The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [109]
April 4
JJ says he’s developing a “revolutionary” new kind of cigarette, a healthy replacement for tobacco. But not to tell Noel.
April 7
Got a visit today at the lab from … guess who? The alpha male, the über-cool dandy lion of the boulevards, for whom the belles toil—Monsieur Blaquière. Surprise, surprise. He didn’t say anything terribly nasty. In fact, he said he heard I was sick and asked if I was feeling better. I tried to remain as nonchalant as he was, which was hard because my mind was as steady as a drunkard’s piss-line and my heart was doing backward somersaults and I ended up spilling Maxwell House all over my chest. But then, after he left, I was surprised at how I felt—I was actually relieved that he was gone!!
April 12
Incredibly, miraculously, Mrs. B seems back to normal! Like the magician’s assistant who enters the casket and comes out the other side, transformed. She’s smiling & joking & her short-term memory is back!! Most of the time, anyway. Everyone has played a role, says Noel, but warns there’s still a long way to go.
The only problem now is … Noel. He looks like he’s been rolling around in a dingy dryer for weeks. His hands and clothes are stained with chemicals and he’s haggard and gaunt, with bags under his eyes like bruises. As far as I can tell, he’s stopped eating, except for soda biscuits—though I once caught him gorging and gobbling everything in the fridge like a famished dog. He’s heading for a major crash, I’m almost sure. What’s strange, eerie, is that with the lost pounds he’s starting to look more and more like. . . Norval.
April 13
Noel seems in much better spirits. He’s spending less time in the lab, & going out more. I wonder where? He could be seeing that American girl I saw him talking to at the lab, the synaesthete with the heart-shaped neckline. They laughed like hyenas together. And she kept flipping her hair back & letting her skirt hike up when she sat down. Or maybe he’s out with the Bath Lady. Who the hell cares?
April 14
Art therapy classes going well. Getting straight A-minuses. After years of aimlessness, of turnstiling through bars and no-future jobs, I think I’ve finally found something I want to do! Am now using Mrs. B as a guinea pig. She’s done six paintings so far & they’re all superb! She’s really talented & should have her own exhibition one day. If I had any initiative or willpower, which I don’t, I’d try to arrange it. Is it possible that her memory disorder has made her more creative? In a great guest lecture last week, Dr. Vorta mentioned that this kind of thing—creative outbursts—was possible, that FTD (frontotemporal dementia) can have this effect. That damage to one side of the brain (the left) may liberate the other side. Or something like that.
Speaking of Vorta (who’s getting a tad frisky, shall we say, in our lab sessions), I asked Stella about him, trying to find out if there was any truth to what Norval said, about Vorta having an affair with her, about him causing her husband’s suicide. But she had nothing bad to say about him at all. On the contrary. She said he was a close friend of her husband’s, practically a guardian angel to her son, a brilliant scientist, etc, etc. I should’ve let it go at that. But in my prying way I actually came out & asked her, point blank, if she had an affair with him. She laughed. And then said, with a wink: “Oh, he was after me all right. A very persistent man.” While your husband was alive? I asked. “No, except for a bit of harmless flirting, it started long after that. But he stopped, very suddenly.” Stella stopped here herself, which was probably a cue for me to mind my own business. Why did he stop? I asked. Stella paused, bit her lip. “Well, he came over to the house one evening, on some absurd man-like pretext, & handed me an envelope, which he insisted I open then & there. Which