesus Christ!” I say into his face. And I mean it. But I also admit that letting my entire body be enveloped in a crackling blue light is a bit Spielberg, bless him.
“Jesus Christ?” repeats Arnie, thinking anything’s possible.
“It’s an expression!”
I grab the trembling man by both shoulders, which of course he doesn’t feel, because I’m totally weightless and also on a very strict diet, but it does help to make the point (and, ethereal or not, I can still smell his boozy breath, which, trust me, could wake the dead).
“Well congratulations, Arnie. Know who you just met? The name Satan ring any bells? Beelzebub? Diablo? Lucifer? Old Nick? Jack Nicholson in that movie with the pretty witches?”
“He definitely said his name was Lyle.”
“That’s just another aka! To the world, he’s Lyle. To us, he’s formally known as Prince of Darkness!”
Arnie just stares at me. “Shit!” he says, in horror. “Now I’ve got him on my case too?”
By this time, my guy is completely freaked out.
If he had enough hair, it would be turning white.
Wouldn’t yours? To discover that the girl of your dreams has gone straight over to the Devil!
Okay, Noreen probably isn’t the stuff that Arnie’s dreams are usually made of, but she has certainly been on his waking and sleeping mind since at least Tuesday.
And if Lyle isn’t quite the Devil yet – I’m not the world expert on Satanic pecking orders, so sue me – he is certainly one of the Devil’s disciples.
Which reminds me of a play by George Bernard Shaw, but don’t get me started on late Irish playwrights.
Not if you want to know what happens with Arnie and Noreen and Lyle by Sunday.
Which I’m pretty damn interested in myself, by the way, especially as to how this Lyle guy knew about the whole soul-misplacement mishigas forty-five years ago.
You think there’s a mole in heaven? Call for George Smiley!
Anyway, I’m so busy mulling over all these new complications, I almost don’t notice that someone else is on the opposite side of the stage from yours truly, her thickly mascaraed eyes glued onto an agitated husband talking feverishly into thin air.
And she has a far smaller gentleman watching right along with her.
Lucky, I can lipread.
“That him?” exclaims Big Louie, who can’t quite believe what he is looking at and would rather look at what’s taking off on the stage just above him.
“Yeah. That’s my Arnie. Talking to himself again. They tell me he did that at the hospital. How did you track him down?”
“I got my sources.”
One of the dancers winks at him from the stage. He gives her a flip of his ponytail.
“And pretty much everyone in this burg owes Big Louie a favor.”
Despite herself, Melisande is clearly impressed.
“Any idea what the hell he’s doing here?” asks Big Louie.
“Who knows?” screeches Melisande, but quietly. “He’s finally flipped. Danger to himself and others. That’s why I want him… you know.”
The diminutive man nods sagely. “It’s the humane thing to do.”