Chapter Thirty-One #2
A room service waiter wheels in a large trolley shrouded almost to the floor in a pristine white linen tablecloth and groaning with food of the finest quality.
There are more oysters on display than Arnie has ever seen, and he has been a big oyster guy in the past, especially since learning they could be an aphrodisiac.
He wonders if this is still the intention today, although he has to admit Noreen isn’t looking like she needs much crustacean encouragement.
Lyle tips the waiter in a manner that behoves the suit and the man exits rather contentedly. Arnie, meanwhile, revs up for one final implore, although he can’t help grabbing a couple of oysters for the journey.
“Noreen… please,” he says, as he chews. “I can’t compete with this guy. Hey, who could? Warren Beatty, circa 1972, maybe. I don’t even know why I’m here, except… I need you. Really. See, for reasons I won’t bore you with, if you don’t come with me right this minute, I’m a goner.”
Noreen looks seriously puzzled. Despite what is, by her own reckoning, a rather over-dramatic entreaty, she finds herself feeling vaguely impressed.
The man for once looks almost sincere, as if the entire brash facade that was Arnie Garth is crumbling.
She is not exactly certain what to say, but before she can even utter a word, she and her duelling menfolk hear a gruff, disembodied voice.
“You’re a goner anyway, pal!”
It appears to be coming from within the large room service trolley.
Noreen simply assumes that a talking trolley is yet another marvel this extraordinary place has to offer.
However, as they stare at it in wonder, a very small, leather-clad arm appears from beneath the fine white tablecloth.
The arm is all the more interesting because the expensively gloved hand attached to it clutches a compact but lethal Ruger SR40c handgun plus tailored silencer.
Big Louie climbs out from inside the trolley and freezes the room. Even Lyle looks a tad cold.
Noreen is the first to break the silence. “It’s okay!” she says, excitedly. “I know what he wants.”
She scoots over to the suite’s well-stocked minibar and starts scooping out the miniatures. Shot-sized malt whiskeys, assorted baby bourbons, mini Tequilas and gin-lets fill her arms. Smiling benevolently, she thrusts them all towards the diminutive newcomer.
“I hope you enjoy them,” she says, “please don’t thank me.”
Ignoring the generous if bizarre invitation to Lilliputian bacchanalia by this equally strange person, Big Louie walks straight over to a totally bemused Arnie. Pointing the barrel of the gun in his direction, he shakes his head rather sadly.
“Hate to do this, pal. I love your work.”
“Thanks. The Little Big Men movie got a blockbuster small audience – but this is a mistake!” says Arnie.
“Tell that to your old lady.”
“Old lady?” says Noreen.
“My mother wants to kill me?” cries Arnie, with fake incredulity.
“You’re an orphan,” reminds Noreen, who by now has become rather angry.
Not just at Arnie’s bursting in on her lovely and rather promising evening but at this new and quite belligerent intruder, pretending he’s a very small cowboy or something.
She does get, however, that Las Vegas is a city of artifice, so perhaps she is not investing this compact gentleman with the gravitas he might be accustomed to expect.
“I meant step-mom,” corrects Arnie, swiftly. “My stepmother wants to kill me?”
“No more talk,” says the latest visitor, “and sorry, guys, no witnesses. Wrong place, wrong time. Shit happens. Say your prayers. We respect all denominations.”
“Fire away,” says Arnie, resignedly. He is more than a little exhausted by now and has quite run out of ideas. “I was going this route in a coupla days anyway. But hey, guy to guy, give the dame a free pass.”
The smaller man regretfully shrugs his refusal and levels the weapon upwards at Arnie’s head. As he starts to squeeze the trigger, something small and furry flies through the air towards him at great speed and clamps its powerful little jaws on Big Louie’s favourite ear.
“Arrghhhhh!” screams the bitten man, as you would if Stanley the flying ferret had started eating your face.
Unsurprisingly, the gun goes off, sending a bullet that whistles past Arnie’s trembling head and passes right through Lyle.
Mildly annoyed, the wearer of the Coward-ish dressing gown examines the neat hole in the fabric, front and rear.
Arnie seizes the moment and leaps towards his would-be assassin, knocking him backwards into the trolley and sending oysters, champagne and other amatory aids flying. Then Big Louie’s favourite pornographer grabs Noreen firmly by the arm.
“Now do you wanna leave?”
“Yes please, Arnie!” says Noreen, grabbing up all her bags and thinking to herself that this really is getting to be a bit of a habit.
They run out of the room. Away from the struggling assassin. Away from the devilish Lothario in the punctured dressing gown. Away from that low round thing in the bathroom she would have loved to soak her aching feet in.
Lyle stares after them. To his chagrin, he has to admit to having been taken a tad off guard by these quite unexpected and unwelcome impediments to mutually assured seduction.
From the corridor, he hears a long, high-pitched whistle which, were he of this earth, might have split his eardrums. This is followed by a frantic scurrying as Stanley, Lakeland warrior-ferret, dashes across the room and out of the door, brandishing a small but dangerous German firearm in his tight little mouth.
In the corridor a pair of young newly-weds, she in a relatively sane white wedding dress, he in a smart rented tux, are gaily returning to their room. They watch the speedy, gun-toting creature as it flashes past them.
“Wow,” says the young man, impressed. “Talk about security!”